Cigarette Makers Aggressively Recruit Smokers in Foreign Countries

Michigan residents are enjoying the health benefits of its now 8-month old smoke-free free policy, one of 27 states in the country with such a policy and the number is likely to increase in the coming years.

This type of aggressive policy changes in the US has resulted in Big Tobacco looking more and more over seas for new markets, particularly in developing countries that don’t have strong public health rules, particularly when it comes to regulation of tobacco sales.

PRWatch states the following:

Global cigarette makers like Philip Morris (PM) and British American Tobacco (BAT) are getting more aggressive in their efforts to recruit new smokers in developing countries to replace those who are either quitting, dying or failing to take up the addiction in the U.S. and other developed nations.

Tobacco companies use marketing tactics in foreign countries that they could never get away with using in the U.S. In Indonesia, for example, cigarette ads still appear on television and billboards, companies target kids by putting cartoon characters on cigarette packs, and stores still sell cigarettes to children.

As governments try to crack down on these objectionable marketing behaviors, cigarette makers fight back using lawsuits and time-worn, but effective PR techniques. Philip Morris International has been especially aggressive in fighting marketing restrictions overseas. The company has deployed a $5 million campaign in Australia to fight a government plan that would require cigarettes be marketed in plain brown or white packages. PM designed the campaign to make it look like it was coming from small store owners, and got help financing it from competitors like BAT and Imperial Tobacco.

The companies also argue that higher cigarette taxes will stimulate smuggling, but tobacco industry documents reveal that global tobacco companies are not only complicit in cigarette smuggling, but that they oversee it, and even depend on it to gain access to closed markets.

The Center for Public Integrity has also just released a new report on tobacco company efforts abroad, entitled Smoke Screen: Big Tobacco’s Global Lobbying Campaign. The report looks at global trends with detailed sections on what is happening in Russia, Mexico and Uruguay.