BAGUIO CITY, Philippines — If there’s an endgame in the campaign against smoking, it will be to classify tobacco as a dangerous drug so the country will no longer export tobacco grown by farmers, who can invest instead in other high-value crops, according to an advocacy group. Lawyers advocating for tobacco control want Congress to set a period of transition for farmers to abandon tobacco farming and grow more marketable produce, such as dragonfruit, said Ben Visperos, legal counsel of Health Justice. ADVERTISEMENTVisperos said the government had not complied with a provision of the Tobacco Regulation Act of 2003 (Republic Act No. A transition period, which could be inserted in amended tobacco laws, would require local governments to initiate and finance alternative crop programs for tobacco farmers, Visperos said. A 2016 report on the “economics of tobacco farming,” published by the Action for Economic Reforms and the American Cancer Society, established that “cultivating tobacco leaf in the Philippines does not typically generate high economic returns for small farmers.”The report said: “Despite the apparent lack of significant financial return from tobacco farming, there remains a strong attraction to tobacco farming for many farmers.

Source: Philippine Daily Inquirer April 30, 2019 21:11 UTC