Chairman of the Joint Select Committee and Minister of Health & Wellness, Dr. the Honourable Christopher Tufton, Members of this Honourable Joint Select Committee; Staff of the Houses of Parliament, acting PAHO/WHO representative and colleagues of the technical team,
Good afternoon.
Let me add to the words of the acting WHO/PAHO representative, the gratitude of the Convention Secretariat of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control or WHO FCTC for short, for the opportunity to address the Committee this afternoon.
I would also like to thank you for your consideration of our joint submission with PAHO, in which we offered our comments and suggestions for strengthening the Bill, in alignment with the WHO FCTC, in order to help Jamaica to comply with its obligations as Party to the Convention.
I am very proud of having worked closely with Jamaica over so many years in support of its public health agenda before being appointed as Head of the Convention Secretariat last year.
From my current position, I commend the Government of Jamaica for its efforts to enact strong comprehensive tobacco control legislation to protect the health of present and future generations of Jamaicans in accordance with the provisions of the WHO FCTC.
While it has been noted that the Caribbean subregion is lagging behind the rest of the Americas in terms of its implementation of the WHO FCTC, Jamaica is demonstrating its leadership and its ongoing commitment to implement measures in order to combat the effects of tobacco use and exposure to second hand smoke.
We know that tobacco is a leading cause of non-communicable diseases such as cancers, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases.
But tobacco is also a risk factor for communicable diseases such as tuberculosis and – very important in the current situation- COVID-19. According to the WHO, smokers have up to a 50 per cent higher risk of developing severe disease and dying from COVID-19.
Globally, tobacco use kills more than 8 million people every year. Seven million of those preventable deaths are due to direct tobacco use, but around one million of those deaths occurs in non-smokers who suffer the health consequences of exposure to secondhand smoke.
The WHO FCTC is an evidence-based blueprint for what governments can do to combat the tobacco epidemic in their country.
And in the Convention Secretariat and PAHO, we are committed to giving our full support to Jamaica to accelerate tobacco control, in accordance with the Global Strategy adopted at the 8th Session of the Conference of the Parties to the WHO FCTC in 2018.
Th
e path on which Jamaica is travelling towards more comprehensive tobacco control is backed by both history and evidence.
In 2007 the Caribbean Community held the pioneer, first summit of heads of government on NCD prevention and control and issued the landmark Declaration of Port-of-Spain called, Uniting to Stop the Epidemic of Chronic NCDs. That Declaration included a commitment to the ratification and implementation of the WHO FCTC.
The Convention Secretariat in collaboration with the PAHO/WHO and the United Nations Development Programme also undertook a Needs Assessment in Jamaica in August 2014 which saw participation from government, opposition and various Ministries, Departments and Agencies.
This detailed process allowed for an examination of the gaps in the implementation of the Convention and a determination of the strengths, weaknesses and opportunities for improving it.
The findings included:
- On strengths: Political commitment, a highly committed national tobacco coordination team and the existence of a strong and supportive civil society. As well as the integration of tobacco control in relevant sectoral plans and that the important existence of a national health fund.
- The main weakness was, exactly that which we are considering today: the lack of a comprehensive tobacco legislation.
Many opportunities were also identified: national political momentum for tobacco control; stakeholders willing to strengthen their contribution and high levels of public support in the context of a global and regional movement to combat tobacco use.
Therefore, one of the main recommendations from the Needs Assessment exercise was to adopt comprehensive tobacco control legislation incorporating the WHO FCTC obligations not yet applied.
In particular:
- banning tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship;
- measures to protect public policies from tobacco industry interference; and
- the implementation of a range of cost-effective measures including taxation to reduce access to tobacco products.
In 2017, PAHO and UNDP also developed, jointly with the Ministry of Health & Wellness, an investment case in the prevention and control of NCDs that analysed selected interventions and showed that:
Link to the full session- 78% of deaths (i.e. nearly 4 out of 5 deaths) are caused by NCDs.
- There is an opportunity to reduce the burden of NCDs through preventative actions, like the tobacco-related WHO ‘best buys” to prevent and control NCDs that include many articles of the WHO FCTC.
- And finally, that tobacco control interventions -like the ones included in this bill- will secure the highest return on investment.
The analysis showed that over a 15-year period the economic benefits will significantly outweigh the costs of implementing the selected policies. For every dollar invested in these selected tobacco control measures, Jamaica can expect a minimum of 5.3 dollars in return.
Before finishing I want to draw your attention to one fact, that many times troubles policymakers: The perception that the tobacco industry is somehow a contributor to society. The “so called” Corporate Social Responsibility activities of the tobacco industry is just a marketing strategy. The industry’s “philanthropic” money is not paying for the economic damage that same industry causes to Jamaica.
It represents only a tiny proportion of the industry’s profits, and also a tiny proportion of the economic losses that Jamaica endures due to tobacco.
And, to state the obvious: no amount of money can “pay” for the lost lives.
To assist with the Joint Select Committee’s consideration of the draft Bill, we have assembled this delegation including experts from the PAHO Regional Office and PAHO Country Office in Jamaica, and from the Convention Secretariat.
With the Committee’s permission, I will give the floor to Ms Rosa Sandoval and Mr Andrew Black for a presentation that will elaborate on our joint written submission.
Again, thank you for the opportunity to address the Committee today.