The church said discipline and WHO said relative reduction

At Centenary Church in Suva on 24 August, the president of the Methodist Church in Fiji and Rotuma opened the 2026 Annual Conference with a description of bodies. Reverend Dr Semisi Turagavou named bloodshot eyes and unsteady speech as marks of excess among ordained ministers and lay pastors. A congregation forms its judgement from appearance, he told delegates. He then asked for greater discipline in the drinking of yaqona, the Fijian name for kava.

Because he framed the matter as discipline rather than custom, Turagavou kept yaqona itself out of the charge and named its honoured place among the people. Ministers who drink heavily make fewer pastoral visits, he said. They bring less commitment to Bible study and sermon preparation. Attendance at the training programmes has thinned. He restated the church ban on smoking and asked lay pastors to hold that standard alongside ordained ministers. A congregation draws no line between the two offices.

In February the Ministry of Health and Medical Services launched the Fiji 2025 STEPS Survey. Dr Devina Nand, head of wellness at the ministry, gave the launch audience the divisional breakdown. Of adults surveyed, 56.0% had drunk kava in the past 30 days. Men returned 71.3% and women 39.5%. Divisional figures spread across a 30 point gap, 80.1% in the East against 49.9% in the West. What the church president described from the pulpit, the ministry had already counted with a questionnaire.

The report treats the kava session as a cluster of habits. Among kava drinkers, 51.2% smoked or used smokeless tobacco during a session. Salty or sweet food went with the bowl in 58.0% of cases. Drinkers aged 18 to 29 used tobacco at 60.4% and snacked at 69.6%, against 33% in the 60 to 69 group. Turagavou described the bowl. The ministry counted the cigarette beside it.

There is more in the STEPS report than yaqona. Adult smoking is at 30% and alcohol use at 49%. Hypertension affected 36.6% of adults. Almost half of that group did not know it. Overweight and obesity together account for 68% of adults. Obesity by itself makes up 40%. Diabetes prevalence rose to 17%. Only 21% ate the recommended daily fruit and vegetables. The health minister, Dr Ratu Atonio Lalabalavu, called noncommunicable disease the cause of 80% of national deaths and raised the prospect of further taxation on unhealthy products.

Comparing the Fijian smoking figure with the global series puts it 10 points above the world rate. WHO published its tobacco trends report on 6 October 2025. It took 2034 national surveys spanning 97% of the world population to build the estimate. Tobacco users fell from 1.38 billion in 2000 to 1.20 billion in 2024, a drop of 120 million since 2010 and a relative reduction of 27%. Adult prevalence worldwide is just under 20%. Governments missed the 30% reduction target for 2025 by 50 million users.

In the Western Pacific Region adult tobacco use was 22.9% in 2024 against 25.8% in 2010, which makes it the slowest progress of the six WHO regions. Fiji's 30% exceeds the regional figure by 7 points. Men in the region show the highest prevalence of the six at 43.3%. The female figure is 2.5%. WHO also estimated global e-cigarette use for the first time in that report. It counted more than 100 million people on the products. Children aged 13 to 15 make up at least 15 million of that number.

When WHO published its June 2024 status report on alcohol and substance use, the count of alcohol deaths was 2.6 million a year. Psychoactive drug use added a further 0.6 million a year. The report does not use data past 2019. Alcohol produced 4.7% of all deaths worldwide. An estimated 400 million people lived with alcohol use disorders. Of that number, 209 million were dependent. Among 15 to 19 year olds, 23.5% were current drinkers. The report put heavy episodic drinking at 38% of drinkers in the preceding month.

Between 2000 and 2019 the regional lines diverged. European consumption per adult fell 17% and African consumption 18%. The Western Pacific rose 40%. Total consumption in the Western Pacific was 6.1 litres of pure alcohol per adult in 2019 against a global 5.5 litres. The region is the slowest of the six on tobacco and the second fastest on drink, behind South-East Asia at 112%. Fiji belongs to that region alongside China and Australia.

To find yaqona in the data, an analyst leaves the global indicator set and opens a national module. WHO tracks tobacco and alcohol against the sustainable development targets, a definition set holding across borders. Fiji has fielded its own yaqona module since 2002. The module asks about sessions and about the 30 day window, in Fijian and in Fiji Hindi as well as English. A field officer holds up a showcard of standard drinks against a bilo, the half coconut shell used for serving. No two bilo hold an identical volume.

Article 11.3 of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control obliges Parties to print warnings and other textual information on tobacco packaging in the principal language or languages of the country. WHO launched the MPOWER package in 2008 with warnings printed on the packet. The treaty text names the obligation and leaves the list of principal languages to the Party. Fiji has three in daily use. A packet in Suva printed only in English speaks past the iTaukei family in Kadavu and past the Fiji Hindi speaker in Ba.

A public health body put mental health and chronic disease awareness content into three Pacific languages. The first draft was clinically correct. It shamed its audience and enquiries dropped. Two rounds of community review later, the tone had changed and the help seeking path listed concrete steps. Enquiries rose. The clinical content had not changed. It was a Fijian reviewer who struck the colloquial vai tikotiko and locked vakaitikotiko in its place, the printable form.

When a ministry drafts a health notice with a general purpose engine, the output looks fluent and the tone question goes unasked. Huri publishes its marked comparison of Fijian engine output for buyers to inspect. Post editing a fluent draft costs more than drafting from scratch, because a post editor is repairing a text already looking finished. A clinician signing off the file sees only that the sentences parse. The shaming phrase survives the review.

Since Christians make up nearly 70% of the Fijian population, church ministers speak weekly to an audience no ministry campaign convenes. The Methodist Church holds first place among the denominations and dominates among iTaukei Fijians. Its membership has fallen from a peak above 280,000. Turagavou has asked earlier conferences for adjustment in the organisation's own governance. A pastor who quits smoking delivers the health campaign himself, in Fijian, on a Sunday morning.

While commissioning Fijian health material, a buyer should price the review rounds and name the audience by division. A notice pitched at Suva does not answer for the Eastern Division at 80.1%. That Pacific campaign took two rounds of review. Ask for the marked-up files and count the strikes. A supplier with no record of rejections has done no review. An unpaid reviewer never appears. Strike counts and reviewer names belong in the delivery note.

Turagavou asked the ordination candidates at Centenary Church to hold the smoking standard from their first posting. That service followed on Wednesday, two days after the opening address. The ministry holds the 56.0% and the 30%. Sunday morning belongs to the church. Between the two, a reviewer marks up a Fijian sentence. A congregation in Kadavu hears the result as a warning or as a scolding. Fiji will field the next STEPS round in three languages, with the yaqona module still bolted on the side.