[920] in peace2
Tobacco Targets Teens Abroad
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Felix F AuYeung)
Sun Aug 26 16:05:19 2001
To: peace-list@mit.edu
Date: Sun, 26 Aug 2001 15:57:37 -0400
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From: Felix F AuYeung <felixauyeung@juno.com>
Tobacco Lures World's Teens
Greg Winter
New York Times Service
Saturday, August 25, 2001
Free Cigarettes Find Their Way to Underage Smokers
Sara Bogdani had just turned 17 last summer when she slipped into a short
skirt and started working as a Marlboro girl.
.
While the rest of her high school friends spent their vacations laboring
in restaurants or lounging at home, Sara donned a red hat, a T-shirt with
a cowboy on the back and a knapsack full of Marlboros and other Philip
Morris cigarettes.
.
Then she hit the streets of her hometown, Tirana, the capital of Albania,
offering a smile and a free pack to anyone who professed a love of
smoking and looked, well, almost as old as she was.
.
"As long as they weren't 14 or something, it was O.K.," Sara said by
telephone, noting that a co-worker was also 17. As for her bosses, "they
were just glad if you gave out all the cigarettes," she said.
.
Just as it is in the United States, giving cigarettes to teenagers is
illegal in many countries, including Albania. But while the practice has
all but disappeared in America, it goes on in many developing nations,
and Philip Morris is not the only tobacco company that the World Health
Organization has accused of enticing teenagers with free cigarettes.
.
"This is the right time for the tobacco industry to seduce children
overseas," said Vera da Costa e Silva, director of the United Nations
agency's tobacco program, which is documenting the distribution of
cigarettes to smokers under age 18 by Philip Morris and its European
competitors. "They are looking to increase the number of smokers in
developing countries and elsewhere abroad because in the United States
they are losing their market."
.
Sugar and honey can be found in some cigarettes that British American
Tobacco sells in the South Pacific. Health officials contend that the
ingredients are added to lure teenagers who might otherwise dislike the
acrid taste of cigarettes.
.
BAT denies the allegation, saying there is not enough of the additives to
soften the harshness of smoking. But old internal documents from its
American subsidiary, Brown Williamson, point out that "it is a well-known
fact that teenagers like sweet products. Honey might be considered."
.
Local tobacco companies are sometimes more overt than the global
cigarette makers, health officials say. Members of India's Parliament
criticized Indian Tobacco Co. in 1997 for inviting teenagers to a debut
party for one of its brands. Parliament members complained that the teens
smoked, drank alcohol and posed in advertisements for the cigarettes.
.
A new study by WHO and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention questioned students between 13 and 15 years old in 68
countries and found that roughly 11 percent in Latin America and the
Caribbean had been offered free cigarettes in 1999 and 2000. In Russia,
nearly 17 percent of the teenagers questioned said that they had been
given free cigarettes. In Jordan, the figure was 25 percent.
.
The chief executive of Philip Morris, the only American tobacco company
that directly sells and promotes its own cigarettes overseas, pledged
three years ago to follow the same rules abroad that it does in the
United States - which now bar handing out free cigarettes to anyone, much
less to minors.
.
But while health officials and attorneys general give Philip Morris high
marks for curtailing its marketing to American youths since a settlement
of state lawsuits in 1998, they rarely say the same about its promotions
overseas.
.
Outside the United States, the social and political taboo against
underage smoking is usually far weaker. Nor is there an army of state
officials, lawyers and anti-smoking advocates trying to keep tabs on
nearly everything tobacco companies do.
.
Health officials in many countries contend that the way Philip Morris
products are promoted overseas often places cigarettes directly in the
hands of young people.
.
"As we start to squeeze them here in terms of not selling to children,
they need replacement smokers," said Mohammed Akhter, executive director
of the American Public Health Association. "They're finding these
substitute smokers in the Third World."
.
Philip Morris has long recognized that distributing free cigarettes is a
risky proposition. In 1995, well before the tobacco settlement limited
the practice to nightclubs and other adult-only settings in the United
States, Philip Morris stopped giving free samples to Americans,
specifically because it was too hard to prevent children or young
teenagers from getting them.
.
Even so, Philip Morris said, it has continued to hand out some samples
abroad. Executives acknowledged that Geoffrey Bible, the company's chief
executive, told them in 1998 to eliminate the discrepancies between their
marketing at home and abroad, hoping to dispel accusations that Philip
Morris solicited teenage smokers. But they characterized his instructions
as a "vision" of what the company should do, not a proclamation of any
formal new policy.
.
Where it does pass out free samples, Philip Morris said, it has strict
rules against giving tobacco to minors.
.
Still, company executives said, Philip Morris is a large enterprise,
sprawling across dozens of countries. It exports more than 60 percent of
the nearly 1.1 trillion cigarettes that it sells every year.
.
"I'm not telling you that our policy is 100 percent respected around the
world," said Remi Calvert of Philip Morris's international division. "It
should be, but we're not perfect."
.
Meanwhile, the Marlboro girls, dressed to raise eyebrows and plying
crowds at concerts and trendy cafés, are familiar sights across the
globe.
.
Teenagers may not be their intended audience. But youngsters are no
strangers to the free samples.
.
"I got a pack," said Hachimou Isaka, a 15-year-old in Niamey, Niger,
where giving tobacco to minors is prohibited. Through a radio contest
last April, Hachimou won tickets to a concert that Philip Morris
sponsored in a 30,000-seat arena, the biggest in the country.
.
To his great delight, Hachimou said, girls only slightly older than he
doled out packs of Bond Street, one of Philip Morris's overseas brands,
along with hats and T-shirts, to thousands of fans.
.
"There were a lot of kids - so many that I couldn't count," Hachimou
said, estimating that some were as young as 10.
.
" I would go again," he said. "I love smoking. I love cigarettes."
