By Mark Dovich
Public health experts at the American University of Armenia marked World No Tobacco Day on Tuesday by highlighting the tobacco industry’s negative environmental impact and, in conversation with CivilNet, urged the Armenian government to strengthen its tobacco control program.
Armenia has cancer and smoking rates, including levels of exposure to secondhand smoke, that are well above the global average. In a press release Tuesday, the country’s Health Ministry said that nearly 28% of people in Armenia over the age of 16 smoke, predominantly men. More than 5,500 people die from tobacco-related diseases in the country every year.
A study published last year found that tobacco costs Armenia over $610 million per year — about three times the revenue generated annually by taxes on tobacco products. Cigarette companies are some of Armenia’s biggest taxpayers.
While the health impacts of tobacco use have been clear for decades, “now we see that there is another harm — environmental harm,” explained Zaruhi Grigoryan, a research associate at AUA who has worked on tobacco control and other public health issues.
She discussed tobacco’s environmental impact at a public lecture at AUA Tuesday, explaining how each stage of tobacco’s “life cycle” — from cultivation to manufacture to consumption to consumer waste — harms the environment.
Tobacco cultivation, Grigoryan explained, is one of the most environmentally destructive agricultural practices globally, since it is extremely resource-intensive. Experts estimate that 5% of deforestation worldwide can be linked to tobacco farming alone.
Manufacturing tobacco products and transporting them to consumers is also very labor-intensive and wasteful, releasing large amounts of carbon dioxide gas, which contributes to global heating and the climate crisis.
Tobacco products continue harming the environment even after they are used. Cigarette butts are one of the most littered items on the planet and leach toxic chemicals that persist in their surroundings.
In spite of its high smoking rates, Armenia was among the first countries in the world to ratify the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, a landmark international treaty, and has passed two tobacco control laws, in 2004 and 2020.
Arusyak Harutyunyan, an assistant professor and senior researcher at AUA and longtime tobacco control advocate, told CivilNet that “there are many things that we can be proud of in terms of tobacco control in Armenia,” while stressing that “there is still work needed.”
In particular, she called on the government to raise taxes on tobacco products, strengthen anti-smoking education initiatives, and make smoking cessation services widely available to the public.
Harutyunyan also said that the government should ensure that its tobacco control legislation — which, she noted, is largely in line with international standards on paper — is properly enforced.
Grigoryan largely echoed those recommendations, saying she “believes that raising taxes will be a strong way to prevent youth from starting smoking,” adding that Armenian society needs to “denormalize” tobacco use.
The World Health Organization created World No Tobacco Day in the late 1980s in order to draw attention to the threat posed by tobacco use to global public health.
