Let’s play with public health?

Hazara tobacco growers say 85% pictoral warning on cigarette packs ‘hazardous’ for their business
Bureau report
PESHAWAR: The society of tobacco growers, Hazara Division, has accused an organisation of taking huge funds from a US foundation and supporting a secret tobacco control policy that would seriously affect Pakistani farmers, agricultural workers and their dependents.
In a statement, Anjuman Kashtkaran and Tobacco Hazara Division president Rustam Khan Swati alleged that this organisation supported the plan to increase cigarette packet health warnings from 40 percent to a massive 85 percent, which would affect the farmers’ community.
He said the Pakistan Tobacco Board (PTB) had opposed the proposal but State Minister for National Health Services Saira Afzal Tarar announced it without any consultation with the farmers, retailers and other stakeholders. He said if the proposal was implemented it would have negative consequences for all the stakeholders.
Rustam Khan Swati, who is a farmer, said he believed that the imposition of excessive 85 percent warnings on cigarette packaging would adversely affect the livelihood of 75,000 farmers, 300,000 farm workers and 450,000 dependents. Rustam Khan Swati appealed to the finance and commerce ministersto take notice of the issue and protect the interests of the farming community.