ASH UK complains about BAT cricket ads

[Robert Weissman <rob@essential.org>]

Press release
28 May 1999
For immediate release


ASH challenges British tobacco company for using World Cup Cricket to market
cigarettes to Third World children

ASH has today made a formal complaint about the violation of agreements
governing tobacco sponsorship of sporting events.  British American Tobacco
is using the World Cup Cricket tournament to market one of their cigarette
brands to children in the Third World, through the Wills sponsorship of the
Indian Cricket Team.   The Wills logo is clearly visible on the shirts of
the Indian team, and child-size replica T-shirts are available
internationally (1).    On the eve of the big match between England and
India at Edgbaston, and in advance of World No Tobacco Day on Monday (2),
ASH is calling for World Cup Cricket ‘99 to go tobacco free.

ASH is concerned that the use of the Wills logo on the shirts of the Indian
team will encourage more children in India to smoke.  A study of Indian
children published in the BMJ in 1996, concluded that cricket sponsorship by
tobacco companies increased children’s likelihood of experimentation with
tobacco (3).

ASH believes that the Wills sponsorship contravenes two voluntary agreements
between the Government and the tobacco industry, which govern the conduct of
the industry (4).  We have today written to COMATAS, the committee which
monitors both agreements, to
lodge an official complaint (5).

The marketing of child-size T-shirts displaying the logo of a BAT brand also
contradicts assurances given to an ASH campaigner by BAT Chairman Martin
Broughton at BAT’s recent AGM (6).  Clive Bates, Director of ASH, has
written to BAT asking how BAT’s promotion of the Wills brand on children’s
cricket shirts equates with BAT’s new desire to be seen as a “responsible
company in a controversial industry” (7).

ASH is also arguing that the organisers of the Cricket World Cup 1999, the
England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), should take steps to make the event
totally tobacco-free, following the examples set by the Soccer World Cup and
the Olympics.   We are calling on the ECB to request that the Indian team
cover up the Wills logos on their shirts.

Health campaigners in India have called for the Wills sponsorship of the
Indian team to be stopped.  Earlier this month, the Voluntary Health
Association of India filed a Public Interest Litigation in the Delhi High
Court, seeking that the Wills sponsorship contract with the Indian Cricket
Team is cancelled (8).

Emma Must, International Campaign Manager at ASH, commented:
“With World No Tobacco Day coming up on Monday, the England and Wales
Cricket Board should seize this opportunity to make the rest of the World
Cup tobacco free.  They should ask the Indian team to remove the Wills logos
from their shirts.  Indian children must not become victims of the British
tobacco industry.”

Taposh Roy of the Voluntary Health Association of India, said:
“The Wills sponsorship has to be stopped. It is not popularising cricket in
India, but hooking young people to the deadly smoking habit. The playing
fields of India must not be turned into mass graves where children lie
buried. It is this realisation which has to seep into the Board of Cricket
Control in India who have been accepting tobacco sponsorships.”

Notes:

(1) Official World Cup Cricket replica shirts in the Indian Team colours,
displaying the Wills logo, are available in child sizes from the MCC shop at
Lords, in high street sports shops and by international mail order from the
official Cricket World Cup website
(http://www.lords.org/worldcup/merchandise).

(2) World No Tobacco Day is organised annually on the 31st May by the World
Health Organisation to generate public awareness of the dangers of smoking
and stimulate action.

(3) ‘Effects of sports sponsorship by tobacco companies on children’s
experimentation with tobacco’, S. G Vaidya, U D Naik, and J S Vaidya, BMJ
313, 17 August 1996.

(4) The Fourth Agreement on Sponsorship of Sport by Tobacco Companies in the
UK (1995) and the Voluntary Agreement on Tobacco Product’s Advertising and
Promotion (1994).

(5) COMATAS is the Committee for Monitoring Agreements on Tobacco
Advertising and Sponsorship.  It is composed of representatives from the
Government departments concerned (ie Culture, Media and Sport, and Health)
and the tobacco industry in equal numbers.

(6) When asked at BAT’s AGM on 29 April about the marketing of child-size
t-shirts bearing BAT brand logos in Vietnam, Broughton replied that “there
is no company policy to target children”.  He added that a specific T-shirt
referred to was “probably a counterfeit”.

(7) See website of BAT subsidiary Brown and Williamson (http:/www.bw.com).

(8) The Voluntary Health Association of India (VHAI) Public Interest
Litigation was filed in the Delhi High Court on 13 May 1999.  According to
VHAI, the litigation “seeks to enforce article 21 of the Constitution of
India and prevent irreparable harm being caused to the lives of millions of
cricket loving Indian children and youth from cigarette smoking as a result
of cigarette advertising and cricket sponsorships”.  The next hearing has
been fixed for 23rd July 1999.

Contacts:

Emma Must, International Campaign Manager: 0171 224 0743 (w) 0171 738 6506
(h)
Clive Bates, Director: 0171 224 0743 (w) 0468 791237 (m) 0181 800 1336 (h)


Emma Must
International Programme Manager
Action on Smoking and Health
16 Fitzhardinge Street
London W1H 9PL
UK
Tel: +44 171 224 0743
Fax: +44 171 224 0471
E-mail: emma.must@dial.pipex.com