Lighting a Fire
for Change

IDRC’s Research for International Tobacco Control (RITC) program is helping researchers in developing countries counter the influence and immense financial resources of transnational tobacco companies.

Tobacco control policies and programs have altered behaviour so dramatically in Canada and other developed countries, it’s easy to forget that a few decades ago smoking was the social norm. We smoked at work, at home, and in restaurants and bars, and tobacco companies relentlessly advertised their products on television, radio, and in magazines and newspapers.

In the past two decades, the smoking rate for Canadians aged 15 years or older has been cut in half — from 35% in 1985 to 18% in 2006. Yet, as smoking rates have been declining in Canada and other Western countries, they have been rising in the developing world. By the year 2030, tobacco will cause an estimated 10 million deaths annually — 70% in developing countries.

Unfortunately, the negative impact of tobacco in poor countries goes far beyond increased morbidity and mortality. Growing tobacco requires heavy use of pesticides and fertilizers and rapidly depletes soil nutrients, and 70% of the world’s tobacco is grown in developing countries. Land used for growing tobacco is not available to grow food. Every year, an estimated 2000 km² of woodland are cut down to fuel smokehouses that cure tobacco. And tobacco workers, many of whom are women or children, typically work in poor conditions for very low pay.

An Understanding of What Works

The good news is that the tobacco control measures now prevalent in Western countries — including bans on advertising and sponsorship, increased taxes, smoke-free public places, anti-smuggling measures, product regulation, and education and quit-smoking programs — also work in the South, if they are backed by political will and sound research.

Few people are in a better position to understand this than Linda Waverley of IDRC’s RITC, a program within the Social and Economic Policy program area. Created in 1994, RITC funds research in developing countries on a wide range of issues, including how to make the transition from growing tobacco to growing food; the health, economic and environmental impacts of tobacco cultivation; the health care costs of tobacco use; and effective policy approaches to reducing tobacco use. RITC addresses tobacco as a major development issue, exploring how globalization affects tobacco cultivation and use and how tobacco use affects poverty at both the household and national levels.

Linda Waverley began her career in tobacco control in the late 1980s in Victoria, British Columbia, where she helped implement Canada’s second smoke-free municipal bylaw (Vancouver had the first). “That process opened my eyes to many of the complexities of tobacco control,” she says.

It also led to her being hired by the Ministry of Health to manage British Columbia’s tobacco control strategy. “That job taught me the need for a broad-based, comprehensive tobacco control strategy that includes programming, policy, research, community-based intervention, and mass media campaigns,” she says. “I saw that it takes many sectors working together — researchers, policy- and decision-makers, practitioners, NGOs, and other advocates.”

The position also gave Waverley an opportunity to work on tobacco control at the national level, first as the BC representative on a national steering committee for reducing tobacco consumption, then as the committee’s chair. Her work experience, combined with a master's degree in investigative medicine and a PhD in the social science and public administration aspects of tobacco control policy, landed her the job of RITC senior program officer in 1998. Two years later, she became RITC program leader.

Major Successes, Major Challenges

During Waverley’s years at RITC, the program helped create an international community of tobacco control researchers who are building a locally focused knowledge base capable of countering the influence of transnational tobacco companies. RITC-supported researchers have scored some highly visible successes.

In South Africa, for example, local RITC-supported research convinced the government to implement some of the strictest tobacco control measures ever adopted by a developing country. The consequences of that legislation were truly win-win: when the excise tax was increased from 34% to 50% of the retail price of cigarettes between 1994 and 1998, tobacco consumption dropped 15% while government revenues from tobacco taxes climbed 75%.

Success in South Africa inspired similar RITC-supported research in Jamaica, which helped the Jamaican government rebut the tobacco industry’s argument that higher taxes would have a devastating impact on the country’s already precarious economy. A RITC-funded researcher from South Africa worked with his Jamaican colleagues to provide the evidence required to convince finance ministry officials.

However, despite these and many other successes, RITC-supported researchers continue to face major challenges. “Tobacco control is a battle that has to be fought country by country,” says Linda Waverley. “The tobacco industry generates huge amounts of money and when it threatens to remove its operations from a country, often politicians listen. Tobacco control only works when there’s the political will to base decisions not on threats, but on the facts.”

For More Information

Research that Matters

How IDRC-supported research is addressing development challenges and making a difference in the lives of people in the South.

Tobacco and Taxes: A Winning Strategy With funds from Health Canada, IDRC supported an economic study that helped the Jamaican government rebut the tobacco industry’s arguments against higher taxes on cigarettes — in the process breathing new life into the country’s tobacco-control strategy.

More Research that Matters

IDRC Links

Research for International Tobacco Control (RITC)

External Links

Health Canada’s Canadian Tobacco Control Strategy

WHO Tobacco Free Initiative (TFI)

WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control

The Tobacco Atlas, 2nd edition

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