Belize law to control tobacco

By William Ysaguirre (Freelance Writer)

BELIZE CITY, Mon. Oct. 20, 2025

   Belizeans will soon be protected against the harmful effects of tobacco smoke by a sweeping new legislation, the Tobacco Control Bill, which the Minister of Health and Wellness Hon. Kevin Bernard introduced in the House of Representatives for its first reading on Friday, October 17.

   The new law has been 10 years in the making, and is in line with the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which Belize signed onto in 2003 and ratified in 2005. It entered into force on February 2005, explained director Esner Vellos of the National Drug Abuse Control Council (NDACC). Since then 183 UN countries, 90 percent of the world population has joined the convention, which recognizes that “scientific evidence has unequivocally established that tobacco consumption and exposure to tobacco smoke causes death, disease and disability.”

   The technical task force to review the Tobacco Control Bill was convened in May and June 2023, and submitted a revised Bill to the Attorney General’s ministry in August 2023. The Attorney General spent the next 3 months incorporating the task force’s recommendations into the draft bill, which the task force reviewed again. After public consultations in 2024-2025, the Attorney General’s office submitted a final draft to the Health Ministry, which presented the bill to Cabinet in August 2025.

   In essence, the new law will order policies to control tobacco use, and protect present and future generations from the devastating harms of tobacco use and exposure to tobacco smoke. The law will make it illegal to sell tobacco products to anyone under the age of 18, to prevent children from starting to smoke.

   The new law outlaws smoking in all public places, on public transportation and in the work place, “to protect workers and the public from exposure to tobacco smoke.” The law provides for a public education campaign to “enhance public awareness of the hazards of tobacco use and exposure to tobacco smoke”, including the labelling on tobacco packages which must display clear warnings of the dangers of tobacco use; to ensure that individuals are provided with information to make fully informed decisions about the use of tobacco; and to create a national coordinating mechanism for tobacco control.

   Tobacco use exacerbates Belizeans’ risk of contracting non-communicable diseases (NCDs), such as heart disease and cancer, which are among the leading causes of death in Belize, explained Dr. Lila Estephan of the NCD project funded by the Inter-American Development Bank. Tobacco use accounts for 8 out of 10 cancer deaths in Belize. Of the 2,334 deaths in 2024, 355 resulted from heart disease, 285 from cancer, 204 from diabetes, and 108 were from cerebro-vascular disease. In health management terms, prevention is always better than cure, and far less costly. Other risk factors are excess alcohol consumption, an unhealthy diet – too much fats, salt and sugar, and a lack of physical exercise. Tobacco contains over 7,000 different chemicals, of which at least 250 are poisonous, and which you would ordinarily never think of putting in your body: like methane, butane, toluene, ammonia, methanol, arsenic (rat poison), stearic acid, nicotine and paint!

   Smokers live 10 years less than non-smokers on average. Tobacco kills 8,000,000 people in the World per year, of which 1 million are from the Americas, and one in six – 16 percent, are caused by second hand smoke. In Belize, about 17,634 people smoke regularly, according to the Statistics Institute of Belize, and about 106 die each year from tobacco use. The greatest threat is to the young, to teenagers; as the number of adolescents who have tried cigarettes was 31 percent in 2014, and it’s growing. Only 12.3 percent of teenagers smoked in 2014, but that number grew to 15.5 percent by 2024.

   The tobacco industry is finding new ways to target younger smokers, vape inhalers that look like toys, because the older smokers are dying, and younger smokers will buy more tobacco before they die! Until the law takes effect, Belize presently has no legal age limit to prevent children and teens from buying tobacco products. The new law aims to change this most urgently.