TWN: US-UK tobacco giants merge to target Third World smokers

[Robert Weissman <rob@essential.org>]

March 1999

U.S.-U.K. TOBACCO GIANTS MERGE
TO TARGET THIRD WORLD SMOKERS

With the merger of two of the world's biggest cigarette companies - British
American Tobacco (BAT) and Rothmans - the threat of smoking to the health of
the Third World population is even bigger now, as the new giant pursues its
main objective of targeting emerging markets in the developing world.

By M S Ahmed

 London: Two of the world's biggest cigarette companies - British American
Tobacco (BAT) and Rothmans - have merged to create a group selling more than
900 billion cigarettes a year around the world. Faced with a decline in
sales in the developed world mainly as a result of anti-smoking legislation
and publicity, the new giant plans to target the expanding market in the
'developing' world, where there is less awareness of the threat of smoking
to health and where laws against cigarette advertising is virtually unknown.

 The $13 billion merger, announced in January, makes the new group the
second largest private tobacco company after the American Philip Morris,
which sells Marlboro - the dominant global brand. (The Chinese State-owned
tobacco company is the largest tobacco producer in the world.) The tie-up
which brings together brands such as 555 State Express, Rothmans, Benson &
Hedges, Dunhill and Peter Stuyvesant, is expected not only to put Philip
Morris's dominance in doubt but also to trigger off other mergers.

 The tobacco companies, including the new group to be known as New BAT,
admit that their main objective is to target emerging markets. A New BAT
spokesman admitted  in January  that  the group would target  the growing
markets  in China, Africa, India and South-East Asia. If New BAT succeeds in
its promotional pitch, it will cause more deaths than any war, disease or
famine has yet claimed.

 In other words, the sleek brands that will flood those regions as a result
of the targeting are the biggest single killer known to history, and are,
therefore, more lethal than the cruise missiles rained by Uncle Sam on Iraq,
for instance, but scarcely attract a fraction of the publicity.

 Health experts estimate that cigarettes will claim four million lives a
year worldwide by 2000 and 10 million a year by 2030, of which seven million
will be in the developing world. Anti-smoking organisations, health experts
and scientists in the West - including ASH, the anti-smoking pressure group,
the British Medical Association (BMA) and Oxford University dons - have
opposed the merger, arguing it will lead to more deaths in the developing
world.

 The BMA have accused the New BAT of seeking new smokers in the developing
world because its sales are under pressure in the developed world, where
lawsuits, anti-smoking legislation and adverse publicity have tarnished its
image. It said after the announcement of the merger: 'This is an industry on
the defensive. What is alarming is that it is overtly striving to recruit
new smokers in the developing world because it is under huge pressure in
Western markets.'

 But one of the most effective critics of the deal is Professor Richard Peto
of Oxford University, who is one of the main authors of the biggest study so
far of the dangers of tobacco smoking, published in the British Medical
Journal, in which scientists from China, America and Britain interviewed the
families of one million people who died between 1986 and 1988.

 According to Professor Peto, 'If this merger means more cigarette sales,
it'll mean more cigarette deaths because half of all smokers eventually get
killed by their habit unless they can manage to quit.' And arguing that BAT
and Rothmans provide one-sixth of the world's tobacco, Peto added: 'The
cigarettes sold by these two companies are already causing more than half a
million deaths a year and 20 years from now they will be causing a million
deaths a year worldwide.'

 Despite these horrific predictions, the British foreign office and the
prime minister's office have overruled the health department's objections to
the merger, arguing that the importance of boosting exports overrides the
threat to lives in the developing world posed by the merger. New guidelines
being drawn up by the foreign office will order British embassies worldwide
to help the tobacco companies to corner new markets.

 According to British media reports, embassy staff will be told 'they must
offer the same legal advice and support to tobacco companies that they give
to other British firms' - including information on local markets. Company
officials will also continue to accompany ministers on trade missions
abroad.

 The British government move comes after the publication of statements by
the foreign secretary Robin Cook that British foreign policy would be guided
by ethical principles. Cook's ethical foreign policy is apparently
comfortable with the promotion of mass murder, albeit disguised as business
promotion, in the interests of boosting British exports. - Third World
Network Features/Crescent International

-ends-

About the writer: M S Ahmed contributed a longer version of this article to
Crescent International (February 1-15, 1999).

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1876/99

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