Hard to give up the weed

Press, 8 February 1986, Page 18

Hard to give up the weed

Despite their strenuous efforts to diversify from tobacco, the world’s seven tobacco multinational companies remain addicted to cigarettes. The tobacco market may be mature but it remains massive, worth some $lOO billion a year world wide (SNZ2OO billion). The world wheezed its way through some four trillion cigarettes (i.e„ nearly 1000 by every man, woman and child on this planet), according to new figures from the World Health Organisation (W.H.0.). Though consumption in rich countries is falling (in America, the number of cigarettes smoked per person has fallen to its lowest level since 1949), in poor ones it is increasing rapidly.

The battle against smoking is’

hampered by a pack of special interests. The tobacco multinationals spend $2 billion (SNZ4 billion) a year between them on advertising and sports sponsorship. Governments like the tax revenues on tobacco, and some are big producers in their own right

State-run industries in centrally planned economies produce 37 per cent, of the world’s cigarettes, and State monopolies in countries like France, Kenya and Turkey account for a further 17 per cent

Tobacco is a crucial source of income for some developing nations: Zimbabwe, Mali, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Malawi and Brazil are heavily dependent on a crop that provides a living for some 35 million small farmers

round the world. The W.H.O. agrues that the industry does little for developing countries: The multinationals cream off the profit while the addiction sucks in expensive imported cigarettes. Copyright — “The Economist.”