Campaign for making tobacco polluters pay launches in The New York Times

The New York Times has partnered with the Global Center for Good Governance in Tobacco Control (GGTC), a convention of Stop Tobacco Pollution Alliance (STPA), for a campaign urging countries to ban cigarette filters and make tobacco polluters pay for the environmental damage.

The campaign is launched by the STPA, a coalition of organisations behind the global movement to align plastics policies with tobacco control, reads a press release.

As a part of the campaign, The New York Times published a post titled "Uncovering the Truths Behind the Tobacco Industry's Deception' to shed light on cigarette filters" to shed light on cigarette filters" aggravating role in cancer and ocean pollution as well as the tobacco industry's deceptive tactics to conceal the truth.

The post leads readers to tobaccoplastics.ggtc.world, which features environment country brief on the cost of tobacco's plastic pollution, produced by STOP, a tobacco industry watchdog. The campaign, aims to encourage the public to learn about and disseminate the cost of tobacco pollution in their country and add their voice to support STPA's message to ban filters and make tobacco polluters pay.

The campaign is aimed at gathering support for STPA's message for the next round of the UN Plastic Pollution Treaty negotiations, INC-2, from 29 May to 2 June, in Paris.

According to Mary Assunta, head of Global Research and Advocacy at STPA member GGTC, and author of the Global Tobacco Index, "The tobacco industry, unlike any other industry, is regulated by an international treaty. It cannot be part of policy making; its 'corporate socially responsibility activities' are simply a type of advertising, and it has deceived the world into thinking cigarette filters are beneficial when in fact they are linked to aggravation of cancers and severe marine pollution."

The STPA has called upon governments to align plastic policies with tobacco control.

A briefing on the damage caused by tobacco companies in many countries and how should tobacco companies pay for their pollution are available on tobaccoplastics.ggtc.world.

As per the report, the tobacco companies in Bangladesh should pay Tk8,640 crore for marine pollution and Tk97.927 crore for waste management, meaning Tk 8,700 crore in total per year.

The report estimated the loss at 129,054 deaths and Tk15,800 crore each year in economic losses, from consuming 8,600 crore sticks produced mainly by British American Tobacco Bangladesh and Japan Tobacco International.

The marine pollution and waste management costs of tobacco product packaging and cigarette butts represent a conservative estimate of some quantifiable impact of tobacco product waste, a small part of the overall environmental damage, it said.