Big Tobacco Laughs All the Way to the Bank As Filipinos Die of Smoking

Source from:  InterAksyon.com 05/26/2014

A report indicating the extent of a multinational tobacco company's profits in Asia should prod the Philippine government to stop the cigarette industry from raking in big money at the expense of public health, an advocate for tobacco victims said Sunday.

Emer Rojas, president of New Vois Association of the Philippines, pointed to the recent report of Bangkok-based Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance (SEATCA) showing Asia has become Philip Morris International's virtual "cash cow," accounting for 34.3 percent or $10.5 billion of the firm's $31-billion net revenue in 2013.

"The SEATCA report showed PMI sold 880 billion sticks of which 301 billion were shipped in Asia where majority of its patrons are from low-income families. Four countries—Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines were identified as the company's targets in peddling its deadly product. With 10 Filipinos, mostly poor, dying of smoking every hour—these factors should be reasons enough for our solons to make a stand and protect the people's health," said Rojas, whose New Vois group represents victims of tobacco.
Rojas added the tobacco industry's earnings in developing countries like the Philippines are plowed back to their foreign headquarters and do little to help local stakeholders like tobacco farmers, who remain poor.

"The industry earns by making us sick of the different diseases associated with smoking. It makes our children nicotine addicts. It steals breadwinners from families through premature death and it burdens our health system because we have to treat smokers who have gone sick," he added.

Rojas, a cancer survivor and a former smoker, said the Philippines still lags behind its neighbors in tobacco control because Congress is too slow to pass laws that will deter consumption.

He singled out the bill on graphic health warnings which has failed to pass in the 14th and 15th Congress. The amended sin tax, for example, took almost 30 years before becoming into law in 2013.

"I hope our lawmakers would realize some people are earning by getting our people sick with irreversible diseases like cancer and emphysema. Get angry that while the tobacco industry rakes in huge profits, taxpayers' money has to fund treatment for smokers."
Health advocates like the NVAP are supporting Senate Bill Nos. 27 and 499 authored by Senator Pia Cayetano and Senate President Franklin Drilon, repectively. The bills call for full-color graphic health warnings on tobacco packs that will carry images concerning the harmful effects of smoking. The two measures also seek to complement the sin tax law, which complies with the World Health Organization policy encouraging higher taxes and graphic health warnings as the most effective ways to curb smoking.

"We've seen by experience that text-only warnings are ineffective to stop Filipinos, especially many young ones, from taking up smoking. Based on studies, if labels portrayed with pictures the real effects of smoking, non-smokers shall think twice before starting the deadly addiction and current smokers shall reduce their consumption," said Rojas.

Rojas noted that countries that imposed graphic health warnings have seen dramatic changes in tobacco consumption and were able to encourage would-be smokers not to take up the habit. Enditem