New message from big tobacco
Comment
Tobacco companies are admitting that smoking kills. British American Tobacco, which holds a large market share in this part of the world, along with its subsidiary West Indies Tobacco Company, brought media operatives from Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Guyana and Suriname together in Trinidad earlier this month for a seminar. Stabroek News attended and in this column shares some of what is current in the tobacco industry today. The United Kingdom's Department of Health has produced a paper titled simply `Smoking Kills' which is scary enough to make some smokers never reach for that next cigarette. What is unexpected is that "big tobacco", as the conglomerate British American Tobacco Company (BATCO) has been called, has finally also uttered these words. The refrain has been picked up by others in the tobacco industry, the latest being Phillip Morris. And the response by anti-smoking groups? "Too late." The tobacco industry has been under attack by governments, individuals and non governmental organisations since the 1950s, perhaps earlier. And it has been fighting back. Its latest move has been to present a new image of a caring, responsible producer. At the seminar in Trinidad, BATCO's Senior Scientific Adviser, Dr Adrian Payne, admitted that smoking causes emphysema, lung cancer and heart and respiratory diseases. He also acknowledged that it is difficult to quit smoking. Though refusing to state when the tobacco company had made its about face, Dr Payne presented a paper, some six months old, titled 'Smoking - Our View'. According to the paper, the tobacco company does not want children to smoke and wants adults to be fully aware of the risks involved if they choose to. In the US and UK, cigarette advertisements are being dropped from certain television stations. Tobacco companies are being refused when they offer sponsorship of sporting activities. In Australia, anti-smoking activists have an ongoing campaign in which they deface cigarette billboard advertisements, changing the message to reflect the dangers of smoking. Dr Payne noted that BATCO had consistently been publicising the risks involved in taking up cigarette smoking on all its products and was willing to expand on this. BATCO's advertising campaign is touted as promoting a choice between brands for people who have already decided to smoke, rather than being targeted at non-smokers. BATCO feels that social factors are what influence people's decision to light up. An informed decision to enjoy the pleasures of smoking while balancing this against the risks is a lifestyle choice like any other. But this level of responsible advertising is still to be extended to Guyana and Caribbean countries where BATCO's brands are widely sold and ads carry no warnings. A lack of publicity of the risks involved in smoking had been the basis of many of the early lawsuits filed against the tobacco industry. Suits filed against the tobacco industry by US states Mississippi, Florida and Texas were settled between July, 1997 and January 1998. Each state received a lump sum up front payment of $232 million, $750 million and $989 million respectively. Roughly 27% of these amounts were designated for pilot programmes by the states to discourage youth tobacco use. The entire settlement which will be paid over several years is $246 billion. As part of the settlement terms also, the tobacco industry is prohibited in a settling state from billboard or transit advertising of a tobacco product, or targeting children in cigarette advertising or marketing or taking any action the primary purpose of which is to cause underage smoking. BATCO says it is willing to work with anti-smoking groups towards the production of a safer cigarette, eradicating under age smoking, and the issue of public smoking among other issues on which the two sides have previously fought. (The anti-smoking groups say there is no safe cigarette.) Dr Payne feels that public smoking is being put down because of its nuisance value rather than its health risks. He argued that emissions from trucks, cars, factories and other industries project far more pollution into the atmosphere than a roomful of cigarette smoke at any given time. BATCO is not prepared to shut down its factories on the basis of a health risk. Dealing with the moral dilemma of selling a product now agreed to be dangerous to health the company essentially argues that smokers have a choice. It notes that alcohol causes liver disease, caffeine in tea and coffee is said to be addictive, unsafe sex spreads HIV/AIDS; yet none of these industries, legal or illegal, is prepared to close its doors. The choice is up to the consumer. There may be some merit in this position. The only rider that could be added is that the company should apply the same standards and principles in developing countries as it now does in developed ones.
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