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Activity 11, The Tobacco Habit: Marketing and Morality

Laws banning smoking in public places.  Tougher restrictions on advertising-especially advertising aimed at children.  Lawsuits asking millions of dollars in damages.  Leaks of documents showing the tobacco companies knew of smoking's harmful effects while denying those effects publicly.  These are just some of the problems facing tobacco companies in the United States in recent years.

Are the giant multinational tobacco companies in financial danger?  Probably not, because cigarette use is growing in Asia, Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and in the former Soviet Union.  In Asia alone, the world Health Organization estimated at the beginning of the 1990s that smoking would increase by one-third during the decade.

The Asian Market

In many Asian countries, smoking is fashionable.  And, Asian smokers seem to be susceptible to glitzy advertising campaigns.  Smoking American or European cigarettes is seen as "cool."  According to The New York Times article (Shenon, 1994), "No gift is more appreciated in Vietnam than British-made ‘555' cigarettes.  In China, the choice is Marlboro.  Among the gentry of Thailand, it is Dunhill."  Rates of smoking are extremely high among Asian men-60 percent in Japan and China, for examples, and a whopping 73 percent in Vietnam (Pollack, 1997).

While some Asian governments have followed the lead of Western nations and banned tobacco advertising on television and radio, the tobacco companies find ways to get their message to the people-at sporting events, for example, or through clothing that sports cigarette logos.  In Japan, the tobacco industry-the Japanese company which has a monopoly in local production of cigarettes and four multinational tobacco companies-has voluntarily developed new, tough advertising standards effective April 1, 1998.  These standards are designed to control smoking by young people (Trends in Japan, 1998).  In strict Singapore, anti-smoking laws, such as laws against selling cigarettes to minors, carry heavy penalties.  Such laws indicate that anti-smoking attitudes of Western countries are finding their way to some Asian countries.

China is an especially attractive market to the multinationals because it has a huge population (1.2 billion people) and a growing economy.  The number of smokers in China is greater than the population of the United States (Shenon, 1994).  Other market groups targeted by the tobacco companies are Asian women and young people.  While adult males have been the most common smokers in Asia, advertising aimed particularly at women and young people seeks to change that.  Increasing numbers of Asian women see smoking as a sign of their liberation (Pollack, 1997).  In Vietnam, the number has reached as high as 34 percent of women, although 10 percent or less are more common figures across Asia.

The multinational tobacco companies say that they are not trying to get nonsmokers in Asia to start smoking.  Instead, they say, they are trying to get Asian people who already smoke to change brands.  The evidence suggests otherwise, however.  In Hong Kong, very few women smoke.  Thus, if companies are not interested in creating new smokers, Hong Kong would not appear to be a good market for a cigarette brand aimed at women.

Yet Philip Morris introduced their Virginia Slims brand aimed specifically at women in Hong Kong a few years ago (Shannon, 1994).

Under the Bush Administration particularly, the US government pushed for agreements that allow free trade in cigarettes, thus ensuring that Asian countries would be open markets for American-based tobacco companies.  The 1993 annual report of R. J. Reynolds Tobacco claimed that "Today, Reynolds has access to 90 percent of the world's markets, a decade ago, only 40 percent."  Clearly, trade negotiators' efforts to support the American tobacco industry have been successful.

Health Effects

Physicians and scientists are concerned about how increased smoking will affect the health of the Asian people.  One scientist estimates that "because of increasing tobacco consumption in Asia, the annual worldwide death toll from tobacco-related illnesses will more than triple over the next two or three decades, from about 3 million a year to 10 million a year, a fifth of them in China.  His calculations suggest that 50 million Chinese children alive today will eventually die from diseases linked to cigarette smoking." (Shenon, 1994).

The Japanese Ministry of Health included in its White Paper for 1997 a section linking smoking and lung cancer; it also discussed the dangers of passive smoke.  This marked the first time a section on smoking appeared in the Ministry's annual report (Trends in Japan, 1998).  In previous years, the ministry had tried to include such a section but had been overruled by the more powerful Ministry of Finance, which represents the interests of the tobacco industry (note that the Japanese government owns a major share of Japan Tobacco).  (Pollack, 1997).

Pollack, Andres, "Overseas, Smoking is One of Life's Small Pleasures, "New York Times, (August 17, 1997)
Shenon, Philip, "Asia's Having One Huge Nicotine Fit," New York Times, (May 15, 1994 pp. 1, 16-17)
"Trends in Japan: Cigarette Ads," Japan Now (January 1998), p.6

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