Tobacco Firms Turn Focus to Developing Countries

Source from:  SF Gate 11/17/2010

Multinational tobacco companies, for years battered by politicians and lawyers in the United States and other developed nations, may have found an answer to their woes - emerging markets and developing countries. This week in Uruguay, the World Health Organization hosts the latest round of talks on global tobacco controls in meetings that are expected to draw hundreds of anti-tobacco activists, public health specialists and industry executives from around the world. For most of this year, journalists in six countries have documented the industry's moves into emerging markets around the world. Their inquiry, sponsored by the Washington, D.C.-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, has uncovered aggressive industry lobbying tactics from Moscow to Mexico City, including: -- Political campaign contributions, gifts and donations. -- Helping regulators write new tobacco rules and threatening legal action against reforms. Such efforts have delayed anti-smoking campaigns in some countries and derailed them entirely elsewhere. Earlier this year, Russia led talks on new tobacco rules for former Soviet countries. But the Russian version of tobacco controls was written by tobacco lobbyists, according to the industry on the website of Tabakprom, one of two Russian industry lobbying groups. A Philip Morris spokesman in Russia, Sergey Chernenko, acknowledged that company officials took part in the working group. "It is a natural democratic approach to legislation," Chernenko explained. Also critical to the tobacco industry is Mexico, where, despite a declining population of adult smokers, 57 percent of teenagers between 13 and 15 years old have smoked at least once. In Mexico this year, an estimated 60,000 people will die because of tobacco-related illnesses, making tobacco one of the nation's top killers. Mexico also is home to Carlos Slim, the world's richest man. Slim, who built his early wealth on sales of popular Mexican cigarette brands, first partnered with Philip Morris in 1997 and a decade later sold most of his tobacco holdings to the multinational company. Slim still owns 20 percent of the firm's Mexico operation and has a seat on the parent company's board of directors. In 2004, Slim participated in a private meeting with then-President Vicente Fox, according to a former government official who attended the meeting. After the meeting, the government announced a compromise in which the industry would help pay some costs of treating tobacco-related illness in Mexico - as long as the country put off new excise taxes on cigarettes. As they did in Mexico, tobacco companies and their allies have raised threats of legal action against governments to blunt the impact of tough new controls. Uruguay, for example, may end up in international court after Philip Morris warned the country to back away from plans for one of the world's toughest anti-tobacco laws that would require dire health warnings covering 80 percent of cigarette packaging, and limit tobacco companies to selling just one variation of each brand. To combat industry influence, the World Health Organization established rules barring company participation in writing standards in individual countries, and urged governments to more closely monitor industry lobbying. But in the rough-and-tumble world of politics in developing nation capitals, such controls can be tough to enact and tougher to enforce. The effect of the interference has been to slow and dilute reforms, said Derek Yach, former top assistant to the WHO director general and now head of PepsiCo's Global Health Initiative. "Incremental legislation is favored by the industry," Yach said. "And every tactic used by the industry in the past will be used again. They'll do so as long as they can get away with it." Enditem