In Brazil, tobacco industry tries to mobilize farmers against COP 10 on tobacco control

Tobacco industry players are holding public hearings in Brazil to unite tobacco growers against the directions of COP 10, which is to be held in November in Panama. The FCTC and the WHO campaign “Grow food, not tobacco”, on the occasion of World No Tobacco Day 2023, have been targeted in particular.

"We want to give a voice to those who are frequently judged without the right to defend themselves. We cannot afford to allow people who do not know the reality of farmers to dictate the future of our communities." With this vibrant appeal, Marcus Vinicius de Almeida, coordinator of the Subcommittee for the Defense of the Tobacco Supply Chain, opened the first of a series of ten public hearings on tobacco production in the Rio Grande do Sul region before 300 people.[1]The Minister of Health had apologized, but the Ministries of Agriculture, Foreign Affairs, and Agrarian Development and Family Farming had sent representatives.

FCTC and WHO in the crosshairs

Elton Weber, a federal MP from the region, chaired and moderated the meeting, clearly displaying his intention to put pressure on the federal government, which will be represented at the upcoming Conference of the Parties (COP10) of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (CCLAT). This COP10 is to be held from November 20 to 25, 2023 in Panama, and will be followed a few days later by the Meeting of the Parties (MOP3) to the Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products.

Tobacco industry players and local politicians intend to assert their point of view and the difficulties facing the tobacco sector, while combating positions deemed "ideological" public health actors. Iro Schuenke, President of the Interstate Tobacco Industry Union, for his part, regretted that tobacco industry players did not have a greater say in this COP10 than in previous editions. He also deplored that the decisions of previous COPs had been immediately implemented in Brazil, while the country is one of the main producers of tobacco. Considering the FCTC and public health decisions as "the worst dictatorship" known to him, he strongly criticized the campaign organized by the World Health Organization (WHO) on the occasion of World No Tobacco Day on May 31, 2023. This campaign presented a child whose plate was full of cigarette butts and proclaimed “Grow food, not tobacco” ("Grow food, not tobacco").

Instrumentalization of farmers and cultivators through front groups

Although Brazil remains the world's third largest producer of tobacco leaves, production is declining, from 787,817 tonnes in 2010 to 702,208 tonnes in 2020.[2]It represents less than 1,130 million of the total planted area in the country and is mainly practiced on small family farms in the south of the country.[3]. Around 200,000 small producers are said to be growing tobacco in Brazil.

The lobbying operation set up by the tobacco industry aims to present itself as an organization representing these small farmers, in order to destabilize COP10 and the FCTC. The themes of tobacco production and substitute crops, although they are addressed in the FCTC, are not among the most restrictive subjects, unlike product regulation or the issue of cross-border advertising. It is in fact to counter these other provisions that, as was the case in other COPs, the tobacco industry is trying to divert the debates through third parties, which are most often only front groups. Locally, this type of operation also aims to reassure farmers about the profitability and interest of tobacco growing. A recent protest by small tobacco farmers in Pakistan, who denounced a brutal drop in wholesale tobacco prices decided by tobacco multinationals while the prices of fertilizers and pesticides are soaring, indicates that tobacco growing is far from being a profitable economic option.[4].

The discourse equating public health with various forms of fascism has been regularly deployed by the tobacco industry for around fifty years.[5]. It is correlated with several attempts to appropriate the theme of human rights by the main tobacco multinationals since the 1990s. A recent report by Philip Morris International (PMI) on the subject[6] shows that this human rights issue is likely to be further exploited, with the aim of sabotaging the FCTC. The use of forced child labour on many small African farms has, however, been widely documented.

To learn more about tobacco growing, read our decryption.

Keywords: Brazil, tobacco cultivation, CCLAT, COP10, MOP3.

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[1] Public Hearings Ahead of COP10, TobaccoReporter, published June 23, 2023, accessed June 26, 2023.

[2] Ranking of world countries by tobacco production (leaves), Atlasocio, updated July 27, 2022, accessed June 26, 2023.

[3] The tobacco market – Brazil, BusinessScoot, report, August 2020.

[4] Tobacco growers reject purchase price set by companies, Dawn, published June 25, 2023, accessed June 26, 2023.

[5] Schneider N, Glantz S. ''Nicotine Nazis strike again'': a brief analysis of the use of Nazi rhetoric in attacking tobacco control advocacy. Tobacco Control. 2008;17:291–296.

[6] Human rights report, PMI, June 2023, 57 p.