“As countries step up efforts to strengthen their tobacco control measures, the tobacco industry is also intensifying its interference.” – Global Tobacco Industry Interference Index 2020. Sandisiwe Kela started smoking when she was 15, and by age 18, she smoked every day. As a curious kid, she could only fight the urge to try out...
The government is not doing enough to stop the tobacco industry interfering with policy, the 2021 Tobacco Industry Interference Index Report for SA has claimed. The report states that several government departments have partnered unchecked with the tobacco industry. The index, which is an annual review of how governments protect public health policies from tobacco industry...
Summary Watchdog says BAT gave cash and cars to dozens of politicians, civil servants, journalists as well as people working at competitor companies to help influence and secure health policies that favour their business activities in key African countries. The whistleblower documents connected to BAT’s questionable dealings in East and Central Africa revealed evidence...
British American Tobacco is a bellwether stock on the JSE, although it has lost some of its lustre in recent years. New allegations of bribery and corruption could tarnish it further. Protracted battles with the Nigerian regulator wiped millions of rands in value from MTN as the share price fell from more than R200 to...
Ghana is set to complete its ratification of the Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products, an international treaty under the aegis of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). The move is a landmark step for a country where one in five cigarettes are sold illegally and an encouraging one, given the deleterious effects that the...
Dr Yussuf Saloojee, director of the National Council Against Smoking, has said that South Africa's anti-tobacco lobby needs to create more effective messages to counter the tobacco industry's focus on the economic role it plays and the taxes it pays. Saloojee was speaking at the launch of the 2021 Tobacco Industry Interference Index for South...
The British American Tobacco (BAT) has disowned the highly addictive and nicotine-laced oral cigarettes dubbed Lyft being sold illegally in the Kenyan market. BAT Chief Executive Officer Crispin Achola disassociated the firm from the poisonous tobacco-free modern oral nicotine pouch being sold in the Kenyan market. The new development puts officials from the Kenya Revenue Authority...
The Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa, CAPPA, has urged the Nigerian government to ensure public officials do not engage in unnecessary interactions with the tobacco industry. CAPPA’s call was in reaction to reports that alleged that British American Tobacco Plc, BAT, ran a mass surveillance operation and informant network in South Africa and made...
What seemed like an insignificant issue in 2007, when tobacco control activists screened 10 randomly-selected movies and found out that the tobacco industry has been using Nollywood to promote tobacco, smoking has grown into a mega monster. A new research carried out by Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa, CAPPA, in 2020 shows how Igbo,...
A research conducted by Dr Arti Singh, a Faculty Member, School of Public Health, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), has revealed that one in every five cigarettes is illicit in Ghana. The research findings from the illicit tobacco trade study under the Tobacco Control Capacity Programme (TCCP), indicated that in Ghana, sale...
