Asia''s Promise May Evaporate unless Tobacco Companies (Part II)

Source from:  Tobacco Reporter  09/27/2013

Foreign intervention

The reminder about not smoking, in general, came at a bad time—a least for those people in areas of Malaysia then affected by the smoke from forest fires in Indonesia. They had little option but to breathe in the smoke from the fire but were warned not to smoke tobacco during the crisis. The deputy director of the Health Ministry's Disease Control Department, Zainal Ariffin Omar, said smokers would stand a higher chance of contracting smoke-related illnesses if they smoked while the smoke from the forest fire was present. Such a statement seems to raise a number of questions, but, luckily, none of them particularly relevant here.

In any case, Indonesia couldn't export all of its smoky prob-lems. In January, stories in the local press were describing how small cigarette factories in Indonesia were being driven to bank-ruptcy by an increase in clove prices. The increase was said to have been caused by a fall in production precipitated by heavy rain in the regions where clove plantations are located. Heavy rain was blamed, too, for destroying tobacco seedlings in Indonesia and causing farmers in Jember, East Java, to incur heavy losses. The head of the Kasturi Tobacco Farmers' Association was quoted as saying that as many as 600 farmers, cultivating 800 ha, had had to replant two or three times.

In fact, not only was Indonesia not exporting all of its tobacco problems, it was importing some. While in most parts of the world May 31 was marked as World No Tobacco Day, in Medan, North Sumatra, a number of activists supporting the Indonesian Kretek Community (KKI) staged a rally expressing their support for the nation's tobacco industry. Medan KKI coordinator Chaidir Harahap was reported as having said that World No Tobacco Day was part of a ploy by foreign countries to destroy the tobacco industry. He pointed out also that two major national cigarette companies, Sampoerna and Bentoel, had been taken over by for-eign companies, and he said that thousands of small-scale cigarette producers had gone bankrupt.

Given his wariness when it comes to outsiders messing with Indonesia's tobacco industry, Chaidir might not have been amused when, in January, the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease said it was donating $400,000 over two years to the city administration of Palembang in an attempt to control the consumption of cigarettes there. Nor was he likely to have been pleased when, in late June, an anti-tobacco network launched a "road map" it hoped would accelerate Indonesia's ratification of the World Health Organization's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). The chairman of the Indonesia Tobacco Control Network, Kartono Mohamad, made the point that Indonesia was one of 10 countries that had not ratified the FCTC. He said that cigarette consumption in Indonesia was increasing every year and that the country now had the third-highest number of smokers worldwide.

It is difficult to know what Chaidir would have made of the call by the Bali Tobacco Control Initiative group at Udayana University's public health department for the banning by the central government of the  World Tobacco Asia 2014 exhibition and conference, which is to be held during September at the Bali Nusa Dua Convention Center. Would he see the event as being about international support or international meddling? Whatever the ProTobEx Asia event in March was about, it was the subject of some international meddling when the WHO, in a letter to President Benigno Aquino, expressed concern that the Philippines could be encouraging smoking by hosting one of the "world's biggest tobacco trade shows."

There is no doubt, too, that some tobacco-industry prob-lems in Indonesia were homegrown, if reports in the local press were anything to go by. But then it hasn't been all bad news for tobacco interests. In July, a story had it that an Indonesian company, Perkebunan Nusantara X, was looking to boost its non-sugar revenues by tapping into the Chinese market for luxury goods through exports of cigar tobacco.

And South Korea, too, was doing well out of exports. In March, KT&G said that overseas sales had reached $634 mil-lion during 2012, a huge figure given that the company got into the export business only during 2000. The company's Esse brand was said to have dominated the super-slim market with sales of more than 50 billion cigarettes worldwide last year.

When it comes to international trade, one thing that strikes you is how most countries of Asia, with the notable excep-tion of China, are suffering from the illicit trade in cigarettes. Although, come to think of it, even Hong Kong suffers. A report in May told how Hong Kong Customs recently confis-cated property worth $18.5 million that was previously owned by the mastermind of a gang convicted in an illicit cigarette and money-laundering case.

Illegality

Perhaps illicit trade is part of the reason why the incidence of smoking remains so stubbornly high in some countries. Japan, which is aiming to cut its smoking incidence to 12 percent, has been fairly successful in this regard. Currently, 19.5 percent of the Japanese smoke, down from 27.7 percent in 2000. But even here the proportion of smokers among men aged 30 to 40, at about  40 percent, remains high.

Thailand has been less successful. Despite unrelenting efforts to curb smoking, the number of Thai smokers has risen by half a million to 13 million during the past four years, according to one report quoting Health Department Director General Jedsada Chokdamrongsuk. Desperate situations call for desperate measures, but the Thai government might have overstepped the mark. The legality of the Thai government's actions was being called into question in June because of a deci-sion by the Ministry of Public Health to impose new, bigger health warnings on cigarette packs. The Thai Tobacco Trade Association said that it was asking the Administrative Court to invalidate the ministry's decision, which involved increasing the warnings from 55 percent of the front and back surfaces to 85 percent. Philip Morris (Thailand) and Japan Tobacco were also bringing cases.

The question of legality was raised, too, in Vietnam, where, according to a story on Vietnam Net, it was difficult for tobacco control laws to be enforced because the people who passed those laws also broke them. At a meeting of the National Assembly's Committee on Social Affairs, one deputy described smoking in public places as a chronic disease that was never cured. "At the meetings of the National Assembly, just during the break, the hallway was filled with cigarette smoke," he said. "It looked terrible."

Nevertheless, Vietnam is trying. In January, it announced plans to impose a ban under which those under 18 years of age would not be allowed to sell tobacco products at retail outlets, nor buy them. The ban is part of a long-term national plan approved by Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung that aims, in part, to reduce the number of smokers in the 15–24 age group from 26 percent to 18 percent.

Vietnam is, too, one of a number of Asian countries to have set up a fund specifically to control tobacco usage. The others are Laos, Malaysia, Mongolia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand.

But is it all worth it? It will come as no surprise that the country with the less-than-assiduous approach to tobacco control is, on the surface, making the most profit from tobacco. A  China Daily report in May had it that while Chinese tobacco companies had reduced their advertising in traditional media, they were stepping up their pres-ence on the Internet. The Beijing Center for Disease Control and Prevention compiled the report after monitoring 32 television chan-nels, 91 newspapers and magazines, and vari-ous Internet media, including commercial websites and micro blogs. But such strate-gies work. Tax payments by China's tobacco companies last year, at rmb864.9 billion  ($137.7 billion), were up by 15.7 percent on those of 2011, according to a Xinhua Newswire story in January. In addition, the industry provided the government with prof-its, which, at rmb716.6 billion ($114.1), were increased by 19 percent on those of 2011. In fact, China has been doing so well that China Tobacco International (CTI) said in July that it intended to open an office in North Carolina, USA. The office was expected to serve as the base for CTI's North American leaf-buying operations, which are likely  to include purchases from both leaf dealers and farmers.

Finally, a story in January said that people carrying more than the permitted amount of cigarettes and alcohol when they fly into Taiwan no longer faced the possibility of a prison sentence. Well, that's a relief. But, nevertheless, be careful if you have to visit the dentist while staying in the country. A team of researchers at the National Taiwan University in Taipei are currently perfecting—if that is the right word—a device that could inform doctors and den-tists whether and when their patients have been eating, drinking and smoking, according to a story in Gizmodo.

Mouths apparently make unique motions depending on whether they are being used to eat, drink, smoke or talk, and the team's Bluetooth-ready fake tooth records these motions. You have been warned. Enditem