New York, Nov. 14: As sales to developing nations become ever more important to giant tobacco companies, they are stepping up efforts around the world to fight tough restrictions on the marketing of cigarettes.
Companies like Philip Morris International and British American Tobacco are contesting limits on ads in Britain, bigger health warnings in South America and higher cigarette taxes in the Philippines and Mexico. They are also spending billions on lobbying and marketing campaigns in Africa and Asia, and in one case provided undisclosed financing for TV commercials in Australia.
The industry has ramped up its efforts in advance of a gathering in Uruguay this week of public health officials from 171 nations, who plan to shape guidelines to enforce a global anti-smoking treaty.
This year, Philip Morris International sued the government of Uruguay, saying its tobacco regulations were excessive. World Health Organisation officials say the suit represents an effort by the industry to intimidate the country, as well as other nations attending the conference, that are considering strict marketing requirements for tobacco.
Uruguay’s groundbreaking law mandates that health warnings cover 80 per cent of cigarette packages.
The lawsuit against Uruguay, filed at a World Bank affiliate in Washington, seeks unspecified damages for lost profits.
“They’re using litigation to threaten low and middle income countries,” says Dr. Douglas Bettcher, head of the WHO’s Tobacco Free Initiative. Uruguay’s gross domestic profit is half the size of the company’s $66 billion in annual sales.
Peter Nixon, a vice-president and spokesman for Philip Morris International, said the company was complying with every nation’s marketing laws while selling a lawful product for adult consumers.
He said the company’s lawsuits were intended to combat what it felt were “excessive” regulations, and to protect its trademark and commercial property rights. Cigarette companies are aggressively recruiting new customers in developing nations, Dr Bettcher said, to replace those who are quitting or dying in the United States and Europe, where smoking rates have fallen precipitously. Worldwide cigarette sales are rising 2 per cent a year.
But the number of countries adopting tougher rules, as well as the global treaty, underscore the breadth of the battleground between tobacco and public health interests in legal and political arenas from Latin America to Africa to Asia.
The cigarette companies work together to fight some strict policies and go their separate ways on others. For instance, Philip Morris USA, a division of Altria Group, helped negotiate and supported the anti-smoking legislation passed by Congress last year and did not join a lawsuit filed by Mr R.J. Reynolds, Lorillard and other tobacco companies against the Food and Drug Administration. So far, it is not protesting the agency’s new rules, , requiring graphic images with health warnings on cigarette packs. But Philip Morris International, the separate company spun out of Altria in 2008 to expand the company’s presence in foreign markets, has been especially aggressive in fighting new restrictions overseas. It has also sued not only Uruguay but also Brazil, arguing that images the government wants to put on cigarette packages do not accurately depict the health effects of smoking and “vilify” tobacco companies.
The pictures depict more grotesque health effects than the smaller labels recommended in the United States, including one showing a foetus with the warning that smoking can cause spontaneous abortion.
In Australia, the government announced a plan that would require cigarettes to be in plain brown or white packaging to make them less attractive to buyers.