[Intl-tobacco] SF Chronicle: America's Deadly Export

[Robert Weissman]

America=B4s deadly export - San Francisco Chronicle

Wednesday, October 23, 2002

David Lazarus, Chronicle Staff Writer

I don=B4t see why President Bush is in such a hurry to do some damage
overseas. If he=B4d just wait a while, America=B4s cigarette industry will
do it for him.

Marlboro maker Philip Morris made that clear the other day when it
reported that international cigarette sales in the most recent quarter
jumped 2.3 percent. They would have been even higher if shipments to
Japan hadn=B4t been interrupted by the West Coast port lockout.

Despite weakness in domestic smoke sales -- not to mention the
ever-present threat of litigation -- tobacco stocks are surging once
again after Philip Morris said robust overseas sales were a big factor
in helping the company=B4s profit nearly double.

You=B4ve got to hand it to Wall Street. An industry says it=B4s succeeding
wildly at poisoning customers worldwide, and investors say, "Gimme some
of that action."

"Marlboro is the quintessential premium brand," Morgan Stanley analyst
David Adelman told me. "Philip Morris is gaining ground in all markets
where they operate."

Which is pretty much all of them. And if the company can=B4t bring in
U.S.- made smokes by the truckload, it looks at local production.

Earlier this month, Philip Morris became the first foreign tobacco
company to begin cigarette output in South Korea, the eighth-largest
cigarette market worldwide, where more than a quarter of the population
is addicted to nicotine.

North Korean nukes? We=B4ll show that pesky Kim Jong Il how to really get
people breathing hard on the Korean Peninsula.

Philip Morris also said that it=B4s keen to purchase Serbia=B4s largest
tobacco plant when it gets privatized next year. The company should feel
right at home in the Balkans, where killing off local residents has been
something of a pastime for years.

I know I sound cranky on this issue. But it never ceases to amaze me how
an industry that massacres its customers so freely -- 5 million deaths a
year, according to the World Health Organization -- can profit so
handsomely from trafficking in a deadly, highly addictive drug.

That profit, of course, translates into political muscle, which makes
money- hungry government officials, especially in developing nations,
complicit in the chemical enslavement and wholesale slaughter of their
citizens.

"In all parts of the world except sub-Saharan Africa, where you have an
AIDS epidemic, tobacco has surpassed infectious diseases as the leading
cause of death," said Stan Glantz, a professor of medicine at UCSF and a
longtime anti-smoking crusader.

According to the WHO, more than 15 billion cigarettes are smoked
worldwide every single day. In the United States, Canada, Britain,
France, Germany and Russia, the average smoker consumes between 1,500
and 2,499 cigarettes annually.

Each Japanese smoker puffs down 2,500 or more cigarettes a year. And the
Chinese, not surprisingly for anyone who has ever visited that
tobacco-happy country, account for about a third of all cigarettes
consumed worldwide.

On the economic front, the WHO says smoking accounts for $76 billion of
annual health care costs in the United States, $15 billion in Germany
and $3.5 billion in China. Fires caused by smoking cause more than $27
billion in damage every year worldwide and kill hundreds of thousands.

The United States is the largest exporter of cigarettes, accounting for
almost 20 percent of the global total. Japan is the largest importer.

So am I advocating complete prohibition of tobacco? Much as I=B4d like
that to be the case, I accept that people have a right to slowly kill
themselves if that=B4s their choice. (But they have to keep it to
themselves -- no secondhand smoke, thank you very much.)

Governments, however, do not have to make this exercise in mass suicide
so easy. New York was on the right track when it imposed a severe
anti-tobacco tax this summer.

Statistics released last week show that the tax, which raised the city=B4s
levy on cigarette packs from 8 cents to $1.50, resulted in a 64 percent
plunge in sales in September. Mayor Michael Bloomberg is now pressing
ahead with even tougher smoking restrictions.

Shamefully, California lawmakers chickened out when it came to jacking
up the price of smokes in this state. Assembly Speaker Herb Wesson,
D-Los Angeles, had sought to raise the tax on cigarettes to $3 a pack --
the highest in the nation.

"Either people quit smoking, which is good for everyone, or their habits
help us balance our budget," he said.

Ultimately, though, politics (and industry lobbying) got in the way of
this high-minded approach to both fiscal prudence and public health, and
the tax measure was voted down.

Tobacco foes like Glantz took the outcome poorly. "Those tax increases
would have created a lot of revenue and had a substantial impact on
usage," he said.

"The governor and the Legislature are completely out of step with the
public on this," Glantz added.

That would be the American public, which is gradually waking up to the
dangers of tobacco. Domestic consumption of cigarettes has declined by
7.5 percent since 1998, according to the University of Tennessee=B4s
Agricultural Policy Analysis Center.

As for the rest of the world, America=B4s message is this: Let =B4em eat
Marlboros.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=3D/chronicle/archive/2002/10=
/23/BU144331.DTL