“(Business in Cameroon) - Public denunciation of illicit advertising on cigarettes”. This was the title of the communiqué published by end of last week in the local press by the Cameroonian Anti-Tobacco Coalition (C3T). According to this coalition, “the tobacco industry again used its schemes to promote the sale and smoking of cigarettes, through several billboards implanted in various cities in Cameroon”.

Even though the incriminated posters only denounce cigarette contraband, C3T “assesses this action as a manoeuvre by the tobacco industry to purely and simply advertise tobacco products and encourage the population to smoke cigarettes”. Which, as the Coalition highlights, is “in blatant violation of the 2006 law on publicity, which bans all forms of advertising for tobacco products in mass media in Cameroon”.

Seizing the opportunity of this denunciation, C3T reminds that “based on the results of the global survey on adult smoking carried out in 2013 by the World Health Organisation (WHO), one million and one hundred thousand (1,100,000) Cameroonians are tobacco users, half of them will die from their tobacco addition”.

At the same time, we learned that “a survey carried out with schools in the city of Yaoundé in 2016 by the Alliance for the Control of Tobacco in Africa, in partnership with the Cameroonian Anti-Tobacco Coalition, led to the identification of 173 selling points close to the 20 schools surveyed, with the presence of advertising and tobacco-promoting posters in close to 50% of cases”. Which demonstrates, according to C3T, that “the tobacco industry is encouraging the establishment of selling points around schools, to promote the initiation of young students to the consumption of tobacco products”.

BRM