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.