Growers want to be part of WHO convention on Tobacco

The International Tobacco Growers Association on Thursday requested the World Health Organisation to allow their participation in the upcoming seventh Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) to be held in the national capital in November.

The FCTC Conference of Parties (COP7) meeting is being held from November 7 to 12. Tobacco growers from several countries including India, Indonesia, South Africa, Portugal, Zimbabwe, Philippines, Brazil, Bulgaria, US and Zambia, met in the national capital on September 20 and 21 and expressed grave concern over the threat posed to their occupation and livelihood by the unreasonably harsh and arbitrary regulatory measures being adopted by national governments in many parts of the world.

Growers are highly apprehensive that the meeting will see COP7 participants agreeing to a host of extreme regulatory measures that impact tobacco cultivation and livelihood of tobacco growers. Adoption of extreme measures at COP7 will directly and severely affect the livelihood of millions of tobacco farmers and farm workers around the world.

Growers pointed that such anti-farmer regulatory policies are being driven by anti-tobacco activists without any real world knowledge of tobacco cultivation and the importance of tobacco to the economy of many countries or the livelihood challenges faced by the farming community in the tobacco growing regions of the world.