Asia-Pacific health experts battle against cigarette firms
Asia-Pacific health experts battle against cigarette firms
The battle between worried health experts and aggressive cigarette companies intensifies in the Asia-Pacific. Ramon Isberto of Inter Press Service reports.
MANILA (IPS): Alarmed by the tobacco industry's high-powered marketing drive into Asia-Pacific, governments there may soon impose a region-wide total ban on tobacco advertisements by the year 2000.
But there are already doubts over the effectiveness of such a ban, which is being pushed by the World Health Organization (WHO). Some health experts say the state can do more to stifle smoking by slapping stiff taxes on cigarettes and other tobacco products.
"I will speak to governments, but it will be up to member-states to implement a tobacco ad-free regime" said Dr. S.T. Han, WHO regional director for western Pacific which includes parts of South east Asia, the South Pacific, Australia and New Zealand.
As matters stand, the some governments have already banned or restricted tobacco advertising. The list includes Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Thailand, Papua New Guinea and Vietnam which have outlawed advertising in print and broadcast media and restricted sponsorship as well.
Most countries, however, allow billboard advertising and 'parallel product advertising'.
WHO is putting together a new five-year action plan that includes more extensive anti-smoking education programs. A recent WHO study found that despite years of publicity adverse to smoking, many people still do not understand its harmful effects.
And while more and more countries have imposed total or partial no-smoking rules in hospitals, state buildings and public transport like buses, taxis and airline flights, enforcement has been spotty. No-smoking ordinances in Manila's crowded buses, for example, are routinely ignored by cigarette-puffing commuters.
Tobacco firms have also been very skillful in getting around ad bans. In Malaysia, cigarette companies responded to a TV ad ban by developing alternative products that had the same name and logo as the cigarette brands -- like Dunhill accessories, Lucky Strike motorcycling equipment and Salem vacation programs.
In addition, successive administration in Washington have successfully lobbied with Asian governments like China, Taiwan and Thailand to remove or relax many of the old trade barriers that kept U.S. brands out of those markets.
Faced with less effective restraints, tobacco companies especially those from the United States have gone on a marketing binge.
The 1993 number one advertiser in China, which by itself accounts for one-third of world tobacco consumption, was Marlboro. Philip Morris's premier brand is also among the top 10 advertisers in such lucrative markets as Hong Kong and Malaysia.
In Taiwan, tobacco consumption rose five percent shortly after the entry of U.S. brands in 1987. Five years later, U.S. companies had cornered 16 percent of the market.
Health authorities are especially worried by the success of tobacco firms in getting more young people and women to pick up the smoking habit.
A 1993 survey of five Beijing hospitals showed that 6.8 percent of the women staff smoked, compared to only 1.7 percent in 1988. Among Japanese women in their 20s in Tokyo, WHO officials found smoking had doubled from about 10 to 20 percent.
Given such trends, Judith Mackay, director of the Hong Kong-based Asian Consultancy on Tobacco Control, says the situation in Asia" will get worse before its gets better as the industry expands its areas of (promotional) aggression."
The tobacco industry's own forecasts show the cigarette market in Asia will grow 33 percent between 1991 and the year 2000. The health consequences will be divesting, expert warn.
Lung cancer is already the leading cancer in men in some Chinese cities. It will get worse say health experts. Given the time lag between the rise of Tobacco use and the increase of tobacco-related diseases, they reckon Asia should see an epidemic of such health problems by the year 2025.
By then, the annual tobacco death toll would have risen from three million to 10 million. Developing nations will account for 70 percent of those deaths -- two million in China alone.
Such dire prospects are pushing Asian governments to take action. China, where one-third or 300 million of the population over 15 smoke, wants to host the 10th World Conference on Tobacco and Health in 1997 in a bid to step up its anti-smoking drive.
The Philippines has aired TV counter-ads designed to discourage smoking. The campaign was called Yosi-Kadiri (literally: 'cigarette disgusting') which showed a chain-smoking character by the name being shunned by his friends.
But such counter-ad campaigns pale in comparison with the heavily- financed ad and marketing drives of the tobacco giants.
Even total ad bans may be all smoke and no fire. According to a study of the U.S.-based International Advertising Association, smoking has increased in Thailand and Taiwan where total or partial bans have been in force.
Other studies suggest taxes are the most effective weapon government have against smoking. In Papua New Guinea, researchers Simon Chapman and Jeff Richardson found a 10 percent hike in the selling price of cigarettes produced by a 20 percent increase in tax would cut cigarette consumption by 14.2 percent.
According to their study, taxes are more effective cutting consumption in poor nations than in rich countries. And since these would raise government revenues, tobacco taxes seems like a classic case of, as one paper said, "doing well by doing good."
But in the real world, tobacco lobbies, domestic and international, often frustrate efforts to raise sin taxes on tobacco.
Last year, for example, Manila tried to raise taxes on cigarettes by replacing and valorem levies with specific taxes because the old system was full of loopholes. But well-financed lobby groups quickly swung into action and convinced to opt for a compromise formula that changed little.