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British American Tobacco (BAT) has been in Africa since 1902. The shareholders at the London meeting had reason to celebrate; the company made a pretax profit of more than $4.5 billion last year. But Action on Smoking and Health, a non-profit group that works to eliminate the harm caused by tobacco, used the opportunity to protest the company's growing presence in Africa.
Group spokesman Martin Dockrell says African countries are experiencing the highest increase in tobacco use among developing countries.
"The shareholders are meeting in London today to count their profits," he said. "They sold 1.1 billion cigarettes in Africa and the Middle East region last year, and we are not so happy because by our calculation that is equivalent to about 100,000 deaths."
Dockrell says since smoking is on the decline in the West due to pressure by organizations like his and the general public's awareness of the health implications of smoking, companies such as BAT have shifted their focus to Africa and Asia with aggressive advertising. . . .
BAT responded with a written statement saying Action on Smoking and Health's facts just do not stand up. It also dismissed the charge it is breaking into emerging markets to dodge regulation, since it has been in those markets for more than 100 years and abides by the laws and regulations of all the countries it operates in.
The company says the health risks associated with smoking are well-known and warnings about the hazard are printed on every single pack of cigarettes it makes whether the law requires it or not.
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Not only is it unfair, but it is also intentionally deceptive of the tobacco industry to continue to promote its harmful and lethal products portrayed through "cool", "sexy" or "sophisticated" imagery.
It is about time all Asean governments put an end to all forms of direct and indirect tobacco advertising, promotions and sponsorship, because where tobacco companies are concerned, there is no such thing as "truth in advertising".
ANTI-TOBACCO advocates from Southeast Asia said efforts to rid the region of the smoking habit will fail unless tobacco control laws, particularly those banning the promotion and advertising of tobacco products, are enforced effectively by all Asean member countries.
The Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance's (Seatca) policy development adviser, Mary Assunta, said it was time for all Southeast Asian countries to pool their efforts and enact measures that could reduce tobacco use.
"Unless we all effectively implement the global treaty that includes a ban on advertising and promotions, our people and children will remain vulnerable to the aggressive marketing tactics of Big Tobacco," she said.
Anti-smoking advocates from around Southeast Asia have agreed on the need to work together to push for the enforcement of a comprehensive ban on the promotion and advertising of tobacco products.
The need to combat what they said was increasingly subtle and sophisticated tobacco marketing was stressed at a two-day workshop that ended on Friday, organised by the Bangkok-based Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance (Seatca) and the Health Promotion Board of Singapore.
The aim of the gathering was for participants from the region to share their experiences and lessons in anti-smoking campaigns and to address the need to tighten controls on anti-tobacco laws among Southeast Asian countries under Article 13 of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control of the World Health Organisation.
Efforts to rid the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) of the dangers of smoking will fail unless tobacco control laws, including banning the advertising of products, are enforced with equal zeal throughout the region, anti-tobacco experts said on Thursday. The Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance (SEATCA) and the Singapore Health Promotion Board are holding two days of discussions in Singapore focusing on national and regional plans to further regulate tobacco advertising and promotion as part of a global treaty formalized by members of the World Health Organization.
Sri Lanka has offered to host the consultations of the South-East Asia Regional Group (SEAR) of the World Health Organization on the Protocol on the illicit trade in Tobacco Products in October 2008.
The offer was made during the First Session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body on a Protocol on Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products which concluded in Geneva on Friday. The Conference was attended by delegates from over 150 countries, observers, organizations and NGOs
Sri Lanka together with the other members of the SEAR actively participated in the deliberations both at the regional consultative meetings as well as the plenary sessions, in respect of the template of the Protocol on Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products prepared by an expert group appointed by the secretariat of the Convention of Tobacco Control.
Sitting in his office overlooking Lake Geneva, Philip Morris International Chief Executive André Calantzopoulos takes a long drag from an unusually short cigarette. Called Marlboro Intense, the product has been shrunk down by about a half inch, and offers smokers seven potent puffs apiece, versus the average of eight or so milder draws.
The idea behind Intense is to appeal to customers who, due to indoor smoking bans, want to dash outside for a quick nicotine hit but don't always finish a full-size cigarette. Pointing to his lit Intense, the CEO says there are "possibly 50 markets that are interested in deploying it."
Marlboro Intense is likely to be part of an aggressive blitz of new smoking products PMI will roll out around the globe once the company -- now a unit of New York-based Altria Group Inc. -- becomes a standalone entity. That change will be set into motion tomorrow, when the Altria board is expected to approve a long-awaited decision to split PMI from Philip Morris USA. The move would free the tobacco giant's international operations of legal and public-relations headaches in the U.S. that have hindered its growth.
The separate entity, for example, would be exempt from U.S. tobacco regulations and out of reach of American litigators. Importantly, its practices would no longer be constrained by American public opinion, paving the way for broad product experimentation. . . .
Some antitobacco types are sounding alarm bells that an independent PMI will be a corporation which, from a practical viewpoint, is stateless and answers to no one. . . .
PMI is also streamlining manufacturing. By this fall, it will halt imports of about 57 billion cigarettes annually from its U.S. sister company. Instead, it will begin to get its entire supply internationally, primarily from its own 42 manufacturing centers, the largest of which are in Holland, Russia, Germany, Turkey and Ukraine. . . .
After more than three years of negotiations with the Chinese government, PMI is expected this year to begin marketing three home-grown brands. The smokes -- selected from hundreds of varieties produced by state-run China National Tobacco Corp. -- will be sold in Central Europe, Eastern Europe and Latin America, according to PMI.
[P]ossibly 50 [international] markets . . . are interested in deploying it [Marlboro Intense].Philip Morris International Chief Executive André Calantzopoulos on the new product meant to appeal to customers who, due to indoor smoking bans, want to dash outside for a quick nicotine hit but don't always finish a full-size cigarette.
VERMEER'S HAT
The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World
By Timothy Brook
Bloomsbury. 272 pp. $27.95 . . .
China.
Vermeer's Hat thus aims "to capture a sense of the larger whole of which both Shanghai and Delft were parts: a world in which people were weaving a web of connections and exchanges as never before." To do this, Brook looks at seven works of art -- not all of them by Vermeer -- "for the hints of broader historical forces that lurk in their details." For instance, in the chapter titled "School for Smoking," he notices that 17th-century Dutch porcelain, representing Chinese scenes, often shows people smoking. Where did the painter get the idea that the Chinese smoked? This leads to an overview of tobacco commerce and consumption in Asia, building on accounts of the shipping routes, the trade laws and the movement of silver, as well as tobacco, to the East. But Brook also takes time to discuss the social impact of chi yan or "eating smoke."
Such interlacing of the economic with the social and ideological Brook labels "transculturation," . . .
Commercially, the 17th century was an age of silver, tobacco and slaves, and Brook shows how the three interconnect to form an intricate economic network. This new international economy is revealed in every aspect of life, not only in the account books of the VOC and the histories of the Jesuit missionaries in China and Latin America, but also in the items depicted in paintings by a Delft artist who died young. All our experience is global. As Brook writes in his final chapter, "If we can see that the history of any one place links us to all places, and ultimately to the history of the entire world, then there is no part of the past -- no holocaust and no achievement -- that is not our collective heritage." Vermeer's Hat shows how this is true of the 17th century and by so doing provides not only valuable historical insight but also enthralling intellectual entertainment.
Opposition from the tobacco industry is an obvious obstacle to tobacco control. Spurious economic arguments against higher taxes have been debunked in the West, but are still commonly repeated in the finance ministries of developing countries. . . .
About 150 million to 180 million tobacco deaths would be avoided before 2050 if the proportion of adults in developing countries who quit smoking increases from below 5 per cent today to 30 per cent to 40 per cent by 2020 (like current quit rates in Canada). Because control policies deter children from starting, even greater benefits can be expected beyond 2050.
Benjamin Franklin once said, "In this world, nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes". Yet we have a tax that could prevent hundreds of millions of premature deaths. It is time to use it.
THERE are 1.25 billion adult smokers in the world and 10 per cent of these are in South-East Asia.
At 46.1 per cent, Indonesia has the biggest percentage of adult smokers while Brunei has the least at 0.04 per cent.
Malaysia's adult smokers make up 2.9 per cent of adult smokers in the region. . . .
These were the grim facts presented by the Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance (Seatca) at the recent regional workshop on implementing a 100 per cent smoke-free environment.
Seatca was formed in 2001 to act as a supportive base for government and non-government tobacco control workers and advocates in the South East region and beyond.
It also acts as a watchdog to ensure that countries who have ratified the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control fulfill their requirements to implement measures to curb tobacco usage.
Cigarettes were most affordable in Taipei and Tokyo, according to a worldwide study that found tobacco taxes aren't high enough to deter smoking in more than half of the 60 cities surveyed.
The study compared cigarette prices with median incomes to determine affordability. In New York, Seoul, Amsterdam, Rome and 30 other cities, affordability was ``high,'' according to the study by Ming-Yue Kan, a researcher at the Committee on Youth Smoking Prevention in Hong Kong. Cigarettes were least affordable in Kiev, Beijing and Shanghai.
``Most cities within high-income economies have a high cigarette affordability level,'' said the study, published in the journal Tobacco Control this month. ``As the newly emerging economies approach high income levels, immediate measures should be taken to avoid a duplication of the experiences of their predecessors. Tax increases should be given high priority.''
Tobacco is the world's second-biggest cause of death
Tobacco-related deaths are expected to double to 10 million a year by 2030, with most fatalities in developing countries, a senior World Lung Foundation (WLF) official said on Friday.
Judith Longstaff Mackay, the organisation's global tobacco control programme coordinator, said while cigarette markets were getting smaller in advanced economies, the opposite was true for developing states, where the number of smokers and the volume each consumes is growing.
"I think it's important not to get into competitive deaths, but there's about 3 million TB deaths a year, whereas there are 5 million deaths a year from tobacco and these are going up," Mackay told Reuters in an interview.
"By 2030 that 5 million will be closer to 10 million, they'll be doubling ... and the major burden is on developing countries," she said on the sidelines of an international lung health conference.
I think it's important not to get into competitive deaths, but there's about 3 million TB deaths a year, whereas there are 5 million deaths a year from tobacco and these are going up. By 2030 that 5 million will be closer to 10 million, they'll be doubling ... and the major burden is on developing countries.Judith Longstaff Mackay, the World Lung Foundation's global tobacco control programme coordinator.
AROUND 700m Asians, mostly men, cannot get through the day without puffing on a cigarette. The habit is thought to kill around 2.3m Asians every year . . .
Thailand, which banned it in most public buildings in 2003, is holding hearings on a plan to extend the ban to all places of entertainment. China's press said this month that cigarette makers would be told to put larger health warnings on their packets, including images of skulls, blackened teeth or diseased lungs. . . .
However, both nicotine-addled countries may be wrong. In each, tobacco taxes are unusually low by world standards. Studies by the World Bank and others suggest that, though raising tobacco taxes succeeds in cutting smoking, it still increases government revenues. Tougher curbs on cigarette smuggling can have the same effect. Tobacco farmers could switch to growing, say, oilseeds, for which demand is booming. And Asia's tobacco firms, in the short term, says Mr Fishburn, need fear neither higher taxes nor tougher advertising bans: they have so much scope to improve their efficiency that they could boost profits even in a shrinking market.
A regional tobacco-control organisation yesterday lambasted plans by cigarette manufacturer Philip Morris to set up a multi-million dollar warehouse in the Philippines to store tobacco leaves from plantations in Asia.
The South-East Asia Tobacco Control Alliance warned that the planned investment only showed that Philip Morris and other tobacco companies were “moving relentlessly to exploit new markets for their deadly products.â€
The alliance urged the Philippines and other South-East Asian countries to adopt strong tobacco-control measures to protect the health of their citizens, saying Philip Morris’ plan should be a wake-up call.
The World Health Organization (WHO) called Friday for an all-out war against tobacco use in Asia, with one of its officials calling smoking a 'deadly epidemic'.
Concluding a five-day conference on key health issues for Asia, the UN agency also warned that the number of patients with mental and neurological disorders in many countries in the Asian Pacific region is increasing while their treatment leaves much to be desired.
Shigeru Omi, WHO's regional director for the Western Pacific, told the conference on South Korea's Jeju Island that a few member states already have met the requirements of the agency's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control and that more are making good progress in implementing the convention's provisions.