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Big Tobacco’s Latest Target: Myanmar
Strong action needed to head off tobacco epidemic
Posted by: Editor | Aug 22, 2013
As smoking declines in many developed nations, the tobacco industry is increasingly targeting low- and middle-income countries. The industry’s latest target: Myanmar.
As Myanmar emerges from decades of isolation and military rule and international sanctions are lifted, the Associated Press details how tobacco companies – including multinational giants British American Tobacco and Japan Tobacco – are moving in as quickly as possible. And they’re trying to do it under the radar.
“They seem to think by entering the market stealthily, they can avoid public scrutiny,” Tin Maung, Myanmar’s top tobacco control advocate, told the AP.
As they do in many poorer countries, the tobacco companies are exploiting a need for economic development and weak tobacco control laws to sell more of their deadly and addictive products. Unless countries take strong action, the result is usually higher smoking rates and more tobacco-caused death, disease a nd economic costs.
“We expect the (Myanmar) economy to boom and a growing middle class to emerge with more disposable income,” said Mary Assunta, senior policy adviser with the Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance. “This gives plenty of room for tobacco companies to focus on targeting the middle class and teenagers with cheap cigarettes.”
Myanmar has ratified the international tobacco control treaty, the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. But the country needs to adopt and enforce proven measures called for by the treaty, including higher tobacco taxes; 100 percent smoke-free laws that apply to all workplaces and public bans; large, graphic health warnings; and bans on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship.
The tobacco industry’s aggressive tactics are driving a global tobacco epidemic that is projected to kill one billion people worldwide this century. Countries around the world must be equally aggressive in working to reduce tobacco use and save lives
http://www.fresnobee.com/2013/08/23/3458...bacco.html
Smoking rates are below 13% in California. Tobacco use is sinking across the country and in other wealthy countries. What's a multinational tobacco company to do?
With profits to make and shareholders to please, the tobacco industry peddles its product in poorer nations and lately is seeking to use international treaties and U.S. trade policy to keep from losing more market share.
Rather than stand up to Big Tobacco, President Barack Obama's Office of the U.S. Trade Representative last week sidestepped the issue by not explicitly recognizing tobacco as uniquely harmful to human health, says FairWarning, a nonprofit investigative online publication that reports about tobacco issues.
The trade representative initially proposed what every health-conscious Californian knows: Tobacco is bad for you, and sovereign nations should be free to regulate it as they see fit. That language was watered down, in the face of lobbying by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and tobacco state congressional members.
As developed nations try to restrict tobacco use, the tobacco industry invokes trade policy in creative and nefarious ways, claiming, for example, that Australia violated its intellectual property rights by restricting logos from cigarette packaging and requiring graphic warning labels that picture cancer victims.
Rather than challenge Australia's regulations in Australian courts, major tobacco companies have encouraged Ukraine, Honduras and Dominican Republic to challenge Australia's regulations before the World Trade Organization, FairWarning reported in November.
In a stark illustration of the tobacco industry's strategy, The Associated Press reported that the world's major tobacco companies are moving factories into Myanmar, an impoverished nation of 60 million people where 45% of adult men smoke and where children as young as 12 regularly buy cigarettes.
The article pointed out that "awareness about the health hazards is low, tobacco controls are weakly enforced, and the anti-smoking lobby is effectively a one-man act." Myanmar will be a rich vein for tobacco companies as it emerges from years of military dictatorship.
Anti-smoking organizations called the Obama administration's watered-down stance in trade talks a missed opportunity.
They're correct. The ability of nations to control and restrict tobacco will become increasingly relevant as the tobacco industry uses every tool at its disposal to stave off regulation.
