New tobacco labelling standard to be implemented within months

Feb 19, 2009 News

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The labelling of cigarette packets will come under serious scrutiny within a matter of months and tobacco companies could even have their products seized if they do not comply with the soon to be introduced standard which will govern the packaging and labelling of tobacco products in Guyana.

This disclosure was made by Bloomberg Project Officer, Eshwar Raghunath, who during an interview with this newspaper yesterday reflected on how the standard came into being.

According to him, through a project called the Bloomberg Global Initiative which is fuelled by a whopping US$125M from the New York City Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, Guyana along with Jamaica, Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago were afforded funding to commence programmes to allow for tobacco control.

The funding, Raghunath said, was channelled through a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) in each of the countries, with the Guyana Chest Society being the entity of choice here.

“In each of these countries there is a project officer who works simultaneously with the Ministry of Health, the National Bureau of Standards and other NGOs, and our task basically is to advocate for the implementation of a picture-based health warning system on cigarette packages in the Caribbean.”

According to Raghunath, the four Caribbean countries were strategically targeted since they all are home to entities instrumental to the approval of the new standard.

He explained that since the standard is intended to govern the implementation of the picture-based system Caribbean-wide, entities such as the Caricom Secretariat and the Caribbean Regional Organisation for Standard and Quality (CROSQ), which is the central body to approve the standard, must play an integral role in its establishment.

“They were tasked with coming up with the standard that would be implemented in all Caricom countries and it will be adopted by the various governments and they (governments) are obligated to implement the requirements. The standard was developed by the various Bureaus of standards within countries that are affiliated with CROSQ,” Raghunath said.

He pointed out, too, that Guyana and the three Caribbean countries are in fact obligated to embrace and implement the project which is geared at controlling the scourge of tobacco in the society since they have all acceded to a World Health Organisation (WHO) Convention.

“It came about through something called the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). This is the first public health treaty…this is how the project came about as a result of the global tobacco epidemic. The various members of WHO met and they decided that tobacco use was a problem and came up with the treaty.”

The treaty which came into being in the year 2005 has regulations that countries and Governments need in order to battle the tobacco epidemic, Raghunath informed.

He added that based on surveys that were conducted, the WHO was able to deduce that the use of tobacco is the number one cause of preventable diseases.

The treaty, he disclosed, contains a number of articles which address the demand and supply of tobacco, as well as its packaging and labelling, among others areas.

And in order to emphasise the harm that tobacco can cause, Raghunath said that the local segment of the project will focus on Article 11 of the Convention which addresses packaging and labelling of cigarettes.

The final draft of the standard has already been completed and is currently at the promotion stage, thus it has been advertised in the press and on television. Raghunath said that members of the public can uplift copies of the draft standard from the Guyana Chest Clinic located in the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation compound, the Ministry of Health’s Brickdam head office, the Guyana National Bureau of Standards at Sophia or at the Pan American Health Organisation head office, and offer their comments.

These comments will be considered before the new standard is put into full effect, Raghunath said.

Public consultations in this regard will be held in Regions Two, Four, Five, Six and Ten, after which its implementation will be finalised and tobacco dealers will have to within six months rid the market of the current labelling style and implement the new picture-based warning system.

With the new system in place, Raghunath said that cigarette packets will have pictures on 50 per cent of its upper front and back depicting the harm that cigarette smoking could cause. In addition the standard will serve to harness the deceptive terms that are used on such packets to encourage the sale of the tobacco products.

And should the dealers not adhere within the stipulated time, Raghunath said, the GNBS will be forced to seize products that do not comply.

However, he noted that currently the tobacco dealers have all given their commitment to help implement the initiative locally which has proven to be successful in several countries, the evidence being that the number of persons using cigarettes has significantly reduced.

According to Raghunath, the Bloomberg initiative is one step closer towards implementing tobacco legislation, even as he added that currently the Ministry of Health is composing draft legislation in this regard. Pix in Thursday Issue as harmful tobacco

 

Caption: Eshwar Raghunath displays some of the pictures which should be displayed on cigarette packets

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