INFACT new report

[Robert Weissman <rob@essential.org>]

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A corporate watchdog group Monday accused Philip
Morris and RJR Nabisco of
``circumventing'' laws, ``manipulating'' trade agreements and
aggressively marketing cigarettes to young people
overseas as opposition mounted against tobacco in the United States.

The authors of a report by the INFACT organization also told a news
conference that anti-smoking legislation now
before Congress allowed the firms to ``hide behind their food divisions
and their overseas tobacco divisions'' to
avoid being held accountable for health problems caused by smoking
tobacco.

RJR Nabisco spokesman John Singleton said it was company policy to
discourage children from smoking and
added that about 60 percent of cigarettes sold outside the United States
were made by state-controlled firms. He
said his company's share of the market outside the United States was
about 4 percent.

``We at R.J. Reynolds international believe that children should not
smoke. As a responsible manufacturer and
marketer of an adult product, we make every effort to ensure that our
actions are guided by this basic belief,'' he
said.

A representative of Philip Morris was not immediately available for
comment on the INFACT report.

``The U.S. public is increasingly intolerant of tobacco marketing to
kids in the U.S., so Philip Morris and RJR
Nabisco are going overseas, out of the limelight, to addict new
customers,'' INFACT executive director Kathryn
Mulvey said. The group said its study showed ``a pattern of marketing to
youth, circumventing regulation and
secretly manipulating trade agreements.''

The report, ``Global Aggression: The Case for World Standards and Bold
U.S. Action Challenging Phillip Morris
and RJR Nabisco'' cited ``Marlboro Adventure Team'' sporting contests in
the Ukraine, ``Camel'' weddings in the
Czech Republic and ``Salem'' pop music stores in Malaysia, despite
national advertising restrictions.

Marlboro cigarettes are made by Philip Morris and Camel and Salem
cigarettes are made by R.J. Reynolds
Tobacco Co., a unit of RJR Nabisco Holdings Corp.

INFACT's report said the two companies participated in drafting an
international trade agreement that would allow
them to sue foreign governments as legal equals for attempting to
regulate them. The Multilateral Agreement on
Investment (MAI) would require compensation for profits lost due to
government regulation and would void
national and local laws that conflict with it, the group said.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has proposed an International
Framework Convention on tobacco that
would counter the MAI, setting a floor rather than a ceiling on
regulations, according to INFACT.

``The fear among many people working on tobacco control outside the U.S.
is that the rest of the world will be left
to fend for itself against the U.S.-based tobacco corporations once the
U.S. public believes the problem at home is
solved,'' the report said.

It cited an August 1997 WHO statement that tobacco-related illnesses
would be the world's leading cause of death
by the 2020s and that 70 percent of those would be in developing
countries. According to WHO, tobacco already
kills 3.5 million people a year worldwide.

INFACT, best known for boycott campaigns in the past against Nestle and
General Electric, started a boycott of
the food divisions of Philip Morris and RJR Nabisco in 1994 to draw
attention to public health concerns about
tobacco.

The group said it would deliver copies of its report to Philip Morris
board members at the company's annual
meeting April 30. The Boston-based group has scheduled a congressional
briefing in Washington Tuesday on the
findings of its report.

The legislation being considered by the U.S. Congress would cost tobacco
companies $516 billion over 25 years
and not give them the immunity from future lawsuits they want. It would
strengthen federal regulation of tobacco
products, restrict cigarette advertising, impose penalties on the
industry if teen-age smoking did not fall to specified
levels, and limit the legal liability of the companies to $6.5 billion a
year.