SUNS  4308 Friday 23 October 1998

Geneva, Oct 21 (IPS) -- Transnational tobacco corporations are now targeting markets in Asia and other developing regions to offset the losses caused by the crash in consumption in the United States and western Europe, Asian consumer associations denounced at an international health conference here.

Demand for cigarettes waned at a rate of 4.5 percent from 1990 to 1995 in the United States, while climbing eight percent in Asia, Mary Assunta Kolandai with the Consumers Association of Penang, Malaysia told a seminar convened this week by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

There is a real risk that southeast Asia could become a dumping ground for tobacco companies whose manoeuvring room is being increasingly curbed in industrialised countries, warned Z. Jadamba, WHO's director of regional promotion in southeast Asia.

WHO Director-General Gro Harlem Brundtland protested at the conference that transnational tobacco corporations were stepping up their direct investment in developing countries.

The U.S.-based Philip Morris, the world's largest tobacco company, sells three times more cigarettes abroad than at home, taking in 4.5 billion dollars from sales outside of the United States alone, said Kolandai.

The tobacco giants are scrambling to conquer markets recently opened in Laos, Cambodia, Burma and Vietnam, "not to mention China's 300 million smokers," she added.

The proportion of adult male smokers in Vietnam has shot up to 73 percent, one of the world's highest levels. In neighbouring Cambodia, 86 percent of men in rural areas smoke, compared to 65 percent in cities. And in China, 66% of men smoke, compared to a mere 4% of women, according to the statistics presented by Kolandai.

The proportion of women smokers in Asia is still low, although the tobacco industry has its sights set on expanding that market.

In India, women are the targets of aggressive marketing campaigns by foreign tobacco firms, which have launched several "women's brands." In Malaysia, where 60% of men and 5% of women smoke, the proportion of smokers is growing at an annual rate of two percent, while 90 percent of the market is dominated by foreign companies.

The three biggest cigarette companies in Malaysia are Pall Mall's Rothmans, with a corner on 55 percent of the market, RJ Reynolds Berhad, with 18 percent, and the Malaysian Tobacco Company - a subsidiary of British American Tobacco - with 15 percent.

But demand is not only limited to adults. Asian minors have been increasingly acquiring the habit, according to Jadamba's report. In many countries, that increase has offset the number of adults who have successfully quit smoking, the WHO official lamented.

A survey carried out last year in Bangladesh found that around 12% of 10 to 14-year-olds and 23% of 15 and 16-year-olds smoked. The highest smoking rate among minors was seen in Indonesia - 33% of 15 to 19-year-olds.

In Asia, the highest number of addicts are found among the poor. In Bangladesh a full 80 percent of rickshaw-pullers smoke, while a similar proportion of street vendors, labourers and drivers were found to smoke in Sri Lanka.

A rise in tobacco-related health and social problems has accompanied the increase in smoking, said Jadamba. In India, an estimated 12 million cases a year of cancer, heart disease, lung ailments and respiratory infections are directly attributed to tobacco use and could be avoided. Cancer statistics from India indicate that nearly 50 percent of cancer cases in men and 25 percent in women are related to tobacco use.

In Thailand, two-thirds of cancer cases among men and nearly half among women are attributed to tobacco use.

Kolandai said that far from granting priority attention to the growing problem of tobacco use, governments in Asia protect and promote the tobacco business.

In Malaysia, where "we are trying to revitalise the economy in the midst of the crisis sweeping Asia, we clearly cannot confront the additional burden of tobacco-related diseases, especially since they
are avoidable."

The consumer activist recommended that laws putting limits on what tobacco companies can or cannot do in the United States and Great Britain, where the tobacco giants are based, should incorporate an international component. Since control measures are non-existent in developing countries, transnational corporations are free to engage in practices that they are careful to avoid back home, she pointed out.

Kolandai also protested the use of "free trade" arguments and threats of unilateral commercial sanctions to force developing nations to open their markets to tobacco products, such as occurred in Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and Thailand.

Industrialised nations must assume a leadership role in promoting smoking prevention and control measures abroad, she argued.

Moreover, governments should put an end to subsidies for tobacco farmers, she added. In 1997, the European Union subsidised tobacco production to the tune of 1.14 billion dollars, while the United States spent 235 million to bolster prices for tobacco farmers in 1993.

In Asia, meanwhile, tobacco companies are keeping cigarette prices low, within the reach of students and the poor. A packet of 20 cigarettes, which costs an average of 6.62 dollars in Norway, 5.02 in Great Britain and 3.40 in the United States, can be bought for 1.93 in China and just
one dollar in Malaysia.