In the second part of our series looking at Malawi's complicated relationship with tobacco production and smoking, Sahan Lungu joins us to explore whether a holistic approach to tobacco production and smoking could help Malawi minimise the harms related to combustible tobacco use.
Chapters:
0:00 - Why is Malawi dependent on tobacco production? 2:34 - How can Malawi transition away from tobacco production? 7:25 - Integrating harm reduction into regional tobacco policyTranscription:
00:23
Joanna Junak: Malawi is one of the largest tobacco producers in the world. So why does the country import such a large number of cigarettes?
00:35
Sahan Lungu: That goes to certain things like lack of domestic manufacturing capacity you see that for tobacco manufacturing is a very expensive process so for a lot of the companies in malawi if you consider economies of scale and all of that, you see that it's much cheaper to just import the cigarettes than it is to produce the cigarettes here and you sell them. And then you look at the competition that's out there. Would a small company manufacturing cigarettes in Malawi compete with the large tobacco manufacturing brands out there? You see that the answer is no. So it is cheaper to just import the cigarettes and then export the raw tobacco. At the same time, for the Malawi government, it is more profitable exporting raw tobacco than it is getting maybe exercise tax or a value added tax on the cigarettes because the price of cigarettes here, it's very cheap because a pack of cigarettes here will cost you less than a dollar. So you see, while a kg of raw tobacco is more than $1, so it's more profitable to just export the raw tobacco and then import the already manufactured cigarettes. Although they are... Companies now that do manufacturing, but it's not on a larger scale because you could compare with the big tobacco brands that are out there. And most of the small companies that are coming in Malawi to produce cigarettes now, they have backing of larger tobacco production brands.
02:34
Joanna Junak: And what lessons can the country learn from global strategies to reduce tobacco consumption?
02:43
Sahan Lungu: um first and foremost i'll talk about if we're talking about tobacco agriculture and public health and then i'll go into other aspects of the tobacco control first if it's just tobacco farming and public health would benefit a lot from diversification programs of course i know that the agricultural defecification programs that are happening currently in Malawi, that we are trying to move away from tobacco production other viable crops, but it is proving to be difficult because every government that is coming in, they are noticing that the structures that support about farming are far more entrenched than other crops that are available on the Malawian market. So investing more into crop diversification programs would really help us. In this regard, maybe because Tobacco is a huge step of the economy, and then these other crops cannot bear the burden of, if we remove tobacco, maybe we can invest in other aspects of the economy that can bring you a similar level of revenue. For instance, there are countries like rwanda in africa for instance of doing some heavy investments in their tourism so that the tourism industry is in in rwanda now it's beginning to catch up to these other to the agriculture economy when it comes to generating revenue for their nation so maha would take could take a book out of that it could take a play out of that book and then also invest in other aspects of the economy that can bring about the same the same or is more even similar yes the same or more revenue than tobacco is giving us now at the same time when we comes to public health and tobacco use in general, then it's about strategies when it goes to public awareness about the harms associated with tobacco, the benefits of quitting, or the benefits of switching to self-alternative products, things like that. Because in my right now, they are not, or they are limited. programs that are solely dedicated to tobacco use reduction. Most public health problems, we understand that the public health aspect in Malawi is marked by different problems that also demand input and the needed attention because you have things like malaria, you have HIV, all of that demands public health attention and all those problems are very expensive to manage. But also dedicating efforts to tobacco use reduction is also important because right now the trend is non-communicable diseases are beginning to rise on the scale of leading to mortality and morbidity. Investing in public awareness campaigns that target harmful tobacco use reduction can also be helpful. You can take awareness campaigns that have been successful in other areas and maybe help implement them here and see how it works. At the same time, we can look at regulatory measures. So we have to enforce the greater measures that can work for Malawi. I know that for most countries that enforce measures that are directly a loop off of what the World Health Organization recommends with the empower strategy. Yes, it has been helpful in other areas, but then it has to be, for Malawi, it has to be context-based because sometimes if you just rush into things like taxations and maybe bans, you can end up creating another problem rather than solving a problem that you already have. If it is regulation, then make sure that the regulations are logical and context-based so that they don't lead to other problems in the long run.
07:26
Joanna Junak: Okay. And what do you think? Could a harm reduction strategy based on promoting less harmful nicotine products be effective in the country?
07:36
Sahan Lungu: Yeah. For the answer to that question, for me, yes, it can be effective. Because switching to alternatives, the benefit is already in the description. It's a safe alternative. So would you rather have people be more safe or being exposed to harm? So every logical person or sane person would choose having people uh safer than exposing them to more harm because if you're exposing to harm managing the harms of tobacco is far more expensive than it is to just manage the behavior aspects of it so for me the answer would be yes it is effective but As I'm saying, it is effective. For it to be effective in countries like Malawi, there still needs work to be done because we still have issues of accessibility and affordability. So these alternative nicotine products must be made legally available and affordable to encourage smokers to switch from the traditional cigarettes. Otherwise, then... what we're talking about. At the same time, as we're talking about public awareness, there's also need to be public education on these risk-risk products. And then how can making sure that tobacco users, first of all, are aware that these products are available, are aware that these products are much safer than combustible cigarettes. At the same time, how do they differentiate from safe products to unsafe products? And which products can aid them in their journey and how to approach creating using these products, that's also very important so that you can be able to make informed choices and then, you know, support the harm reduction efforts in the long run.
09:40
Joanna Junak: Thank you, Saham. That's all for today. Tune in next time here on GFN TV or on our podcast. You can also find transcriptions of each episode on the GFN TV website. Thanks for watching or listening. See you next time.