BACKGROUND AND IMPLEMENTATION CHALLENGES: In 2024, Tobacco Industry reached out to the Pakistan's Ministry of National Health Service Regulation and Coordination (MONHSR&C) to request for law amendment (SRO revision) that would permit the industry to manufacture and export cigarette packs with less than 20 cigarettes from Pakistan.
It was challenging from the prospective of impacting the public health across the globe, easy accessibility to the youth, impacting lower income tier as easy customer base, non-compliant country to the international obligations as signatory to FCTC (Pakistan) and also posed threat of increased tobacco consumption and easy accessibility to youth as being conveniently available in local market as well.
INTERVENTION OR RESPONSE: CTFK and the partner organizations in Pakistan strongly opposed the TI request by engaging key parliamentarians, media and health activists to convey concerns to MONHSR&C for the drastic impact of revision on local market and global image of Pakistan especially in relevance to the FCTC obligations. Extensive efforts were channelized to generate public response and over 350 letters were sent to Tobacco Control Cell (TCC) raising the public concerns for this revision through multiple civil society organizations, public health professionals, youth activists, students and through public health institutes/universities.
Women Parliamentary Caucus (WPC) of National Assembly, Health Minister of Punjab Province and Chief Minister Gilgit Baltistan (GB) Region were also sensitized to write letters of concern to MONHSR&C to review the decision.
RESULTS AND IMPACT: TI request for law amendment remain halted by MONHSR&C and TI lost USD 20.5 million export contract to Sudan for 10 stick cigarette packs. It not only avoided the TI efforts to weaken the Pakistan tobacco control laws but it also saved other (Africa Region) countries from easy access of small cigarette packs.
CONCLUSIONS: Public led campaigns and strong advocacy efforts to safeguard the public health as top priority should never be undermined.