Bulgaria opposes ban on oriental tobacco use in cigarettes

published on 9/20/12 11:01 AM

Photo: BТА

Oriental tobacco, one of the traditional crops in Bulgaria beside the attar-yielding rose and grapes for first-class wines, has come under threat. It is quite likely that the highly aromatic oriental tobacco varieties that are quite valuable for the tobacco industry, could turn out as the first victim in the struggle to crack down on smoking waged by the World Health Organization. Oriental tobacco has come under lobbyist pressure in the World Trade Organization too exerted by the tobacco concerns using the American broadleaf tobacco varieties that have however a weaker aroma. The struggle is about to end in the European Union where the Health and Consumer Protection General Directorate has been working on an amendment to the tobacco directve passed in 2011 aimed to ban the use of aromatizers in cigarettes. It is suggested that oriental tobacco be included in the category of aromatizers apart from menthol.

What is the original sin of oriental tobacco? To put it simply, the more aromatic the tobacco, the more appealing smoking becomes, the advocates of its ban contend.

The adoption of such regulations by the European Union however, would hurt heavily whole regions of Bulgaria where tobacco growing is a leading occupation of the locals. These are predominantly mountainous regions where soils are rather poor and tobacco growing has hardly got any alternative. The population of many villages makes a living cultivating by the hand the small-leafed oriental tobacco unsuitable for machine processing. This trade has for many years provided decent incomes to such regions. More than 200,000 work in this sector, predominantly Muslims. Bulgaria is the largest producer of oriental tobacco across EU and is the country with the largest number of people working in tobacco growing. A blow dealt on this crop is likely to generate major social problems coupled with ethnic and religious tension. To make things even worse, those regions are located along the Bulgarian-Turkish border, an outer border of the EU.
For all above-mentioned reasons the Bulgarian Minister of Agriculture Miroslav Naydenov has recently sent out letters to the EU commissioners in charge of agriculture Dacian Ciolos, and of health and consumer protection John Dali expounding Bulgaria’s arguments against the EC ban on oriental tobacco now in the making. In turn the Bulgarian members of the European Parliament have vowed they will engage in lobbying among their colleagues. So far, the ban has been explicitly opposed by Greece and Italy. Potential allies in this case are also Spain, Portugal, Romania and Hungary. The dividing line runs between the North and the South of the EU, and in a global perspective – between the EU and the leading producers of broadleaf tobacco, namely China, Brazil, India and the United States.

By the way, the Bulgarian MEPs have been waging their own battle on this issue since 2010 when the European Parliament managed to rebuff the first attack on oriental tobacco. Back then the European Commission engaged to carry out a survey in EU countries on how effectively planned measures could cut smoking. “The outcome of the survey is not convincing and this is a further argument in support of our cause”, Bulgarian MEP Iliana Yotova has commented. According to her colleague Maria Gabriel, the Bulgarian cause stands chances of success provided the two debates on the issue, notably, anti-smoking measures and social protection of tobacco growers, are not mixed together. It was this division of problems that actually led to the success in 2010. She believes this strategy is the productive one today too. Well, we have to admit that back in 2010 the Bulgarian state ran into a major blunder. When the draft for the ban was tabled for public discussion only the Bulgarian Ministry of Health came up with a statement and it was positive. It seems that the Ministry of Agriculture and Food has missed the chance of laying out its objections. The same is true of the sector organizations in the tobacco business.

The strong arguments that the Bulgarian government has delivered to the two European commissioners involved in the matter is that the introduction of such a ban runs counter to the principles of the Common Agricultural Policy for free cultivation of all agricultural crops and for equality and non-discrimination of farmers.

Translated by Daniela Konstantinova

По публикацията работи: Maria Dimitrova – Pishot

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Bulgaria opposes ban on oriental tobacco use in cigarettes

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