Continent Becoming The Biggest Global Ashtray (fwd)

[Robert Weissman <rob@essential.org>]

Continent Becoming The Biggest Global Ashtray
by Wachira Kigotho/All Africa News Agency 
Source: Panafrican News Agency, Monday, 9/13/99

September 10, 1999

Nairobi - Sub-Saharan Africa is becoming a major global ashtray as a
result of free trade in tobacco products shifting from high-income
countries to developing world. There are 933 million smokers in low and
middle-income countries comprising 82 percent of smokers worldwide.

Researchers say is an increase in smoking among the poor, illiterate and
less educated in these regions.

According to a recent World Bank report on economics of tobacco control,
many transnational tobacco companies are relocating to Sub-Saharan Africa,
Latin America and Caribbean among other low-income economies where smoking
is on the increase.

Global trends on use of tobacco indicate that there are 209 million
smokers in United States, Western Europe, Canada and Japan. However there
are 933 million smokers in low and middle-income countries comprising 82
percent of smokers worldwide. So far, the emerging scenario is that there
is an increase in smoking among the poor, illiterate and less educated,
while there is a decline among the educated public.

"Ostensibly the smoking habit is spreading from its original focus among
men in high-income countries to men in low-income regions," says Dr Frank
Chaloupka who co-ordinated the World Bank study. Even then, researchers
noted an upward trend of smokers among women in affluent high-income
societies, says the report.

Researches calculated that 68,000 to 84,000 adolescents from low and
middle- income areas joined ranks of smokers each day against 14,000 to
15,000 in high- income countries. "This means that each day world-wide,
between 82,000 and 99,000 young people start to smoke, and risking
addiction to nicotine," says David Ferranti, World Bank's Vice President
of Human Development Network.

Invariably identification of low level of education as a marker for rise
in smoking in developing countries is worrying for Sub-Saharan Africa
where for decades illiteracy has been going up in comparison to other
regions globally. Researches estimate that 35 percent of all males aged 15
years and above in the sub-region are regular smokers.

Undoubtedly penetration of Sub-Saharan Africa by transnational tobacco
companies has been partly due to economic considerations. Bids to have
tobacco crop classified as weed have been resisted in countries where
tobacco growing is an economic lifeline. For instance in Malawi, tobacco
accounts for 61 percent of export earnings and 23 percent in Zimbabwe. In
many parts of Eastern and Central Africa tobacco is a highly attractive
crop to farmers, providing higher income yield per unit of land than most
cash crops and substantially more than food crops.

According to Dr David Patched, an agricultural economist at the
Commonwealth Secretariat, tobacco is 6.5 times more profitable than maize
in Zimbabwe and Malawi. It also earns 22 times more than cotton and 60
times more than sorghum. The two countries are ranked sixth and eighth
respectively among world's tobacco producers. Altogether Sub-Saharan
African countries produce about 500,000 tons of tobacco of which 192,000
tons are produced in Zimbabwe and 157,000 tons by Malawi. Other important
producers in the sub-region include South Africa (35,000), Tanzania
(25,000), Kenya (24,000) and Nigeria (15,000).

The emerging scenario is that on average the share of global production in
developing countries has risen from 40 to 60 percent in less than a
decade. However, during the same period production in high income
countries has dropped from 30 to 15 percent. Amid commercial pressures,
price incentives and other subsides on tobacco production from
transnational cigarette companies, the report says by 2030, tobacco is
expected to be the biggest cause of death in Sub-Saharan Africa.

"Seventy percent of more than 10 million people who will die of smoking
each year by 2020 will be in poor countries," says Dr Jie Chen of World
Health Organisations, the co-author of the report. Most victims, Chen
says, will die of cancers of the lung, bladder, kidney, throat, mouth,
pancreas and stomach. Others will die of respiratory diseases, ischemic
heart disease and other circulatory diseases. However, in countries where
tuberculosis is prevalent, smokers are at greater risk than non smokers of
dying from this disease.

The researchers noted that smoking is widening the health gap between the
rich and the poor. "Whereas the rich are quitting smoking in large
numbers, the poor are smoking themselves to death," says Dr John Nkuchia,
a Kenyan epidemic intelligence officer at Atlanta-based Centers for
Diocese Control.

So far, the linkage between low socio-economic status to smoking does not
argur well for Sub-Saharan Africa. Already most economies in the
sub-region are devastated and can barely support health, education and
other vital services. The added burden of smoking diseases will
effectively reduce life expectancy of many people in the region.

Researchers warn threat child mortality among under fives will shoot up in
Sub-Saharan African countries where cigarette smoking had been on rise.
According to Nkuchia such countries include Tanzania, Malawi, Zimbabwe,
South Africa, Kenya and Uganda where cigarette smoking has risen by 50
percent in a decade. Over 35 percent of babies exposed to smoking in those
countries are expected to die in infancy.

If the current trends persist, 500 million people most of them in
Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, Latin America and other low income regions
world-wide will eventually be killed by tobacco. Half of them will die in
productive age, losing 20 to 25 years of life, says the World Bank report.

Despite stark realities of health risks posed by smoking there is little
evidence of curbing the epidemic by reducing the supply. Studies carried
in several tobacco growing countries in Africa indicate that farmers are
happy with tobacco prices and too willing to increase the output. Across
Africa, farmers are too reluctant to substitute tobacco with alternative
crops that would not attract price incentives or production support. Even
if crop substitution was to succeed there is little evidence that this
would reduce tobacco consumption.

And whereas price increase on cigarettes has been viewed as an alternative
to control smoking among the poor, the strategy is not working in
Sub-Saharan Africa. Millions of people who could not afford manufactured
cigarettes are increasingly turning to smoking bidis. These are
hand-rolled cigarettes traditionally common in India and South East Asia
but now taking root in Africa.

So far governments in Africa have avoided action to control smoking as
intervention might trigger harmful economic consequences on their fragile
economies. In Tanzania, Kenya, Zimbabwe and Malawi there is general fear
that reduced tobacco production would mean permanent loss of jobs and
lower government revenue.

Ideally economic fragility of Sub-Saharan African countries has created
perfect market conditions for transnational cigarette companies, currently
facing stern legal and health regulatory measures in high-income
countries. Tobacco industry estimates that out of 33 million people
engaged in tobacco farming world-wide, one million are in Sub-Saharan
African countries and the number is still growing.

Quite worrying for smoking control pressure groups is the emerging
evidence that partial bans on cigarette advertising and promotional
campaigns in Sub- Saharan Africa have had little or no effects on smoking
patterns. Researches say most smokers in the region start smoking when too
young and are addicted quite early.