Journal Article Details

Tobacco is a very harmful product. Statistics show that more people died from tobacco use than died in World War II. About 10,000 (ten thousand) people have died in the country due to the terrible corona in the last one year. Where around 1 lakh 26 thousand people die prematurely every year due to tobacco (2018). Public health and development are under threat due to tobacco use. Tobacco-related premature deaths cost Bangladesh Tk 30,560 crore every year, while the tobacco companies cover up Tk 22,810 crore in revenue to the government. About 49 percent of the total population of Bangladesh is youth, who are the main target of tobacco companies. Now is the time to think about how the way tobacco companies are marketing and promoting their business is creating barriers to development.

The Tobacco Control and Research Cell (TCRC) of Dhaka International University conducted compliance monitoring on the implementation of pictorial health warnings on the packaging of tobacco products in 3 phases from 2016 to 2017. In it, they highlight the impediments to implementation of pictorial health warnings due to variations in the packaging of tobacco products, particularly jorda, gul and bidi. And as a solution to this, the concept of standard packaging was created for the first time in tobacco control by highlighting the need for a standard packaging. And accordingly they put forward several recommendations to the National Tobacco Control Cell.

Later, in 2017-2019, TCRC collected data from 265 markets in 64 districts of Bangladesh for two years. A total of 10,074 packs of cigarettes, bidis, zordas, guls are monitored. After the study prepared a complete guideline of standard packaging and on 9th October 2019 to get their views from all the organizations working on tobacco control at national and international level in the meeting room of Health Economics Unit of Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in the meeting room of National Tobacco Control Cell. and implementation requirements” organized a discussion meeting. In the said meeting under the chairmanship of Mr. Md. Saidur Rahman, Additional Secretary (Global Health) of the Ministry of Health, the proposal of TCRC was accepted verbally based on the opinion of the representatives of all the organizations present. Several decisions were taken in the meeting including the decision to take the initiative to implement the proposed standard packaging. After the meeting the proposal was handed over to NTCC.

Standard Packaging Requirements

Tobacco and tobacco products sourced from different markets include size variation, poor packaging, lack of full company name and address on tobacco product packaging, marketing of products by different companies under the same name and band, plastic packaging of smokeless tobacco products, variation in packaging of smokeless tobacco products, Use of poly wrappers for tobacco products, printing on paper and set on wrappers, thin paper wrappers for bidis, absence of ingredients and production date on packets or wrappers are particularly notable. Also using the same name different companies make wrappers with the same design, as well as domestic wrappers modeled after foreign wrappers, which basically evades revenue and deceives the user. Sales of white leaves, loose tobacco and retail shala are also among the barriers to revenue evasion and provision of pictorial health warnings. And introduction of standard packaging can be the only solution to solve these problems of packaging of tobacco products.