[Intl-tobacco] A world safe for Big Tobacco - Boston Globe

[Robert Weissman]

A world safe for Big Tobacco - Boston Globe
Sunday, May 4, 2003, Page H11

By Ellen Goodman


THE WAY I figure it, this is a time when our government might inhale
deeply and pause for a bit of multilateral fence-mending. I don't
expect Donald Rumsfeld to sing 'Kumbaya' in a Parisian cafe with
Jacques Chirac. But couldn't we make common cause with the rest of
the world in pursuit of an international killer, a globally certified
bad guy? Like, say, the Marlboro Man?


The World Health Organization has spent three years hammering out an
agreement with 171 countries to prevent the spread of smoking-related
diseases, especially in the developing world. The convention, due to
be adopted May 19, would ban advertising except where a ban
conflicted with national laws, put a hefty tax on tobacco products,
and require warning labels on cigarette packages.

But instead of applauding the public health measures, the United
States went on a tear. A tearing-up-treaties tear.

The same administration that refused to sign on to a global warming
agreement, opted out of an international criminal court, rejected a
treaty on women's rights, and even one against cloning, has capped
its reputation by trying to undermine the antitobacco agreement.

It not only opposed the taxes, the labels, and even the minimum age
of 18 for sales to minors. It went into high and highly dubious
dudgeon at the carefully circumscribed ban on advertising and
marketing, on the grounds that it limited the 'free speech' of
corporations.

Judy Wilkenfeld of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, who was at the
WHO meetings, observed, 'We were more concerned with the rights of
Philip Morris to export tobacco than with world health. We sought to
weaken every position.'

Now, our government says it won't sign unless there's a new clause
letting any country opt out of any provision it doesn't like. Unless,
in short, it's a treaty without a tooth.

Unilateralism gone haywire? Actually, we're not wholly alone; the
Dominican Republic is on our side. But this coalition of the
unwilling isn't doing wonders for our world reputation.

Remember back in the 1980s when we first embarked on a Philip Morris
Foreign Policy? We forced open world markets to our tobacco with some
strong-arm trade negotiations and such global citizens as Jesse
Helms. Today, America is the largest exporter of tobacco and
tobacco-related diseases.

Smoking is on the decline here, but it's on the rise from Eastern
Europe to Asia. Philip Morris now makes more money abroad than at
home. 'Their market is overseas,' says Wilkenfeld, 'This is the
market they're all salivating over.'

Tobacco is now killing 4.9 million people a year. At this rate, WHO
figures the premature death toll will reach 10 million a year within
a generation -- with 70 percent of the deaths in developing
countries. And unlike AIDS or even SARS, this disease doesn't come
from a virus, it comes from an industry. An industry that contributed
about $6.4 million to the 2002 campaign chests of Republicans.

Let me be fair to Big Tobacco. From time to time, it does care about
the world. Just two years ago, Philip Morris, which sells 80 percent
of the smokes in the Czech Republic, commissioned a study showing
that cigarettes shortened lives by an average of 4.3 years. They
bragged (seriously) that tobacco deaths actually saved the Czech
government $30 million a year in pensions, housing, and health care
for the elderly.

Somehow or other public health organizations didn't chalk this up
under foreign assistance.

'We used to think the major export of the United States to
developing countries was technology for health or farming,' says the
University of Michigan's Ken Warner, 'Now our contribution to the
rest of the world is lung cancer.'

Americans are fighting tobacco addiction at home while our government
is supporting it abroad. In fact, the administration thinks tobacco
companies should be allowed to market overseas in ways that are
prohibited here -- from free samples to sponsorship of youth events.

As Wilkenfeld says, 'we should be exporting tobacco control measures
and not tobacco, a product that when used as directed kills.'

Over decades, our country has spent wisely on international health.
Just this week, the administration urged Congress to pass a $15
billion plan to fight AIDS. 'When we see a plague leaving graves and
orphans across a continent,' President Bush said, 'we must act.'

All over the globe, we've built good health and good will
simultaneously. But when it comes to tobacco, we are standing outside
the world community like a nicotine junkie on a city sidewalk,
huffing and puffing away.



Ellen Goodman's e-mail address is ellengoodman@globe.com.

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