Health or profit: which way for Uganda?

Bill to control tobacco use in trouble as traders, farmers denounce it

Alon Mwesigwa in Kampala

Fred Okippi’s five acres of tobacco garden in his backyard are a lush of green vegetation.

As he carefully prunes unwanted leaves, the jubilant plants whirl to the wind’s direction.

Okippi, wearing a pale black t-shirt and a red hat with a cream band, delicately bends stems to thread his way through, softly humming to perhaps a carol of glee and hope.

“This [tobacco] is my future,” he says.

“If government wants to ban tobacco use, then we are going to suffer. Where are we going to get money to educate our children?”

All Okippi’s neighbours in Lamuorungur village in the Uganda’s western district of Kiryandongo grow tobacco as their cash crop.

“Our parents grew tobacco and we took on the trade after their death, says Onen Can, Okippi’s neighbour, who has about seven acres.

Can, 56, and Okippi, 55, have grown tobacco all their lives.

They don’t understand why the Uganda can even contemplate on enacting a law that could threaten farming the “precious” crop.

Other crops like maize aren’t as profitable as tobacco, they say.

Last year, Okippi says, a kilogram was bought at Shs 4000 ($1.6) while that of maize was Shs 750 ($ 0.3).

There are estimated 75,000 tobacco farmers in Uganda. Tobacco is widely grown in Arua, Kanungu, Koboko, Kiryandongo, and Masindi districts.

In March, when a Member of Parliament Dr Chris Baryomunsi tabled the Tobacco Control Bill 2014 to restrict tobacco growing, sell, and marketing, farmers and traders were riled.

Baryomunsi said farmers had benefited nothing from decades of tobacco farming – many remain inundated in squalor and extreme poverty.

Neither Okippi nor Can has managed to build a permanent house – both live in grass thatched huts. Sometimes, they struggle to get a day’s meal.

They say their children go to school because of tobacco.

Baryomunsi, a medical doctor, says the bill seeks to protect Ugandans from illnesses like cancer.

Farmers have denounced the bill, although it has gained massive support from the medical fraternity.

The bill, expected to be passed into law later this year, this   seeks to prohibit smoking within 100 metres of any public place, work place, and means of public transport.

It puts a full ban on tobacco advertising, promotion, and sponsorship.

Dr Sheila Ndyanabangi, a tobacco control focal person at Uganda’s ministry of Health said tobacco had no benefit other than straining the health system.

“Tobacco kills,” Nduanabangi said. “We want to make it extremely hard for one to find or smoke a cigarette.”

“At the Uganda Cancer Institute, we followed history of most patients diagnosed with lung cancer, cancer of the mouth, throat and oesophagus and found they had been smoking.”

This is how shattering a problem tobacco is, she added. 

Minister of Health Dr Ruhakana Rugunda has called for tax increment on all tobacco products to force some smokers to quit. He said it would also reduce the uptake and use of tobacco products by the youths.

Okippi and Can are aware tobacco brings cancer, but are among the 15% Ugandans who smoke.

“I hear that tobacco causes cancer, but I have not even got any problem,” said Okippi smiling sheepishly displaying his russet teeth.

Uganda’s national referral hospital Mulago says 75% of patients with oral cancer there had a history of smoking, with the number of smoking years ranging from 2-33 years, according to a 2008 study report by Fredrick Musoke, a don at Kampala’s Makerere University.

The Centre for Tobacco Control Africa says 13, 500 Ugandans die annually due to tobacco use. Worldwide, the World Health Organisation estimates five million people die per year.

Almost three quarters of deaths from lung, trachea and bronchus cancers are attributable to tobacco use.

By 2030, tobacco use will kill more than 8 million people annually.

Ugandan traders are not convinced. They have described the bill as “draconian.”

If passed, they said, it would not only hamper their profitability, but also hurt the economy.

Everest Kayondo, Kampala City Traders’ Association (KACITA) chairperson said:

“If people have invested their money, then they should be given a favourable environment to sell it.”

In 2011, Uganda earned Shs 87.5bn ($37.7m) in taxes from tobacco, making it one of the top ten revenue sources.

Yet there is more harm than good in tobacco.

A 2012 survey by a Kampala-based NGO Platform for Labour Action, (PLA) found most children in tobacco growing homesteads missed half of their school time during planting and harvesting seasons.

In 2007, Uganda ratified the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, but it remained without a tobacco control law.

Kenya and Tanzania, Uganda’s neighbours, have tobacco control laws.

In a joint statement, tobacco producing companies in the country, which includes British American Tobacco (BAT), Ugandan Tobacco Services Ltd, and Continental Tobacco (U) Ltd, said government was likely to lose Shs 100bn ($39 million) in annual revenue.

“The law must make a distinction between the products sought to be regulated and the individual corporate entity that enjoys fundamental rights and freedoms. The law should not seek to ban legitimate trade activities,” reads the statement.

To farmers Okippi and Can, the law is nothing but out to deny them daily income.