[Intl-tobacco] Stubbing Out Cigarette Addiction (fwd)

[Robert Weissman]

Stubbing Out Cigarette Addiction
by Simeon Kerr / (Tue, 05 Sep 2000 08:07:12)
Source: ecountries.com, Tuesday, 9/5/00

Egyptians love to smoke. Which is great for tobacco firms. But a growing
anti-smoking campaign could make them have to work just that little bit
harder.

For the world's tobacco giants, the Middle East - and Egypt in particular
- is a bottomless ashtray. Like the rest of the developing world, Egypt's
cigarette sales are skyrocketing. Smoking is engrained in Middle Eastern
culture, no more so than in Egypt, from the traditional water pipe, the
shisha, to the mandatory accessory of every upwardly mobile Cairene, the
Marlboro red. But the wind has turned. An anti-smoking campaign, run by
the government and various health groups, has stepped up a gear.

Egypt is a far cry from bastions of healthy living like San Francisco and
Singapore. Wherever you turn, someone is lighting up; smoking is a right,
not a privilege. But there has always been one famous refuge from the
smoke: the Cairo Metro, an oasis of clean air (and efficiency) in a highly
polluted (not to mention chaotic) city. Fines for smoking on the metro are
vigorously enforced; at $15, they are the equivalent of two to three days
work for the average Egyptian - very effective. Now the trend is
spreading. Cairo University has banned smoking on its premises; Cairo
Airport has now introduced smoking areas; and the Health Ministry plans to
hire and promote non-smokers at the expense of their smoking peers. Modest
measures, perhaps, but something of a revolution in Cairo.

Tobacco multinationals and their local partners, however, are crying all
the way to the bank. The multinationals' strategy, which targets
developing countries where smoking is still cool, applies to the Middle
East more than most. The market remains huge: smokers will consume 80bn
cigarettes this year.  Official figures claim that 40% of males and 8% of
women smoke. Smoking sales rose throughout the 1990s at a rate of 24% in
the Middle East. Compare that with the other hooked continent, Asia, where
sales rose around 9%. Moreover, Egypt's economic revival has boosted the
ranks of the country's elite, the real spenders, who luckily smoke
foreign, "sophisticated" brands. Newly privatized Eastern Tobacco produces
such brands locally - principally Marlboro and Merit.  And profits are
rising: Eastern Tobacco's 1999 profits were up 67% on 1998 levels. With
demand rising, and the middle-income groups perhaps upgrading their brand
from the lower-class staple, the Cleopatra, to cheaper western smokes like
L and M, opportunities for cigarette manufacturing are tempting.

But the tobacco firms will have to keep an eye on the growing anti-smoking
campaign in Egypt. These firms have faced three terrible years in the
United States, facing potentially crippling lawsuits and expensive
out-of-court settlements. Now Egyptian health groups want to ban tobacco
advertising, which has recently been targeting the key growth area, sales
to women. The government may receive 3% of its tax revenue from cigarette
sales, but smoking-related deaths are rising rapidly, prompting the health
ministry to back the campaign to the hilt.

Backing up the official assault, Islamic scholars are coming down on
smoking.  Islam's ban on alcohol has traditionally fostered smoking - of
both legal and illegal varieties - in the Islamic world. But an Islamic
consensus against smoking based on the Quranic injunction against acts
that are bad for one's health is now consolidating. "Do not kill yourself,
Allah is merciful to you,"  goes one famous verse. The highest Islamic
authority in Egypt, the Grand Mufti, has followed Malaysia's lead and
ruled that smoking is haram (forbidden), and that women can divorce men
who refuse to give up. For a God-fearing people, an act against God is
more worrying than a small warning on a pack of Marlboro.  Still, as most
Egyptians point out, cigarettes and shisha are part of daily life; and the
pain of nicotine withdrawal is hard to ignore, even for the most serious
Muslim.