Tobacco ads ban planned in Pacific

Tobacco ads ban planned in Pacific

KUALA LUMPUR (AFP): Delegates at a World Health Organization (WHO) meeting say they plan to push Western Pacific governments to ban advertising and sponsorship by cigarette companies by 2000.

A ban on any kind of tobacco promotion would lead to a reduction in smoking in a region where more and more people were lighting up, the delegates to the 45th WHO committee meeting for the Western Pacific said on Friday.

"It is estimated that of the 1.6 billion population in the region, 50 percent of men and five to seven percent of women smoke," Han Sang Tae, Western Pacific director for WHO, said.

The WHO's Western Pacific list consists of 35 countries including Japan, Australia, New Zealand, China, Hong Kong, Macau, South Korea, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand and India.

Han said an aggressive campaign against smoking had to be mounted in the region to stop escalating cigarette sales -- predicted to rise by 30 percent in Asia alone by 2000.

The WHO will push for enforcement of policies and the introduction of legislation leading to a ban on advertising and sponsorship of sports and cultural events by cigarette companies in the Western Pacific, Han said.

He said the world health body would also propose that a percentage of tobacco taxes levied in the region be used to fund health promotion which lost out in sponsorship from the ban.

Han said by the turn of the century, more than 10 million tobacco-related diseases were expected in the world annually, with two million in China alone and seven million in developing countries.

The current global figure for such deaths is about three million a year, coming mostly from developed countries, he said.