Bangladesh Anti-Tobacco Alliance (BATA) and WBB Trust on Wednesday held a report-launching event titled ‘Limitations of the law: Tobacco companies exploiting the gaps’ at the National Press Club.
According to BATA sources, journalists presented investigative reports showing how tobacco companies are breaking the law and trying to delay tax hikes and amendments to the tobacco control law by spreading misleading information.
Over the past three months, Dhaka Tribune and Bangla Tribune’s Khulna correspondent Md Hedait Hossain Mollah and Sarabangla.net Senior Correspondent Emdadul Haque Tuhin conducted an investigation into the interference of tobacco companies.
The reports found that companies are marketing various flavoured cigarettes at all price levels to attract young people, including university students and women. Public health experts said these cigarettes increase the risk of cancer and serious lung diseases and encourage deeper inhalation of toxic chemicals. The reports recommended a complete ban on flavoured cigarettes in the amended law.
Another report showed that enforcement of the tobacco control law is very weak. From January 2023 to October 2025, only 50 mobile court drives were carried out in Khulna under the tobacco law, fining just 61 people. In the same period, 801 people were jailed and fined under the Narcotics Control Act.
The event was conducted by Bangladesh Anti-Tobacco Alliance (BATA) Office Secretary Syeda Anannya Rahman, while Acting Coordinator of BATA Helal Ahmed presided over the programme. Lawyer and policy analyst Syed Mahbubul Alam Tahin, Bangladesh Cancer Society President Professor Dr Golam Mohiuddin Faruq, Aid Foundation Project Director Shagufta Sultana and TCRC Member-Secretary Md Bazlur Rahman spoke at the event.
Speakers said poor enforcement, attractive packaging, easy availability and flashy advertising are drawing youths into smoking. Tobacco products are being promoted secretly near schools and colleges, and sales points are being set up at major city intersections.
They urged the government to regularize meetings of the Tobacco Control Taskforce, ensure stricter fines and penalties, and include a clause banning tobacco sales outlets within 100 metres of educational institutions in the amended law.
