NATA Chairman enthuses over tobacco control efforts

Sri Lanka’s National Authority on Tobacco and Alcohol (NATA) is tasked with regulating and preventing harm from tobacco and alcohol products. Speaking to Daily FT its Chairman Dr. Palitha Abeykoon states that the situation with respect to tobacco in “quite satisfactory in many respects”.

Dr. Abeykoon reveals that cigarette smoking has reduced in the country with smoking prevalence down to 15 from 25. He hopes to bring this figure to below 10 over the next decade, and if Sri Lanka succeeds it will be declared the first country to eliminate tobacco as a public health problem, he says. However, he admits this would be a rather difficult task. 

NATA claims that over 20,000 people die from tobacco annually in Sri Lanka, and out of that number 2,000 are killed from passive smoking. Accordingly, the agency is looking to tighten regulations with regards to smoking in public places. 

Some of the draft regulations that had received cabinet approval according to Abeykoon include increasing the legal age to purchase alcohol or tobacco products from 18 to 21, and a ban on sales of any products within 100 meters from any school. NATA has also proposed to introduce plain packaging to cigarette packs and restrict the sale of single sticks. 

“If that happens, I think Sri Lanka would have fulfilled all 22 conditions or articles of the FCTC and we will be right up there. But of course, the last mile is the hardest. The situation with cigarettes is quite satisfactory in many respects. With regards to beedi, it is smoked by about 20% of people we have estimated. The beedi smoking population or the beedi production has shown increase. This is evidenced by the fact that even recently they (Police) caught over 2,000kgs of tendu leaf being smuggled by sea. Beedi is produced with a leaf called tendu which is only imported from India.”

The WHO and the Centre for Disease Control in Atlanta is currently conducting a Global Adult Tobacco Survey, spearheaded in Sri Lanka by NATA. Abeykoon says this survey would reveal the size and prevalence of the tobacco market in Sri Lanka. The results are expected out in December.  “With regard to the laws, actually it is applied more for tobacco than for alcohol. There are some things which are marginally relevant for alcohol, but it is written like the Framework Convention which is international law which is only for tobacco, but we have put tobacco and alcohol together. We have also worked on the substitutions of tobacco leaf growing with other cash crops. We did a survey in March this year done by the Department of Agriculture and the President’s Office, where out of about 2,500 hectares of tobacco cultivation in the country, substitution had taken place in nearly 500 hectares, which is about 25%. We are hoping we could get it down to at least 50%. The children have helped a lot. The children have told these people they have learn of these from school and etc. and they have been able to persuade their fathers to wean out of it.”

Abeykoon points to significant harm to the economy from tobacco and alcohol industries, contrary to belief that the local economy cannot do without them, he says. Abeykoon claims that the Government loses Rs. 3 versus every rupee it earns from the two industries due to loss of productivity via premature deaths, lethargy and absenteeism. He states that in contrast to the Rs. 112 billion the Government earned from excise taxes in 2015, it lost Rs. 212 billion as a result of loss of productivity from alcohol and tobacco.  

With the new draft NATA regulations: “We are trying to send smokers into their houses, hoping that the children and the wife will then throw them out,” Abeykoon concludes. (DA)