A World Safe for Big Tobacco

Tobacco is now killing 4.9 million people a year. At this rate, WHO figures the premature death toll will reach 10 million a year within a generation -- with 70 percent of the deaths in developing countries. And unlike AIDS or even SARS, this disease doesn't come from a virus, it comes from an industry. An industry that contributed about $6.4 million to the 2002 campaign chests of Republicans.

THE WAY I figure it, this is a time when our government might inhale deeply and pause for a bit of multilateral fence-mending. I don't expect Donald Rumsfeld to sing 'Kumbaya' in a Parisian cafe with Jacques Chirac. But couldn't we make common cause with the rest of the world in pursuit of an international killer, a globally certified bad guy? Like, say, the Marlboro Man?

The World Health Organization has spent three years hammering out an agreement with 171 countries to prevent the spread of smoking-related diseases, especially in the developing world. The convention, due to be adopted May 19, would ban advertising except where a ban conflicted with national laws, put a hefty tax on tobacco products, and require warning labels on cigarette packages.

But instead of applauding the public health measures, the United States went on a tear. A tearing-up-treaties tear.

The same administration that refused to sign on to a global warming agreement, opted out of an international criminal court, rejected a treaty on women's rights, and even one against cloning, has capped its reputation by trying to undermine the antitobacco agreement.

It not only opposed the taxes, the labels, and even the minimum age of 18 for sales to minors. It went into high and highly dubious dudgeon at the carefully circumscribed ban on advertising and marketing, on the grounds that it limited the 'free speech' of corporations.

Judy Wilkenfeld of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, who was at the WHO meetings, observed, 'We were more concerned with the rights of Philip Morris to export tobacco than with world health. We sought to weaken every position.'

Now, our government says it won't sign unless there's a new clause letting any country opt out of any provision it doesn't like. Unless, in short, it's a treaty without a tooth.

Unilateralism gone haywire? Actually, we're not wholly alone; the Dominican Republic is on our side. But this coalition of the unwilling isn't doing wonders for our world reputation.

Remember back in the 1980s when we first embarked on a Philip Morris Foreign Policy? We forced open world markets to our tobacco with some strong-arm trade negotiations and such global citizens as Jesse Helms. Today, America is the largest exporter of tobacco and tobacco-related diseases.

Smoking is on the decline here, but it's on the rise from Eastern Europe to Asia. Philip Morris now makes more money abroad than at home. 'Their market is overseas,' says Wilkenfeld, 'This is the market they're all salivating over.'

Tobacco is now killing 4.9 million people a year. At this rate, WHO figures the premature death toll will reach 10 million a year within a generation -- with 70 percent of the deaths in developing countries. And unlike AIDS or even SARS, this disease doesn't come from a virus, it comes from an industry. An industry that contributed about $6.4 million to the 2002 campaign chests of Republicans.

Let me be fair to Big Tobacco. From time to time, it does care about the world. Just two years ago, Philip Morris, which sells 80 percent of the smokes in the Czech Republic, commissioned a study showing that cigarettes shortened lives by an average of 4.3 years. They bragged (seriously) that tobacco deaths actually saved the Czech government $30 million a year in pensions, housing, and health care for the elderly.

Somehow or other public health organizations didn't chalk this up under foreign assistance.

'We used to think the major export of the United States to developing countries was technology for health or farming,' says the University of Michigan's Ken Warner, 'Now our contribution to the rest of the world is lung cancer.'

Americans are fighting tobacco addiction at home while our government is supporting it abroad. In fact, the administration thinks tobacco companies should be allowed to market overseas in ways that are prohibited here -- from free samples to sponsorship of youth events.

As Wilkenfeld says, 'we should be exporting tobacco control measures and not tobacco, a product that when used as directed kills.'

Over decades, our country has spent wisely on international health. Just this week, the administration urged Congress to pass a $15 billion plan to fight AIDS. 'When we see a plague leaving graves and orphans across a continent,' President Bush said, 'we must act.'

All over the globe, we've built good health and good will simultaneously. But when it comes to tobacco, we are standing outside the world community like a nicotine junkie on a city sidewalk, huffing and puffing away.

Source: Boston Globe
Sunday, May 4, 2003, Page H11
By Ellen Goodman

Ellen Goodman's e-mail address is ellengoodman@globe.com.