[Intl-tobacco] Africa Remains A Viable Market For Cigarette Companies (fwd)

[Robert Weissman]

Africa Remains A Viable Market For Cigarette Companies
by Peter Masebu / PANA Correspondent
Source: Panafrican News Agency, Wednesday, 5/31/00

      DAKAR, Senegal (PANA) - Combining beauty, charm and the 
ability to speak several foreign languages, Yaya sells stacks of 
cigarette packets to delegates at an African regional conference 
in Dakar, the Senegalese capital.

    Her multinational cigarette company is among those reputed 
for their "generous" sponsorship of sporting events ranging from 
football, horse racing to wrestling, the most popular sport in 
Senegal.

    The government also endorses it because it pays taxes and 
creates employment. Senegalese authorities are aware that 
cigarettes constitute a health hazard, but they turn a blind eye 
to the massive sale of cigarettes by beautiful girls like Yaya 
during conferences, or football matches.

    Tobacco smoking advertising has gone down considerably in 
Senegal over the last decade, but like in many other African 
countries the rate of smoking keeps on rising.

    African tobacco exporting countries cannot wage a viable 
anti-tobacco campaign because the crop earns them badly needed 
foreign currency.

    Hamstrung by tough anti-smoking regulations in the 
industrialised West, multinational cigarette companies have 
turned to the African region as a last resort for their earnings.

    They use several lies to dupe African governments into 
allowing their continued operations and crafty advertisement to 
attract youngsters to begin "puffing." Without realising it, they 
became nicotine addicts hooked to the cigarette for life.

    The Paris-based International Non Governmental Coalition 
Against Tobacco (INGCAT) put it bluntly at a recent conference in 
that the African region "is now the target for profit 
accumulation by the tobacco industry."

    INGCAT's co-ordinator, Dr Karen Slama, warned during the 
13th conference of the African Region of the International Union 
Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease or IUATLD in Conakry, 
Guinea, that "tobacco marketing is a vector for tobacco diseases" 
including cancer and tuberculosis.

    But what was more alarming in her presentation during the 
24-27 May conference was the revelation that Africa's increase of 
3.2 percent per year in tobacco consumption was "the highest in 
the world."

    This consumption is rising dramatically particularly among 
15-year olds.

    Slama provided startling statistics showing smoking 
prevalence rates among 15-year old Algerian males at 53 percent 
and 10 percent for females.

    South Africa's rates were 52 percent for males and 17 
percent among young females while Mauritania's stood at 47 
percent and 4 percent for the two sexes, respectively.

    The figure for Swaziland was 38 percent for males and 8 
percent for females while Nigeria's stood at 24 percent for males 
and 7 percent for females.

    At the Conakry conference, Slama cited an article published 
by the London Times newspaper 15 May as being part of the 
strategy being employed by tobacco companies to maintain their 
grip on the African market.

    The article alleged that tobacco smoking causes 
"non-infectious diseases (which) pose individual but not public 
health risks."

    It purported that tobacco-use-related diseases "do not 
require the same degree of international co-ordination as the 
fight against contagious epidemics," including malaria and AIDS.

    But, in a note to PANA ahead of Wednesday's No Smoking Day, 
Slama affirmed: "This is a tobacco industry lie, but it is not 
true. Tobacco is a public health problem expected to cause 450 
million deaths over the next 50 years."

    She also cited a 1988 letter from British American
Tobacco (BAT) to the Ugandan health ministry, saying it did not 
believe "cigarette smoking is harmful to health."

    She produced a 1990 BAT internal document, which said: "We 
should not be depressed simply because the total free world 
markets appear to be declining. Within the total market, there 
are areas of strong growth particularly in Asia and Africa."

    In 1998, Rothman's representative said in Burkina Faso that 
"the average life expectancy here is 40 years, infant mortality 
is high, the health problems which some say are caused by 
cigarettes just won't be a problem here."

    Denouncing the misinformation, Slama told the conference 
that tobacco was an "urgent problem for Africa today." Some 
90,000 deaths were attributed to tobacco in Africa 10 years ago. 
Tobacco use caused one in 20 adult deaths a decade ago or one in 
every 84 deaths.

    To curb further tobacco-related deaths, the IUATLD calls 
for total ban on tobacco promotions, advertisement and 
sponsorships, disclosure of product development and high taxation 
to make it out of reach to the majority.

    It also calls for restrictions to smoking in public places 
to protect the population from "the health consequences of 
involuntary exposure to others' smoking."

    Many African governments cannot afford to do away with 
tobacco use because this brings in money. However, it would be 
ethical if all smokers are clearly informed that their activity 
can lead to cancer or tuberculosis.