Fact-based actions for healthy outcomes

By Ajith Perera

The recent 10th session of the Conference of Parties (COP) to the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control spawned much discussion about banning cigarette filters, citing efforts to conserve the environment. 

With a reported four trillion cigarette butts added to the environment every year, that cigarette butts are allegedly a leading plastic polluter offers little doubt. But to arbitrarily ban the use of filters poses additional impacts to smokers that the regulators must consider. 

Cigarette filters – or butts – came into place in the 1960s with the aim of reducing the impacts of smoking. The cigarette filter is aimed at reducing the tar and nicotine inhaled by the smokers and to reduce the adverse impact of smoking a filter-less cigarette. A study done by researchers at the Medical University of South Carolina found that people who smoked unfiltered cigarettes were 40 percent more likely to develop lung cancer and nearly twice as likely to die from it than those who smoked filtered cigarettes. It adds they are more dependent on nicotine and 30 percent more likely to die of any cause. 

Some products use perforations in their filters to allow even greater air flow and reduce the volume of smoke coming into the body. Filters also could block any particles or aerosols from entering the system. Therein arises the argument, should cigarette filters be banned in the first place considering possible advantages?

In the first place, no nation is yet to move a ban on cigarette filters. Several media articles have moved to suggest otherwise, which is wrong. The Conference of Parties urged its membership to “take account of the environmental impacts from the cultivation, manufacture, consumption and waste disposal of tobacco products” and to strengthen the implementation of this article through national policies. There is still no movement with regards to an enforced ban on cigarette filters. Regulators must give due consideration to all aspects of science and impacts to human health when deliberating on such policy. 

Sri Lanka is an active participant of the world anti-tobacco lobby, as evidenced by some of the regulations and controls it has enacted against smoking. We, as a nation, are extremely proud of our far-reaching tobacco control mechanism that includes the fact that at 18 years, an adult can cast his vote on the nation’s future but in Sri Lanka, they must wait till they turn 21 years old to legally purchase a pack of cigarettes. The country’s regulations concerning prohibition of enclosed public place smoking is world leading. 

However, it must fight any urge to become trendsetters in the sphere of cigarette butt politics. It must place other, more relevant priorities at the centre. Combatting the growing scourge of smuggled cigarettes is one such concern, which ignores the need to establish effective controls on unhindered access to cheap, lower quality illicit products that are freely available in the market. Very little attention is focused on this key concern that has openly pervaded the Sri Lankan market for close to two decades. The policymakers must give focus to the grave impacts and presence of such informal sections that form a large part of the tobacco industry in Sri Lanka. Ignorance does not always offer blissful ends.  

(Ajith Perera is a retired Administration, Shipping and Maritime Security Consultant in Sri Lanka and the Middle East)