Tobacco Association of Malawi (TAMA) has suggested deployment of Malawi Defence Force troopers to help curb tobacco smuggling from the country.

Making the request to government at the tobacco farmers annual meeting, TAMA’s President Abiel Kalima Banda said tobacco smuggling is making Malawi government to lose billions of Forex because of the malpractice.

The request may be a solution to the problem, should government consider. Meanwhile past years’ tobacco sales records show that there has been rejected tobacco due to low quality. Perhaps part of the smuggled tobacco is the rejected product. On the other hand, tobacco demand is likely to lower as nonsmoking campaigns have pressured buying companies into limiting the amount of product that is bought, which may make farmers opt to smuggling tobacco since the mainstream markets may not buy all the product.

Meanwhile, the whole tobacco farmers are being advised to embark into other crops, since the nonsmoking campaigns will limit tobacco sales.