Doggett international bill introduced

[Robert Weissman <rob@essential.org>]

HEALTH-U.S.: Anti-Tobacco Lawmakers Move To Extend Protections Overseas

By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Apr 28 (IPS) - As the debate over comprehensive tobacco
legislation intensifies, public-health activists and lawmakers here are
intensifying their efforts to curb the promotion by US cigarette companies
of their death-dealing products overseas.

Rep. Lloyd Doggett Tuesday introduced a bill that would require US tobacco
companies to apply the same warning labels to their products abroad as they
must in the United States and require Washington to take part in the
negotiation of a binding international code of conduct on the promotion,
advertising, and distribution of tobacco products.

"Any comprehensive legislation that passes this Congress must stop US
tobacco companies from hooking children around the world to their deadly
products," said Doggett, who added, "Addicting someone else's children to
pay the tab" for a US settlement was unacceptable.

Coinciding with Doggett's announcement was the release by the corporate
watchdog group INFACT, a leader in the effort to regulate the marketing of
infant formula internationally, of a new report, 'Global Aggression,' which
documents how the two leading US-based tobacco multinational corporations
evade local laws and regulations to sell to the booming youth market overseas.

"The tobacco epidemic is driven by transnational corporations," according to
the 126-page report. "Therefore, many problems created by this industry
require a global solution."

US companies currently supply about one-fifth of the nearly six trillion
cigarettes smoked in the world each year. As local, state and federal
anti-smoking laws have reduced smoking by almost 20 percent over the past
decade, tobacco companies have increased their exports by 260 percent, the
report said. In 1996, for example, the top two US cigarette makers, RJR
Nabisco and Philip Morris, sold 57 percent and 70 percent of their products
overseas.

At the same time, international health experts are expressing growing
concern about the steadily rising rates of cigarette smoking in developing
countries. Under current trends, tobacco will kill half a billion of the 5.5
billion people alive today, including one-third of all men in China,
according to the INFACT report.

By the 2020s, according to the World Health Organisation, tobacco-related
illnesses will be the world's leading cause of death, and about 70 percent
of the victims will be from developing countries.

Both the INFACT report and Doggett's new bill are closely tied to the
current debate over legislation, called the "McCain bill," to settle all
health-related claims against the tobacco industry here.

If approved, the bill would require the tobacco companies to pay to 516
billion dollars over 25 years to a government trust fund and impose 1.10
dollars in new taxes on each pack of cigarettes by 2003. It also grants
broad powers to the Food and Drug Administration to regulate the industry's
practices and imposes penalties of up to 3.5 billion dollars a year if the
companies do not meet targets of reducing smoking among youth by 45 percent
in 10 years.

Claiming that the settlement would bankrupt them, the companies walked out
of the negotiations earlier this month, but many lawmakers and analysts
believe their rejection is a tactical maneouvre. "They
saw that public opinion has swung so far against them that the only way they
can get (the legislation) is by opposing it," says Ross Hammond, a San
Francisco-based consultant.

The international provisions of the McCain bill are seen as the critical
test of the industry's intentions, precisely because the companies hope that
they can make up for losses they suffer under the settlement at home by
aggressively increasing market share abroad.

The McCain bill includes five international provisions which are heatedly
opposed by the companies. They include ending US government efforts to
promote the sale or export of tobacco abroad or weaken foreign
tobacco-control regulations and funding efforts to curb cigarette smuggling
which many experts believe is used by companies to introduce their products
in new markets at greatly reduced prices.

The bill also proposes creating a non-governmental organisation (NGO) that
would support anti-smoking campaigns and groups abroad and funding
international tobacco-control efforts through a two-cent 
licensing fee that companies would have to pay for every pack of cigarettese
they sold abroad.

It also calls for a voluntary code of conduct for labeling and advertising
tobacco products overseas and for applying the same curbs on marketing to
children in other countries as apply here;

Lawmakers close to the tobacco industry are reportedly pressing for all
international provisions to be dropped from the McCain bill in negotiations
taking place here this week. But Sen. Ron Wyden, a strong anti-tobacco
leader, told reporters Tuesday that the INFACT report "offers fresh
ammunition for our fight."

"We will not finance a settlement in the United States by sacrificing the
lungs of children all around the world," he said.

Doggett said he was introducing his bill - which is tougher than McCain's in
its call, for example, for a binding international accord on tobacco
advertising and marketing - to rally support in the House for strong
measures if the House Republican leadership, which is more hostile to
tobacco regulation, decides to ignore the McCain package.

"The next few weeks will show whether Congress is still doing the tobacco
industry's bidding," says Hammond. "If the international provisions stay in
the final bill, then it would be fair to say that the tobacco industry's
stranglehold on Congress has finally been broken, because overseas markets
are clearly where the industry's future lies."

Mary Assunta of the Consumers Association of Penang in Malaysia, said both
bills were a "good starting point." But, she added, "we need to look at them
very closely to be sure there are no loopholes. The companies are very smart
and ruthless in exploiting loopholes," stressed Assunta, who worked on the
INFACT report.

In Malaysia, she said, Philip Morris and RJR Nabisco get around advertising
bans by putting their logos on ads for non-cigarette products, such as
clothing, sponsoring concerts and other events that attract teenagers, and
handing out inexpensive items, such as keychains, which carry the cigarette
logo. The report notes that there
are some 1,000 Marlboro Classics clothing stores in Europe and Asia, while
RJR Nabisco promotes Camel Planet nightclubs in Poland.(end/ips/jl/98)

   
[c] 1998, InterPress Third World News Agency (IPS)
                     All rights reserved