An investigative report by
Marie Maurisse (Public Eye)
As for the nicotine results, which were found to be higher than those stated on the packet, Philip Morris says “they comply with the requirements of ISO 8243 which authorises a certain discrepancy”.
Since Morocco, we examined the supply chain to understand how tobacco is produced, because Switzerland is home to the giants of the industry and allows these lower quality cigarettes to be exported to developing countries.
We went to the only cigarette factory in the country whose director allowed us to enter: Koch & Gsell AG in Steinach. Located in an industrial area in the suburbs of St Gall, the company was set up in 2015 by Roger Koch, a 40-yearold from the German part of Switzerland, who previously owned a translation agency.
He now produces 30 000 packets of cigarettes a week, a small proportion of which is exported; the majority are consumed in Switzerland. He sometimes receives visits from the authorities.
Civil servants from various cantonal bodies come to examine the safety of the machines and his employees’ working conditions, and to check that the production process is not causing environmental damage.
He also knows customs agents because they check that products are declared correctly and taxes are paid to the last centime.
What about checks on the content of cigarettes however? “This had never been checked before last October,” he says. “Then the food inspection authorities took several samples to analyse. But we never heard anything back, I imagine they mostly tested for CBD (cannabidiol)”.
Part of Roger Koch’s production does in fact contain the cannabis compound. For tests on other substances, every month he sends some hundred cigarettes to the ASL laboratory in Germany. It is tasked with testing the level of tar, nicotine and carbon monoxide in line with the 10-1-10 standard introduced by the Swiss government.
The federal decree on tobacco products stipulates that the following thresholds must be respected:
“Anyone bringing cigarettes to market must be able to provide evidence that they comply with the applicable legal requirements”. In principle, cantons are tasked with verifying that this provision is respected. Do they manage to analyse cigarettes on the market? Or to ensure that producers are using legal ingredients, as is sometimes done with food distributors? “As far as we are aware, in Switzerland, the figures stated on packets are not checked,” says Adrien Kay, spokesperson at the Federal Office of Public Health (OFSP).
What happens if the results of Roger Koch’s Heimat cigarettes exceed these values? The laboratory’s report is not sent to the authorities but to different clients, such as the Coop retail company. There are no sanctions.
“It’s up to us to make a change”, explains Roger Koch. The only solution is to slightly alter the mix of tobacco, because there is no silver bullet recipe for changing the levels of certain substances. It is possible to wash the tobacco with water, but this would impact on quality. It is also possible to perforate the filters in order to better aerate the absorption of smoke. But this is cheating slightly, so we don’t do it.” The federal government in Berne is very reluctant to introduce stricter regulation. There is clearly no mystery as to why tobacco giants choose to be based in Switzerland. According to a KPMG report published in October 2017, the total income (direct, indirect and government revenue) provided by this industry is estimated at CHF6.3 billion annually, equivalent to 1% of the country’s GDP.
The sector provides some 11 500 direct jobs, offering employment to 0,2% of the working population. And that’s without counting indirect employment, such as tobacco farmers, linked to the sector.
The tax revenue is significant too – the topic is surrounded by secrecy, although at Neuchâtel there are rumours that Philip Morris International contributes over half of the canton’s private-sector tax revenue.
While Switzerland does not control the cigarettes smoked by its own residents, it is certainly not interested in those produced in the country and exported, the federal customs administration (AFD) confirmed. These are not subject to Swiss standards but rather those of importer countries.
This contrasts to the European Union, where the Directive 2001/37/EC sets maximum allowable thresholds for tar, nicotine and carbon monoxide content on cigarettes destined for export.
This provides Switzerland with a comparative advantage – it is the only country on the European continent that produces cigarettes more toxic than those smoked by its own residents.
The Federation thus promotes and profits from the existence of a double standard, while also aggravating public health problems in importer countries.
When asked about the topic, the Federal Office of Public Health explained the lack of controls on exports as the “will of parliament”. In 2012, a motion filed by Laurent Favre, member of the radical liberal party (PLR) of Neuchâtel, who has since become a state councillor for the same canton, demanded that “cigarettes produced in Switzerland continue to be allowed to be exported without restriction to states that are not members of the European Union”. The motion was approved.
As we observed in Casablanca, Morocco does not control the ingredients of Winston and Camel cigarettes imported from Switzerland. Customs officers limit themselves to checking cargo from a fiscal standpoint. The Moroccan case is a one-off: it is rare for countries to have a laboratory that can systematically analyse imported cigarettes. According to the WTO, Burkina Faso is the only other country in Africa to do so.
Even when there are controls in place, the rules can be biased: in France, the national antismoking committee recently filed a complaint against producers accusing them of falsifying tests by placing micro-holes in filters so that the levels of substances they contained appeared lower when measured by the machine than they are when a smoker takes a drag on a cigarette while compressing the filter with their fingers.
The 8th session of the Conference of the Parties to the WHO Framework Convention for Tobacco Control (FCTC) was held last October. The meeting, known as COP8, sought to strengthen controls and traceability in the tobacco industry, as well as to ban advertising.
Behind the scenes, the Swiss representative to the conference was attempting to go unnoticed: Berne had not ratified the document and was unwilling to make any compromises.
Yet the WTO’s figures are shocking: tobacco kills one in two smokers, and each year, seven million people die of smoking.
Ironically, Switzerland spends CHF1,7 billion per year to treat patients suffering from illnesses caused by tobacco while at the sme time holding the door open to a lethal industry.
Switzerland funds antismoking programmes in Tanzania while allowing Philip Morris International, British American Tobacco and Japan Tobacco International to produce highly toxic cigarettes, destined to be smoked elsewhere, on African soil.
