[Intl-tobacco] Tobacco industry hurts mainly the poor: WHO

[robert.weissman@essentialinformation.org]

Tobacco industry hurts mainly the poor: WHO
AFP
May 23, 2004

MANILA  - The poor are the biggest victims of the tobacco industry, spending
the money they desperately need for necessities on something that endangers
their health, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned.  In a report
released ahead of World No Tobacco Day on May 31, the WHO said studies found
that the poor tend to smoke the most. Of the estimated 1.3 billion smokers
worldwide, 84 percent live in developing countries.

Even in developed countries, it is the lower classes who consume the most
tobacco and who bear most of the economic and health burden of smoking, the
report entitled "A Vicious Cycle" said.  It cited a study showing that the
highest rate of smoking prevalence in Madras, India was found among
illiterate men while another study found that the poorest households in
Bangladesh spend almost 10 times more on tobacco than they do on education.

A study in three provinces in Vietnam found that smokers spend 3.6 times
more on tobacco than they do on education, 2.5 times more than they do on
clothes and 1.9 times more than they spend on health care.  Poor rural
households in southwest China spend over 11 percent of their total
expenditure on cigarettes while in Indonesia, the lowest income group spends
15 percent of total expenditure on tobacco, the WHO added.

While growing tobacco is suppose to help farmers, the WHO charged that
small-scale tobacco farmers were barely making a living and that tobacco
cultivation placed workers at risk of injury and illness.  It cited the
danger of green tobacco sickness: the absorption of nicotine through the
skin from wet tobacco leaves, causing nausea, vomitting and even
fluctuations in blood pressure and heart rates.

The use of pesticides to protect tobacco plants also brought illnesses to
growers, the WHO said.  It charged tobacco companies of often operating on a
contract system where they provide seeds and agricultural inputs to farmers
who are then obliged to sell their produce at set prices. This leaves
farmers helpless, and forced to accept whatever prices are offered to them.
Even the countries that grow tobacco are harmed more than they are helped by
the product due to high health care costs and lowered productivity, the WHO
said.

It warned that China suffered 6.5 billion dollars a year in direct and
indirect costs of smoking and said that this figure was "sure to skyrocket,"
with an estimated three million people in China expected to die from smoking
by the middle of this century.

Tobacco imports resulted in foreign exchange losses for many countries and
the cultivation of tobacco -- including the burning of wood to cure tobacco,
resulted in the deforestation of 200,000 hectares (494,000 acres) of
woodlands each year, the WHO charged.  The WHO argued that if tobacco
consumption ceased, people could spend money on more useful things. The
slowdown on the industry would also have minimal harmful effects on farming
and labor.

The organization endorsed stronger controls on the tobacco industry, saying
that "tobacco control, rather than being a luxury that only rich nations can
afford, is now a necessity that all countries must address."