Federal Minister for Religious Affairs Sardar Muhammad Yousaf said that tobacco use is not permissible in Islam and the federal government is doing a lot to control this menace, including work towards introducing a legislation, and will be doing same to ban the scourge of Tobacco Advertising, Promotion and Sponsorship (TAPS).
The minister was addressing a training workshop of the broadcast journalists that was organised by The Network for Consumer Protection in Islamabad. Nadeem Iqbal, Executive Co-ordinator of The Network, said that since devolution a controversy has been ensued regarding health's placement in federal or provincial domain.
"The Constitution, as it is today, is very clear. It's the federal government that has the sole authority to do legislation on tobacco control as empowered by entry 32 of the legislative list part 1 of the constitution," he elaborated. In the federal legislative list Part 1, the federal government has the exclusive legislative domain on the subjects such as enunciated in the entry 32 which states "International treaties, conventions and agreements and International arbitration" The state of Pakistan has ratified international convention called Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in 2005.
But now the federal health ministry is shying away to fulfil its commitment under the convention on one excuse or on other. Nadeem Iqbal asked the audience that if a mosquito is not allowed to advertise diseases like malaria and dengue, then why the Tobacco Industry is allowed to promote and sell cancer in the form of tobacco products. He said that surveys show that 90% of the people are already aware of the health harms of tobacco, "We do not need awareness what we need are laws compliant to FCTC and with the role of provinces in their administration implementation and enforcement." The existing law on tobacco control "Prohibition of smoking and Protection of Non-Smokers Health Ordinance 2002" was legislated before the FCTC and does not cover many guidelines in the FCTC.
He also mentioned that one of tobacco industry own recent report "The challenges of illicit trade in cigarettes" does not support its propaganda campaign that the official regulations that aim at saving unnecessary deaths caused by tobacco, contributes to increase in smuggled cigarettes. Smuggled cigarette packets do not comply with the health warning regulations and serve as a key regulation to distinguish a smuggled from a locally manufactured and/ or legally imported cigarette packet. Enforcement of this law can help curtail tax evasion by preventing inflow of smuggled cigarettes and also sale of such tax-evaded and smuggled cigarettes at retail outlets. The report also contradicts another claim of the industry that regulations can jeopardise the livelihood of the retailers. Tobacco industry itself says that over 600,000 retail outlets selling cigarettes in Pakistan are of various nature including general stores, high end stores, kiryana stores, paan shops, hawkers, corner stores, petro-marts, hotels, restaurants, and cafes Mentioning the recent budget speech in June 2015 he said that even though finance minister Ishaaq Dar had claimed on the floor of the honourable house that FED on cigarettes will be increased from 58pc to 63pc but an analysis of the new cigarette prices shows that the FED is still not more than 56pc.-PR