October, 2018:
HOW BIG TOBACCO THREATENS THE ILLICIT TRADE PROTOCOL
The first Meeting of the Parties to the Illicit Trade Protocol (ITP) starts today. It is crucial for delegates to understand the tobacco industry’s role in illicit trade before discussions begin.
The ITP aims to eliminate all forms of illicit tobacco but has a particular focus on securing the supply chain of legally manufactured tobacco products. Latest estimates suggest that approximately 60–70 per cent of the illicit market is tobacco industry product, indicating that, at the very least, tobacco companies are failing to control their supply chain in the knowledge that their products will end up on the illicit market.
The ITP requires a global track and trace system to reduce tobacco smuggling which will be achieved by each party requiring that every pack manufactured in or imported to their territory has a unique, secure marking providing information on manufacture, shipping and distribution.
The ITP stipulates that this ‘shall not be performed by or delegated to the tobacco industry’- a crucial requirement given that the industry has a vested interest in controlling measures aimed at controlling its supply chain. To this end, PMI adapted its pack marker system Codentify and freely licensed it to its three main competitors who then collectively promoted it to governments using front groups and third parties, despite the system being ineffective and inefficient as a track and trace solution.
In 2016 the system was sold to a company called Inexto, with PMI claiming this complied with WHO requirements.
Yet some of Inexto’s staff feature long-time PMI employees credited with creating Codentify and a complex web of shared intellectual property interests exists between these individuals and the two companies.
This is not the only threat that the industry poses to the ITP. Tobacco companies are a major funding source of data on illicit tobacco with the industry regularly commissioning reports which provide data on the scale of illicit tobacco across various countries and continents.
Recent research from the Tobacco Control Research Group at the University of Bath found that existing assessments of industry-funded data demonstrate that such data are not reliable. When compared with independent sources, they consistently overestimate the scale of illicit tobacco and frequently fail to meet the quality and transparency standards of peer-reviewed research.
Such data enables the industry to promote conclusions about the scale and nature of the illicit trade which cannot be easily disproved. The industry argues it is the victim of the illicit market, emphasising the role of counterfeit cigarettes, while arguing that that public health measures rather than the industry’s supply chain failures fuel illicit trade.
Parties to the ITP must reject the industry’s track and trace system while remaining vigilant against industry obscurantism. Parties also need to be aware that industry data on illicit serve as a platform for the industry’s lobbying and PR strategies. When fighting illicit trade, we shouldn’t look to the industry fuelling the problem to tell us how to understand or solve it.
THE PROTOCOL TO ELIMINATE ILLICIT TRADE IN TOBACCO PRODUCTS
THE PROTOCOL TO ELIMINATE ILLICIT TRADE IN TOBACCO PRODUCTS: A BRIEF HISTORY
Article 15 on the illicit trade in tobacco products was the first article on which an agreement was reached during the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) negotiations. The Parties recognised in this article that the elimination of all forms of illicit trade in tobacco products was an essential component of tobacco control. It is was rather novel that a public health treaty deal with illicit trade. Article 15 was only a first step. At the second Conference of the Parties, the decision was taken to start the negotiations for a separate protocol to eliminate the illicit trade in tobacco products (ITP). The ITP was adopted in 2012 and entered into force a week ago on 25 September 2018.
In the nineties, a big concern was that globally, a third of all exported cigarettes went missing while they were being transported internationally and entered into the contraband market. The evidence suggested that the tobacco industry was the chief beneficiary of smuggling. The industry benefited, using smuggling as a market entry strategy.
An article in the British Medical Journal in October 2000 outlined the reasons for the Protocol. “Tobacco smuggling has become a critical public health issue because it brings tobacco to markets cheaply, making cigarettes more affordable and thus stimulating consumption, consequently increasing the burden of ill health caused by its use. Smuggling is not a small phenomenon: we have estimated that, globally, a third of legal cigarette exports disappear into the contraband market. This extraordinary proportion results in a second key effect of smuggling—the loss of thousands of millions of dollars of revenue to government treasuries.”
The suggestion was made for a protocol to address the active involvement of the tobacco industry in smuggling operations. “In October 2000, the World Health Organisation will start negotiations for a framework convention on tobacco control. A specific protocol could deal with tobacco smuggling. It could, for instance, require “chain of custody” markings on all packages of tobacco products, placing the onus on the manufacturers to show that cigarettes arrive legally in their end user markets. Only such action at international level will resolve the problem, but it has now been shown to be soluble.”
Evidence of the direct and indirect involvement of the tobacco industry in cigarette smuggling is well documented–in internal documents that tobacco companies were forced to release in the course of litigation and in their own admission and court judgements. Since 1997, there have been several official investigations and subsequent court cases in different parts of the world (Hong Kong, Canada, Colombia) that have accused the industry of supplying smuggled cigarettes or at least of being aware of the illegal destination of their products.
The adopted Protocol is in line with the suggested solution outlined above, but is much more powerful. The ITP comprises 47 Articles; the substantive key provisions in Part III deal with supply chain control with the objective of tackling the illicit tobacco trade at the global level.
A QUICK GUIDE TO TRACKING AND TRACING
All Parties to the Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products (ITP) will need to establish a national tracking and tracing (T&T) system. That system needs to be linked into a global T&T regime within the next 5 years. The system may be adapted to national requirements but needs to be able to monitor and verify the authenticity of manufactured or imported tobacco products in its territory. Clear global standards are yet to be agreed upon.
What are the essential minimum requirements?
- A system that is unique, secure and unpredictable and not under the control or influence of the tobacco industry
- Recording of national information on secure servers, not operated by the tobacco industry and with access by the industry strictly limited and controlled
- Persons authorised by Parties, and independent from the tobacco industry, to have access to information about the international supply chain of tobacco products via a secure, usable and well-maintained global information-sharing focal point
What will it track?
- Date & time, location and productions shift of manufacture
- Machine, manufacturing facility and product description
- Name, invoice, order number and payment records of the first customer unaffiliated with the manufacturer
- Intended market of retail sale; intended shipment route, the shipment date, shipment destination, point of departure and consignee
- Any warehousing and shipping
- Identity of any known subsequent purchaser
Know your vendor
Countries will want to purchase adequate and fully functional T&T systems. However, identifying a suitable vendor in the market may be tricky for health government officials who are unfamiliar with T&T vendors. Some systems have been developed by the tobacco industry itself and are incompatible with the ITP.
The need for secure communication
Once the ITP is operational, it will involve the exchange of sensitive information. The confidentiality of any communication needs to be ensured. A secure system needs to be developed to protect it from the threat of criminal interests and the tobacco industry itself trying to corrupt and undermine the ITP.
Groups debate impact of e-cigarettes on public health
https://news.mb.com.ph/2018/10/07/groups-debate-impact-of-e-cigarettes-on-public-health/
Opposing groups continue to debate the government stance on electronic cigarettes or e-cigarettes and its impact on public health.
One group insists that e-cigarettes are a viable option to stopping conventional smoking, while the other group claims this alternative also has the same hazardous effects as tobacco.
Local vaping groups maintained the government should trek the path of the United Kingdom with its relaxed regulations on e-cigarettes, insisting that these have reduced the harms associated with tobacco use and help more people quit smoking.
However, Emer Rojas, president of the New Vois Association of the Philippines (NVAP), remains steadfast in its lobbying for government to prohibit e-cigarettes in the country until its safety is fully determined by expert studies.
Rojas noted that the Department of Health (DOH) had already issued a statement that the reduced harm of e-cigarettes is “unsubstantiated and remain unproven.”
On the other hand, Joey Dulay, president of the Philippine E-Cigarette Industry Association (PECIA), said at a recent forum in Quezon City that the Philippines will remain a backwater country in the area of tobacco harm reduction if the DOH continues its supposed “ill-informed and myopic position” on e-cigarettes.
“It’s high time that the Department of Health take its cue from the UK and other countries that have acknowledged the growing body of scientific evidence supporting e-cigarettes and tobacco harm reduction,” Dulay said.
Published recently by the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, the report titled “E-cigarettes” concluded that e-cigarettes should not be treated in the same way as conventional cigarettes, noting that e-cigarettes are 95 percent less harmful than conventional cigarettes.
Tool for quitting
In its Tobacco Control Plan 2017-2022, the UK government clearly stated its intention to support consumers in stopping smoking and adopting the use of less harmful nicotine products, particularly e-cigarettes.
However, the parliamentary report pointed out that, “e-cigarettes… are too often being overlooked as a stop smoking tool by the NHS (National Health Service, the UK public healthcare system). Regulations should be relaxed relating to e-cigarettes’ licensing, prescribing and advertising of their health benefits. Their level of taxation and use in public places must be reconsidered.”
According to the report, around 2.9 million people in the UK are currently using e-cigarettes, with an estimated 470,000 using e-cigarettes as a stop smoking tool and tens of thousands successfully quitting smoking each year as a result.
The report called on the UK government to consider risk-based regulation to allow more freedom to advertise e-cigarettes as the relatively less harmful option, and provide financial incentives, in the form of lower levels of taxation, for smokers to switch from conventional cigarettes to less harmful alternatives such as e-cigarettes.