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Hungary prepares to kick the habit (fwd)
Hungary prepares to kick the habit
Parliament is considering legislation that would restrict
public smoking
By Susan Milligan, Globe Correspondent, 11/27/98
BUDAPEST - It may be one of the toughest adjustments
this
post-communist nation will have to make: Hungary, long
smoker-friendly, is preparing to impose dramatic
restrictions on puffing in
public places and on the sale of tobacco to minors.
Legislation pending in the Hungarian Parliament would
require restaurants to
create sections for nonsmokers; offices would also have to
accommodate
nonsmokers by creating an assigned room for smokers.
The sale of tobacco to those under 18 would be banned;
minors seen
smoking could also be stopped for ID checks by police.
Cigarette packs
would have to carry warning labels of a prescribed size,
and the Hungarian
government is also considering a 16 percent increase in
the tax on tobacco.
Such rules might seem a bit behind the times in the United
States, where a
nonsmoking majority has fought successfully for space. But
in Eastern and
Central Europe, the proposed law would force a cultural
sea change.
There is no stigma against smoking in this region.
Children smoke.
Cardiologists smoke. The chief of surgery at the main
hospital in Sofia,
Bulgaria, chain-smoked - inside the hospital - during a
recent interview.
At Budapest's Ferihegy Airport, people smoke two feet away
from newly
painted no-smoking signs. The ashtrays are still there.
Only a few restaurants in Budapest have nonsmoking areas,
and one of them
is a vegetarian restaurant, a concept that also baffles
the heavy
pork-consuming Hungarians.
It might seem unlikely, then, that Hungary would decide to
introduce
antismoking rules, and even less likely that the
heavy-smoking electorate
would accept them.
``It's an upward struggle in this part of the world,''
said Annette Andkjaer, a
spokeswoman for the World Health Organization's European
headquarters
in Copenhagen. Smoking is related to numerous deaths in
post-communist
Europe, but ``the reality is that the masses don't see it
that way yet,'' she
said. Still, the newly elected, health-conscious
government of Prime Minister
Viktor Orban is hoping to make the change in Hungary.
Unlike his
chain-smoking predecessor, Gyula Horn, Orban, 35, has
banned smoking in
his office.
Orban's government has two goals: to diminish the number
of deaths from
tobacco (not to mention the government-paid health care
costs), and to
harmonize Hungary's laws with those of the European Union
countries.
Hungary must have rules on tobacco - including a ban on
advertising of
tobacco - to get into the EU.
Health Ministry figures show Hungary leading the world in
deaths from lung
cancer and cardiovascular disease.
``Every 16 minutes, someone does of smoking-related
illnesses in Hungary.
That's twice as many as the victims of alcohol, accidents,
and crime
combined,'' said ministry official Gabor Kapocs.
The Orban administration is also concerned that smoking is
contributing to
the small nation's steady drop in population during the
1990s. About 35,000
of Hungary's 10.2 million people die every year from
illnesses related to
smoking, Kapocs said - almost exactly the number of the
population
Hungary is losing from a lower live-birth rate.
It's not only smoking that defines a Hungarian; it's what
they smoke. In this
emerging nation, expensive Western cigarettes are a status
symbol.
``It's one of the few consumer goods you can take out of
your pocket and
show people,'' said Nyren Scott-Malden, a tobacco industry
analyst with
Credit Suisse First Boston in London.
Most of the tobacco companies in Central Europe, and many
of those in
Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, have been
bought by Western
tobacco firms, Scott-Malden said. Tobacco companies have
invested a total
of about $2 billion in the former communist region, he said.
It's money many cash-strapped governments in this part of
the world don't
want to give up - a point the industry has made when faced
with antismoking
efforts.
In another case, said Greg Connolly of the Massachusetts
Tobacco Control
Program, a division of the Department of Public Health,
Poland had a
smoke-out day several years ago, offering prizes as
incentives. The
campaign was countered by RJ Reynolds, which offered
prizes including
trips and a car to customers who turned in empty Winston
cigarette boxes.
It's often difficult to gain government support for
antismoking measures in
emerging markets, since the economies need the tobacco
industry's
investments, said Connolly, who is an expert on tobacco
issues in Central
Europe. ``Naturally, when faced with short-term economic''
influx, ``they
don't think about the long-term health bill,'' Connolly said.
In Hungary, the cost-benefit ratio is a cash disaster in
the long term, Kapocs
said. The nation takes in about $275 million annually in
revenues from
tobacco, but spends five times that amount on health care
and lost
productivity from illness and early death from smoking,
the Health Ministry
estimates.
Philip Morris Hungary refused to comment on the
legislation, and referred
questions to the Hungarian Association of Tobacco
Manufacturers, which
refused requests for comment.
Rolf Bielefeldt, a spokesman in London for the UK-based
British-American
Tobacco, said the proposed law would not affect sales.
Most of the law's
restrictions - especially those on sales to minors ``are
all right with us,''
Bielefeldt said. As for the limits on smoking in public,
``as long as you define
a sensible position of what a public place is, yes, we can
go along with it,'' he
said.
This story ran on page A02 of the Boston Globe on 11/27/98.
© Copyright 1998 Globe Newspaper Company.