Nazma muller talks to managing director of West Indian Tobacco Company Jean-Pierre du Coudray, a graduate of the University of Western Ontario, Canada, who feels that legislation for tobacco use should also protect smokers, and producers.

Q: Do you smoke?

A: Yes, but it’s not because I work here. I’ve been smoking since I was 22. It’s my choice. I was smoking for nine years, before I started working here. It’s certainly not a prerequisite for working at Witco. In fact, less than 20 per cent of our employees smoke. In 2006, we discontinued a policy where every employee who smoked used to get, depending on their grade, anything between four to eight cartons of cigarettes a month. This is in line with our responsible approach-if you’re an adult and you want to smoke, you have to go out there and buy your cigarettes like everybody else.

Do you ever think about quitting?

Yes, just like I think about not eating so much fast food, going to the gym more often, not drinking as much as I do. Like any decision that has a long-term impact on my health, as you get older, you get more conservative in your choices.

How do you feel about the Tobacco Control Bill (which has lapsed, by the way, and must be debated all over again)?

Well, I’ll give you Witco’s position, which is that we have wanted and continue to want tobacco legislation in T&T. We need to create an environment where youths are protected and the rights of non-smokers are respected. With regard to the draft of the Tobacco Bill, the intent was good, but the content was very disappointing. It was very irresponsibly written, very draconian-it is basically criminalising tobacco, making it more difficult for the legal producers, and creating a black market.

But some people might say you guys got away without being taxed even more heavily, that the Government could have

imposed an even higher penalty on tobacco products, make

people pay $30 for a pack of

20 cigarettes...

But in countries where this has been done, has it reduced consumption? No. All it did was open up a black market-bring the criminal element into the mix. In Canada, where they impose heavy penalties, it has only burdened the legal tobacco producers, while the illegal suppliers are laughing. As I said, I’m happy with the intent of the bill, but I’m not happy with the content. It was written to prevent tobacco consumption, and doesn’t actually follow the guidelines of the FCTC (arm of World Health Organisation that governs tobacco regulation) to reduce consumption.

In any event, the bill has lapsed. It may well return to Parliament in another form, with amendments.

I would hope so. It’s simply not going to work as it is. BAT (British American Tobacco), which owns a little over 50 per cent of Witco, operates in 180 countries, and has been dealing with tobacco legislation for more than 20 years, and in countries like Mexico and South Africa, where the legislation has evolved over time so that the bills today make sense. In T&T, there is no legislation. None. And we’re going from zero to 100 in one step. For years, we have been trying to meet with various ministers of health to discuss tobacco legislation. In 2001, we decided, on our own, to adopt responsible marketing standards-they are more stringent, self-imposed and self-regulated.

Did you give away free cigarettes?

We never give away free cigarettes. We took the decision not to do that kind of thing. We don’t advertise on TV, radio, newspapers, billboards. There’s no law telling us that we can’t- we just don’t do it. Even our vans, which used to be painted to advertise the brands, are now plain white. We stopped doing promotions where the audience wasn’t 100 per cent adults. So we pulled out of Brass Festival, Great Race, Mt D’Or cricket. [They still support Despers (Witco Desperadoes steelband), though.]

Well, that’s not very nice-to stop giving back to the community.

We would like to support these ventures but it’s a bit ironic-a tobacco company supporting sports? There were parts of society that were pressuring us to get out of sports, so we did.

Whatever happened to Witco’s orchid venture?

Back in the ’90s, BAT was a very diversified company: in Suriname we were into shipping, in Jamaica, we had a hotel. But then it decided that its core business was tobacco, and it should focus on that.

Why I ask is that, surely, you see a

reduction in consumption of tobacco

coming as more anti-smoking legislation is instituted across the world; no smoking in public places; education campaigns, etc?

Consumption has, in fact, not been reduced. Governments have not been successful, despite their efforts in reducing consumption. The only way to do that is through sensible legislation; sensible pricing; and sensible taxation. Adults will smoke until they decide they are ready to quit. We need to focus on youths, educating them about the dangers of smoking, and then, in ten to 15 years, you will see a reduction. In Barbados, there was an increase in excise duties beyond the norm, the same in Suriname. And what happened? You had entrepreneurs- bringing in container loads of cigarettes from China. Do we have the infrastructure to deal with smuggling?

It would frighten me if this bill was passed in its present form. Think about this bill as if it was dealing with another legal product, say confectionary, or cars. It’s very draconian and intrusive.

There’s supposed to be a total ban on displays, which is very extreme for a legal product. Even the health warning would be gone. They want supermarkets to sell it from under the counter. This means the supermarkets will have to find storage areas; it will slow down the line when the cashier has to go and get a pack of cigarettes for a customer. It will create a lot of unnecessary hardships for the consumer, and not necessarily reduce consumption.

Imagine you have measures, like a fine of half a million dollars for smoking within 50 metres of a school. What if it’s 2 a.m., and you’re walking past a school-does it apply then? It’s really not well thought out. You’re going to need 1,000 tobacco wardens to police and enforce the bill, administrative people, a building to house them-in this era of belt-tightening. How are you going to tell the public that there are not enough beds in hospitals, but you’re going to use the money to employ wardens to stop people from smoking in bars?

Well, some might say with higher taxation of the tobacco industry, we could

spend more on hospitals?

Between excise, corporate tax and VAT, we paid the Government $450 million last year-55 per cent of our revenue. No other company pays that much of its revenue in taxation. So they are already receiving a lot from us-they know what they need to do with the money.

Compared to the US and the UK,

cigarettes are very cheap in T&T.

How does Witco do it?

I wouldn’t say they’re cheap. They’re average. In Guyana and Suriname, they’re cheaper than here. What happened is we closed our factories in Jamaica, Guyana and Suriname, and that capacity was transferred to Witco. We brought in high-tech machines from Germany, so now we’re much more efficient in terms of economies of scale.

And what about licensing. I see the bill

requires you to have a licence to

manufacture and sell cigarettes.

Yes, everyone needs a licence now, even wholesalers. This will clog up the courts with even more paperwork. Alcohol licences are already a nightmare. The bill is written as if Trinidadians are cavemen, but the society has evolved. I remember, as a boy, my mother smoking in Hi-Lo. She would be pushing the trolley and picking up sausages, or whatever, and smoking a cigarette. When she was finished, she would just drop it on the ground and put it out. But now, no one would even think about smoking in Hi-Lo, because it’s indoors and there is no ventilation. We need sensible legislation that provides designated smoking areas. There’s an outdoor section in 70 per cent of the bars and restaurants in this country, so you have a default smoking area. Witco wants legislation, but we also want something that protects the rights of smokers, too.