[Intl-tobacco] Mexico's curb on smoking in trouble (fwd)

[Robert Weissman]

Mexico's  curb on smoking in trouble
Enforcement record poor on past efforts
by Ricardo Sandoval / KNIGHT RIDDER NEWS SERVICE

Source: Lexington Herald-Leader, Friday, 5/19/00

MEXICO CITY It's billed as a clean start for anti-smoking efforts in
Mexico, where 45,000 people died last year of smoking-related illness and
a million more took up the tobacco habit.

But even before it gets onto the books next week, a new rule banning
smoking in Mexico's federal office buildings is in trouble.

In a culture in which smokers light up pretty much wherever they please,
experts fear Mexican bureaucrats will ignore the congressional edict, and
that it won't be enforced.

Guadalupe Ponciano, a cardiovascular specialist at the government-run
Manuel G.  Gonzales General Hospital in Mexico City, called the
congressional move ``the strongest action yet by the government against a
group of rampant smokers in Mexico.''

``That it's aimed at the government itself gives the government a moral
basis to then protect non-smokers in other areas of Mexican life,''
Ponciano said.

But, as with past rules against smoking, Ponciano fears the new regulation
may fail because of a lack of enforcement that's chronic in Mexico.

``Well, you caught me smoking, so what does that say about how I feel
about the rule?'' asked Concepcion Garcia, 40, a secretary who was puffing
away inside a government office building. ``No one here has told us
anything about a new rule against smoking. I'll stop when they force me to
and maybe it's a good thing.  It could make me quit this ugly vice.''

Garcia is among the estimated 14 million Mexicans who smoke and who are
pushing up health-care costs. Percentage-wise, far more Americans smoke,
but the trend is static. In Mexico, with a population of 100 million, the
numbers of smokers and smoking-related illnesses are growing fast. Public
hospitals alone examined more than a million patients with smoking-related
complaints last year, according to government figures.

Progress against smoking in Mexico has been gradual.

A decade ago, non-smokers applauded federal rules against smoking in
hospitals and airports.

Last year, even San Lazaro, the Mexican Congress's expansive headquarters,
was put off-limits to smokers. But only hospitals and passenger jets, it
seems, are truly smoke-free.