HEALTH-ASIA: Activists Want Treaty to Snuff Out Tobacco Promotion

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Oct 11 2000 (IPS) - The regular sale of shirts bearing the brand name of a popular American cigarette is anathema for anti- smoking activists in Asia. So, too, the appearance of this cigarette brand in the form of stickers on jeeps.

In both cases, the brand name is passed off as a sports apparel label with the word “trophy” added to it — but activists say that is just a cover for advertising tobacco products.

Through such methods — called “brand stretching” — tobacco companies have succeeded in overcoming national laws that place restrictions on cigarette advertising, anti-smoking campaigners say.

Brand stretching is one of the smokescreens that Asian activists will be fighting to expose this week, at the start of the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) first public hearings on Oct. 13 to shape a global tobacco control treaty.

“Advertising, sponsorship and other marketing tactics, and the double standards practised by the tobacco transnationals will be some of the issues we will be raising,” says Mary Assunta, coordinator of the anti-tobacco campaign for the Consumers’ Association of Penang, a Malaysia-based non-governmental organisation (NGO).

A Thai organisation, for its part, intends to make a pitch for a worldwide ban on cigarette advertising.

“The implementation of global ban on direct and indirect advertising, promotion and sponsorship for tobacco products” is a priority, asserts Dr. Prakit Vateesatoki, executive secretary of the Bangkok-based Action on Smoking and Health Foundation (ASH Thailand).

ASH Thailand will also call for tobacco products to be excluded from duty-free sales that in effect promote them, and for the use by governments of tobacco taxes as a policy to reduce smoking.

Likewise, its activists say there is a need for “pictorial cigarette package warnings” and the introduction of a system to track cigarettes from their manufacturing base “in order to control cigarette smuggling”.

These demands reflect the concern by activists and health officials about tobacco use in Asia, where the tobacco industry is aiming for more users given lawsuits in western industrialised countries and health campaigns that have been pushed smoking rates down among adults there.

The South and East Asian regions have earned the unhealthy distinction of fast approaching the “highest tobacco consumption” rate in the world, according to the WHO.

In some countries in the region, tobacco consumption rates reach 80 percent among males. In China, which has more than 300 million smokers, two to 3 million tobacco-caused deaths are predicted by the 2020s.

Demands to stop tobacco promotion through the framework convention have also been underscored by more than 50 anti-smoking groups from Asia in their written submissions to the WHO’s public hearings.

The countries where such pressure comes from include Indonesia, the Philippines, China, Japan, India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

According to the WHO, the written submissions will be read out during the hearings, on Oct. 13 and 14.

In addition to the views from Asia, the Geneva-based health body will also accommodate more than 500 statements submitted by groups and organisations from the rest of the world. These will include views against tobacco and those in favour.

For Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, the WHO’s director general, the hearings are meant to ensure a “free and fair” exchange of views by those interested in the global tobacco control treaty, called the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC).

Following the hearings, the 191 member states of the WHO will begin formal negotiations on the convention on Oct. 16 to 21. If these talks are successful, the WHO expects countries to begin signing the convention so that it becomes effective by May 2003.

Once in force, the convention will enable governments to strengthen their tobacco control policies, including laws to curb smoking.

There are 1.1 billion smokers worldwide, a number that is expected to rise to 1.6 billion by 2025 if tobacco use remains unchecked.

For the WHO, the need for such a multilateral treaty, the world’s first convention on international public health, has stemmed from tobacco evolving into a global health concern.

It is estimated that tobacco kills four million people annually, a figure that is expected to rise to 10 million deaths per year by 2030.

By 2030, furthermore, close to 70 percent of all deaths from tobacco will occur in the developing world, up from 50 percent today.

Based on current predictions, the WHO estimates that nearly a billion people will die from smoking in this century if tobacco’s spread continues at its current pace, which will be “10 times the number killed by tobacco throughout the 20th century”.

Such dismal estimates are of deep concern to Asia’s anti- smoking lobby.

Among men, consumption rates range from 50 to 80 percent in some countries, with the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia and China topping the list. Among women, it hovers between one to 20 percent, with the Philippines and Japan topping the figures.

The rate of smoking among youngsters, too, has given rise to alarm. In Thailand, studies have revealed that some 52,000 youth below 20 years of age start smoking every year. In India, close to 55,000 children start using tobacco regularly every year.

Activists say they expect these numbers to rise given the manner in which tobacco transnationals have targeted Asia for its potential market.

The Chinese market, in fact, remains high on the agenda of the tobacco industry because of the potential it sees in the country’s more than one billion population. WHO estimates that for every cigarette less smoked in highly developed countries, three cigarettes more were smoked in China.

Assunta says the tobacco convention is the only hope for developing countries to counter the financial might of the tobacco industry. It will provide adequate measures to stall Asia from becoming “the fastest growing market” for tobacco use, she adds.

With the convention in place, tobacco companies will not be able to exploit countries that have “weak or limited” tobacco control laws, she explains. “It will bring all countries on par, providing the minimum standards for countries to adopt and implement.”

Bungon Ritthiphakadee of ASH Thailand concurs: “Tobacco is a global problem that needs a global solution like the FCTC.”