UN Health Org Fights Back as Tobacco Companies Target Asian Women

by Ranjit Dev Raj

Kicking off the four-day WHO International Conference on Tobacco and Health, Director-General Gro Harlem Brundtland said the cigarette is the only freely available consumer product which kills the consumer.

"Four million people die annually from this man-made public disaster and this figure will increase to 10 million by 2030 and 70 percent of tobacco-related deaths will occur in the developing countries," Brundtland said.

Traditional notions linking tobacco use to ideas of masculinity have served to keep smoking rates low among Asian women. But thanks to slick advertising campaigns, the Asian woman has indeed come a long way.

"As Asian women become more affluent and as the tobacco industry increasingly targets Asian women with messages equating smoking with equality and slimness we will experience a female smoking crisis unless we act now to prevent it," Brundtland said.

Evidence corroborating Brundtland's prognosis was available in a new study released at the conference showing startling changes in smoking patterns among Japanese women, especially teenaged girls.

The rise among Japanese women in the 20-29 age group is even more remarkable with 23.2 percent admitting to smoking compared to only 10.5 percent in 1986.

"Once a woman has started to smoke there are many factors which may make it more difficult for her to quit than a man," said Yumiko Mochikuzi who led the study.

The Kobe conference examined those factors in depth but will also highlight the urgent need to pinpoint the smoking take up maintenance and cessation factors unique to women.

Kobe, and indeed other parts of Japan, are splattered with advertisements calling on young Japanese women to assert themselves, shed their inhibitions and smoke.

Advertisements appearing in the U.S., but having a potential impact around the world, have shown glossy images of minority women -- including a geisha -- smoking a brand targeted at women smokers.

Japan has some of the world's highest smoking rates in the industrialized world, with 33 million smokers below 20 years of age. Economic costs from tobacco-related problems amount to $52 billion a year, with lung cancer a leading cause of death.

Brundtland said the conference, for which 500 of the world's top public health experts gathered, has set itself the task of preventing Asian women's smoking rates ballooning to those among women in European and North American countries.

At present six percent of women in China smoke but if rates went up to those now seen in Japan it would mean 40 million new smokers in that country alone -- good news for the tobacco industry.

It would seem that Asian women were so far resistant to smoking because it was somehow associated with promiscuity but tobacco companies have resorted to ingenious marketing through media, fashion and entertainment channels to change all that.

Other socio-cultural factors such as disposable incomes and the perception that cigarettes are both a fashion accessory and an aid to weight-control could now lead to an explosion in smoking rates among Asian women, WHO experts said.

The future growth markets for tobacco lie with women in industrialized countries and with young people in developing countries which have rapid economic development, Brundtland said, adding that Asian women can lead the global battle against tobacco.

To that end, the conference will find ways of bridging the gap between tobacco and women's rights and placing the agenda centrally within women's movements.

If history is anything to go by the implications of these dynamics could be catastrophic: in countries such as Denmark, Germany and the U.S more teenaged women now smoke than young men in the same age-group.

Yach said the time has now come to stop wasting time with education against smoking and start working on the behavior and functioning of the tobacco industry itself.

So insidious has the tobacco industry been that Brundtland called last month for an inquiry into the nature and extent of the undue influence which the tobacco industry wields within the UN organizations.

While the full extent of the negative impact within the UN is not yet known, an initial analysis shows clear efforts to prevent implementation of health public policy and efforts to reduce funding of tobacco control while safeguarding the industry's interests.

WHO's battle does not end with the tobacco companies because many governments are themselves addicted to huge revenues that come from growing, processing and marketing tobacco.

But Brundtland pointed to how France has already showed the way by drastically reducing dependence on excise revenues from tobacco. "It is a matter of political will," she said.

The chief weapon in WHO's armory is the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control modelled on trade and arms limitation treaties and which, if everything goes according to plan, could get implemented in three years from now.

"It is about time we had a global set of binding rules devoted entirely to health," she said.

"It seems right that this public health endeavor be devoted to tobacco, which, in the first half of the next century will kill more people than malaria, maternal and major childhood conditions and tuberculosis combined."

Brundtland described the Convention as "both a process and a product." WHO plans to identify all areas of governance needed to activate the world against the weed.

Other WHO weapons include taxes on tobacco. Already the World Bank has come out with a study which shows that raising taxes brings down consumption while enriching state coffers.

The Bank says a 10 percent increase in cigarette taxes in China would cut consumption 5 percent and increase revenue by 5 percent.

The hike in revenues would be sufficient to finance a package of essential health services for a third of China's poorest 100 million citizens, the World Bank report said.

Brundtland also promises a fair hearing for tobacco farmers.

WHO is already working with FAO to study the long-term impact of a global reduction tobacco demand.

WHO has also been pushing for a ban on advertising tobacco products. "Tobacco should not be advertised, glamorized or subsidized," Brundtland said.