Feature: Grisly health warnings on cigarette packs aimed at shocking Bangladeshis into quitting

Just a few days ago rickshaw puller Kawsar Islam was a chain smoker but once the health risks of smoking became crystal clear to him recently he drastically cut down the number of cigarettes he smokes a day.

He is now seriously planning to kick his smoking addiction for good.

Kawsar Islam, 29, has been smoking for the last 12 to 13 years and like Islam, many in Bangladesh's capital city Dhaka are now actively contemplating quitting smoking permanently.

"I've been smoking since around 1972 or 1973," said a sexagenarian official while enjoying a puff at a roadside tea stall in Dhaka recently.

The official, asking for anonymity, said that despite knowing about the harmful effects of smoking on the body, the environment, and the cash that would otherwise be in your pocket, smoking is a habit hard to quit.

But the official is now also committed to stop smoking like the rickshaw puller and said he is smoking far less, day by day.

There are many like the rickshaw puller and the official in Bangladesh's capital who are trying to quit smoking permanently owing to the recently introduced grisly images on both sides of cigarettes packets being sold.

"I'm really appalled to see the gruesome images," said the rickshaw puller who also has a chewing tobacco habit.

From March 19, under a new law, the Bangladesh government made it mandatory for tobacco companies to print graphic pictorial warnings covering the upper half of each pack of cigarettes.

"Instead of smoking a full packet daily, now I just smoke 2-3 cigarettes. I don't want to see those hideous images printed on the cigarette packs anymore. I've already stopped buying a full pack of cigarettes everyday," said the official.

Some other smokers at roadside cigarette shops said they have also been appalled to see the distressing, graphic images of malignant tumors, blackened lungs and mouth cancers appearing on cigarette packages.

Anti-tobacco lobbyists in Bangladesh say more Bangladeshis, especially illiterate people who know very little about the harmful effects of smoking, will quit smoking when manufactures totally stop marketing all kind of tobacco products without pictorial health warnings.

ABM Zubair, the executive director of an anti-tobacco group named 'Progga', said that a survey conducted two weeks after the implementation of the new law found that 74.8 percent of tobacco products are still being marketed without any pictorial health warnings, in violation of the new law.

The survey also revealed that health warning labels covered merely a little more than half of the cigarette packages and the number of packets of Bidis with pictorial health warnings was nil, he said.

Bidis are hand-rolled thin cigarettes that are made mostly in Bangladesh and other South Asian and South East Asian countries and are popular with the working classes for their affordability.

According to the leading anti-tobacco lobbyist, graphic pictures on tobacco packages will be highly effective in discouraging illiterate people from smoking in Bangladesh where about 43 percent of adults are smokers.

Zubair further said many countries around the world have already introduced pictorial warnings on tobacco products and it was found later that tobacco consumption had reduced in those countries.

"We hail the government for implementing the law in Bangladesh albeit belatedly. It took 22 months since 2013 for the government to implement the law."

Anti-tobacco lobbyists allege that the country's tobacco industry resorts to various tricks to prevent governments from implementing the law that makes it mandatory to carry warning labels with graphic health images of decayed teeth, cancerous mouths and other frightful and highly-visual effects that smoking can have on health.

High taxation and graphic pictorial warnings are very effective measures to deter smoking and reduce tobacco sales, Zubair said, adding that he urges the relevant government authorities to strengthen its system of monitoring the market.

He also said the government should fine the companies for violating the law and introduce mobile courts to ensure the implementation of punitive measures.

According to the law, the penalty is up to 200,000 taka (about 2,531 U.S. dollars) or six-month imprisonment or both.

Echoing a similar view, Ruhul Amin Rushd, senior news editor of Bangladesh's leading private broadcasting channel Bangla Vision, said, "We want the government to properly enforce the law that makes it mandatory for printing graphic pictorial warnings on any tobacco product."

Rushd was the originator of ATMA, a group that saw some 400 journalists convened to play an active role in tobacco control in Bangladesh.

ATMA (Anti Tobacco Media Alliance) started its journey in Bangladesh in 2011.

He said the new law is a major step forward in the country and expressed the hope that the shocking images will help poor people to get rid of their addiction.

Anowarul Amin, corporate affairs manager of British American Tobacco (BAT) Bangladesh, said they have been producing all the cigarettes packs with graphical health warnings since March 19.

"No cigarette pack without a graphical health warning has been sent from our factories to the market since March 19," said the spokesman of BAT Bangladesh, which is the market leader in the premium segment of cigarettes in Bangladesh.

"You won't see a single cigarette pack of British American Tobacco Bangladesh in Dhaka nowadays without a graphical health warning," he claimed.

"There may still be some cigarette packs from BAT without pictorial warnings outside Dhaka, as retailers have still been selling old cigarette stock," he added.

"It would take some time for the new packs to reach some 1.2 million cigarette retailers round Bangladesh."

Regarding the impact on sales following the introduction of pictorial warnings, Amin said, "It's too early for us to understand whether sales have already declined to some extent."

But he said that cigarette consumption usually falls after the introduction of such graphic pictorial warnings.

Muhammad Ruhul Quddus, a senior official of the Bangladeshi government's Ministry of Health, had earlier said they are committed to implement the mandatory statutory warning on all tobacco packs to rein in the tobacco industry.

Some 57,000 people reportedly die of tobacco-related illnesses every year in Bangladesh and nearly 300,000 suffer from related disabilities in the country, the health ministry's latest statistics revealed. Endit