Staff Correspondent 

The Advisory Committee formed to revise the draft amendment of the tobacco control law has decided to hold "stakeholder meetings" with tobacco companies on this issue. The Committee, led by the Finance Advisor, reached this decision on 13 July 2025 as it met to discuss the draft Smoking and Tobacco Products (Control) (Amendment) Ordinance, 2024. Such development, as came to fore in recent media reports, has prompted the research and advocacy organization PROGGA (Knowledge for Progress) to express its grave concern since the realization of the Committee's decision would be a clear violation of Article 5.3 Guidelines of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC).

In its Press Briefing, released on Thursday, PROGGA says, according to FCTC Article 5.3, any sort of involvement of the tobacco industry or its affiliates in the formulation of tobacco control-related laws, rules or policies, i.e., providing proposals, opinions or even participating in the process is utterly unacceptable. Bangladesh is one of the first countries to sign the international treaty in 2003 and to subsequently ratify the FCTC Article 5.3 in 2008. It should be noted that the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has already formulated and implemented its own guidelines as per FCTC Article 5.3. PROGGA believes that violation of such a major international treaty would send a negative message to the global community and may damage the country's reputation.

On this issue, ABM Zubair, Executive Director of PROGGA, said, "Holding discussion with tobacco industry and taking industry opinion into account while formulating tobacco control law would be a grave violation of FCTC Article 5.3 for a signatory country like Bangladesh." The Advisory Committee must cancel its decision to meet industry representatives and ensure the passage of the draft amendment at the earliest, Mr. Zubair demanded.

With a view to strengthening the tobacco control law, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare took the initiative to amend the Smoking and Tobacco Products (Control) (Amendment) Act, 2013 in 2021. Following the formulation of draft amendment proposal, subsequent release of the draft on website, gathering opinions from stakeholders, holding inter-ministerial meeting, on 7 November 2024, the draft was placed before the Advisory Council for approval. Later, through a notification published on 9 December 2024, a high-powered Advisory Committee was formed to further revise the draft. Notably, the prevalence of tobacco use among adults (15 y/o and above) stands at 35.3 percent. Tobacco use claims nearly 161,000 lives each year in Bangladesh and leads to hundreds of thousands of disabilities.