[Intl-tobacco] Health care costs turn Mexico against tobacco

[Robert Weissman]

Health care costs turn Mexico against tobacco
Source: Knight-Ridder Newspapers, 2002-05-29, via tobacco.org
http://www.spokesmanreview.com/news-story.asp?date=052902&ID=s1155936

May 29, 2002

Knight Ridder

MEXICO CITY -- The government of this nation of die-hard smokers is
having a change of heart about tobacco.

For Alan Davis, a frequent business visitor from Santa Barbara,
Calif., it can't happen soon enough. "My clothes stink, my hair
stinks" from Mexican cigarette smoke, Davis complained recently. "I
always feel nauseated."

But Mexicans, like Americans, are withdrawing from tobacco exposure
in stages.

Five years ago 90 percent of the Mexican tobacco industry's
advertising was geared to television. Now, cigarette companies
don't advertise on TV before 10 p.m.

This year Mexico's Congress socked tobacco firms with hefty taxes
meant to make cigarettes too expensive for teenagers. Now it is
debating a ban on tobacco advertising on radio, television and the
Internet. It also would prevent tobacco companies from sponsoring
golf, Formula One auto racing and other sports events.

The Mexican government's main motivation is the rising cost of
health care. Smoking-related illnesses account for 17 percent of
the costs in Mexico's public-health system, according to Dr. Guido
Belsasso, who's in charge of Mexico's national drug, alcohol and
nicotine treatment programs.

The tobacco industry has tried to be accommodating. Faced with
anti-smoking pressure, it volunteered to limit cigarette
advertising on TV to late at night. Now it is offering to end
television and radio advertising, starting this fall.

More than 13 million Mexicans smoke. But a Philip Morris spokesman
says cigarette sales are falling. Since 1985, sales have dropped
from 54 billion cigarettes a year to 49 billion. In the same
period, Mexico's population increased from 60 million to 100
million.

The market that officials would most like to curb is among the
roughly 1 million Mexicans each year who reach smoking age.

"We recognize that the most preventable cause of death in the world
is called tobacco," said Belsasso, the anti-addiction czar. He
wants Mexico to follow Canada's shock ad campaigns aimed at the
young, with materials in cigarette packages depicting sick babies
and dying cancer patients. He concedes it is an uphill battle
because of strong lobbying by the tobacco industry.

"For every peso invested in anti-tobacco campaigns, the tobacco
industry invests 500," said Guadalupe Ponciano, head of a
medical-school tobacco clinic at the National Autonomous University
of Mexico, Latin America's largest public university.

"This is a very uneven fight."

Ponciano accused the tobacco industry of marketing to minors with
slick slip-on covers for cigarette packs that teenagers collect and
trade. Tobacco makers also have placed collectible cards in
cigarette packs.