CULTURE-ASIA: Big Tobacco Smokescreen Spawns New Lifestyle Among Women

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

CHICAGO, Aug 15 2000 (IPS) - In Sri Lanka, discotheques have become the latest hunting ground for a tobacco multinational in search of promising clients.

Not only does the tobacco giant in this South Asian island-nation promote regular discos for teenagers and young adults, but it floods such nights of dancing with recruits who hawk cigarettes to a select group – young women.

In Cambodia, on the other hand, the hunting ground for females is the street. Cigarettes are sold to women by youth wearing the colours and logo of another tobacco multinational.

For anti-smoking activists from Asia, these are but two of the disturbing features that illustrate the brazen manner in which the tobacco giants are trying to lure Asian women into smoking.

And at the 11th World Conference on Tobacco Or Health, which ended here last Friday, the activists from that region outlined the messages, both implied and direct, that the tobacco companies are conveying to women in an effort to get them to pursue a new lifestyle with a puff.

“They are associating smoking with being liberal and modern. Women who smoke are touted as adventurous and daring, willing to be an individual by breaking away from the lifestyles of our countries,” said Deepali Singh, an anti-smoking activist from India.

Added Mary Assunta, of the Consumers Association of Penang, Malaysia, “We have evidence about their sales pitch – women can have fun smoking. It is fashionable and romantic.”

Furthermore, she pointed out, tobacco advertisements in a number of Asian countries also project themes with a feminine appeal, replete with images of “youthful, successful, slim and beautiful women.”

And to go with such marketing drives are several brands of designer cigarettes being introduced into Asia bearing names such as Yves St. Laurent, Ms, More, Kim, Capri and Vogue with female smokers in mind. “Tobacco companies have also produced special gift packs designed to appeal to women, such as (the) Virginia Slim Lights gift packs or 555 gift packs,” revealed Assunta.

According to Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, director-general of the World Health Organisation, these “brutal marketing” tactics by the tobacco companies are part of a strategy they have always pursued – “to develop a market, they have to capture the young, during the years when habits are shaped.”

Likewise, she expressed little surprise at the reasons behind their targeting women. “Tobacco companies see (them) as an underdeveloped market and appear to be trying to raise the percentage of women who smoke.”

Such an assessment, furthermore, has been mirrored by a range of reports. The WHO, for instance, reveals that close to 25 percent of women in industrialised countries smoke, as against only seven percent of female smokers in the developing world, making the latter “a prime target for the companies.”

According to another report, “Tobacco Control in Developing Countries,” which was released at the conference, smoking among Asian women still remains low, ranging from about two percent in South Asia to 10 percent in parts of South East Asia.

Currently, the Pacific island-nation Fiji has the most number of female smokers among Asia’s developing nations, with 31 percent, followed by Papua New Guinea, which has 28 percent, stated this 512-page report published jointly by the WHO and the World Bank.

On the lower end of the smoking incidence scale were countries like Sri Lanka, with one percent of female smokers, and India, with three percent. But the United States-based Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, a non- governmental organisation (NGO), fears that such low prevalence rates will not remain so for long if the events of the recent past are taken into account.

“During the 1980s, cigarette companies convinced the US government to force countries in Asia to open up their markets to imported cigarettes or face trade sanctions. The results were catastrophic,” it revealed.

“In South Korea, for example, the smoking rate among teenage boys was 18 percent in 1988 – a year later, after US cigarettes imports were allowed, it rose to 30 percent. (And) smoking rates for teenage girls climbed during the same period from two percent to nine percent,” it pointed out.

And already, activists like Assunta have begun to notice similar shifts in Malaysia. “Smoking among teenage-girls between 12 and 18 years shows that 17 percent smoke. This is about five times higher than the rate of adult women.”

In India, asserted Singh, national surveys have confirmed that many girls have puffed their first cigarette when only 13 years, particularly in cosmopolitan cities like Mumbai (formerly Bombay).

According to the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), the aggressive marketing campaigns pursued by the tobacco industry in Asia “has a great likelihood of success in countries that fail to widely publicise the negative health consequences of tobacco use.”

And in a scathing editorial in its latest issue, JAMA stated, “Far from being responsible corporate citizens, the tobacco industry continues to pursue a course designed to increase the use of its products, with calculated disregard for the consequences on global health.”

For Singh, on the other hand, what is equally relevant is the falsehood being spread by the tobacco industry. “Their campaigns in Asia are projecting a distorted version of modern, Western lifestyles.”

So how do activists like her propose to expose this smoke screen? “By educating women about tobacco-related diseases and death,” she responded.

According to the WHO, close to 4 million people will die this year from tobacco-related illnesses, and if smoking remains unchecked, the annual death toll is expected to rise to 10 million by 2030.

For this Geneva-based health body, that would mean tobacco becoming the leading cause of death worldwide, responsible for more deaths than the human immunodeficiency virus, maternal mortality, automobile accidents, homicides and suicides combined.

But getting that message out to the public will require tremendous effort, admitted Assunta, since it will be going up against the multimillion dollar marketing budgets of the tobacco giants.

And for anti-smoking activists, she added, the focus of such efforts should be: “To convince women about their right to good health and expose the deception of the tobacco multinationals – that the new lifestyle they are advocating is not glamorous, but hazardous.”