The power of advertising

Remember the Marlboro Man?

Sadly, Eric Lawson (the Marlboro Man from 1978 to 1981) recently died of complications from his smoking induced COPD (http://time.com/1935/marlboro-man-eric-lawson-dies-of-lung-disease/)

Well, meet the new Marlboro man: maybe this young fellow could be the new face of Phillip Morris tobacco in Indonesia:

The above images are from a very informative documentary, “Sex, Lies and Cigarettes”, on the extent of tobacco company influence in Indonesia and the effect of smoking on the population:

http://www.smh.com.au/tv/current-affairs/show/vanguard/sex-lies-and-cigarettes-4280601.html

 

Indonesia has one of the highest levels of childhood tobacco use in the world, especially amongst boys. Nearly one quarter of boys aged 13-15 yo are regular smokers and one third of 15-19 yo males smoke. In fact, 70% of men in Indonesia smoke.

 

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.addbeh.2011.01.008.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306460311000281

http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/opinion/editorial-protect-indonesians-from-big-tobacco/

 

One of the largest tobacco suppliers in Indonesia is Phillip Morris. They market the international brand, Marlboro and the Indonesian brand PT Sampoerna, which happened to be the favourite brand of the young boy depicted in the above photo. Incidently, the young boy’s name is Ardi Rizal and soon after the video went viral the Indonesian government sent him and his mum to tobacco rehab in Jakarta, which demonstrates the power that the international media has over local politics. The international media can be helpful since it responds to different corporate pressures than the local Indonesian media.

 

Tobacco companies use a variety of media to drive boys in Indonesia to smoke

Billboards featuring active, vivacious, popular, role models with messages such as “Dying is better than leaving a friend. Sampoerna is a cool friend.”

 

http://www.tobaccofreekids.org/tobacco_unfiltered/post/2011_08_30_indonesia

PT Djarum, another Indonesian tobacco company has used the following ad to encourage people not to quit:

 

http://www.tobaccofreekids.org/tobacco_unfiltered/post/2013_06_10_indonesia

 

 

Tobacco sponsored concerts featuring famous and popular international acts

This article from Tobacco Free Kids exposes the level of tobacco advertising of the java jazz concert festival in Indonesia:

http://www.tobaccofreekids.org/tobacco_unfiltered/post/2013_03_22_javajazz

 

In the recent past, Internationally famous acts have performed under the sponsorship of large Indonesian tobacco giants. Acts such as Muse, Kelly Clarkson, and FloRida have all performed at tobacco sponsored concerts in Indonesia.

Maroon 5 was also going to perform at a tobacco sponsored concert but a Change.org petition raised the profile of the event internationally and the band demanded that all tobacco sponsorship be withdrawn or they would refuse to perform.

https://www.change.org/en-AU/petitions/tell-maroon-5-to-drop-tobacco-sponsorship

 

Activists

The following organisations have had some wins in preventing some of the tobacco sponsored events

http://seatca.org/?p=593

http://www.tobaccofreekids.org/

In addition, the religious group, Muhammadiyah, who run schools in Indonesia, also educate their students about the risks of tobacco smoke.

http://www.onislam.net/english/news/asia-pacific/454678-muhammadiyah-facilities-free-of-smoking.html

 

Other than the above, many individuals have had success in pressuring certain artists not to perform under tobacco sponsorship using web services such as change.org (refer maroon 5 above).

 

China National Tobacco is keen to encourage as many kids as possible to take up smoking and without a significant anti-smoking lobby there seems to be little to impede them. The craziest thing here is that China National Tobacco is a state owned monopoly; all of the costs from the health impacts from this organisation will fall to the Chinese Government in time to come.

From the Chinese Government’s perspective,

“…although smoking harms people’s health, restraining smoking threatens social stability and government income…”

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22696197

 

1st World Poor = 3rd World ?

This very recent (24 March 2014) article from the New York Times raises some surprising issues.

I think we can all agree that the amount of people that smoke these days is going down. But we live in the city. Have we thought about what is happening out bush? The article has a look at some of the more rural, low socio economic counties in the United States and finds that smoking habits have not changed much at all in the past twenty years.

The article states “tobacco companies make corporate contributions to local causes, aim advertising campaigns at low-income areas and even sell cigarettes more cheaply in those areas.”…Sound familiar? This is exactly what the tobacco companies are doing in developing countries!

Personally, I believe it all comes down to education. Or lack thereof. Besides lack of wealth, what do the poor in 1st World countries have in common with the 3rd World? Thats right, they lack access to education. Not just education on the dangers of smoking, but just general high quality education from a young age. As an Australian, I can only speak for our country and it is clear that the best teachers and schools are in the major cities. I think the first step in reducing health inequalities among the rich/poor, developed/developing is to improve the quality of education in disadvantaged populations.  

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/25/health/smoking-stays-stubbornly-high-among-the-poor.html?_r=0

Tobacco use in 3 billion individuals from 16 countries.

The Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS), is multi-regional, international health survey conducted on over 3 billion people. What makes this especially pertinent for this blog is that the survey was only conducted on low-to-middle income countries like Vietnam, Uruguay and Mexico. The results, published in 2012, give an accurate snapshot of overall smoking rates in the developing world. Some important findings include the overall major disparity between men and women smokers, where 48.6% of men smoked and only 5% of women smoked on a global-average. This hints to the fact there may be specific marketing ploys plotted towards men in particular, as there is an obvious cultural paradigm in the developing world surrounding tobacco smoking, just as there was once in now developed nations like Australia, America and Canada, the likes of which are slowly dying.

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(12)61085-X/fulltext

World No Tobacco Day—‘A Distant Hope’

Growing up in Australia you are bombarded with how bad smoking is for you. I still remember those  lessons in high school where it was drilled into us how detrimental smoking was for our health. There was always few rebellious classmates that used to have a few sneaky ‘durries’ behind the toilets, but that was a very small group. 

This sort of health education combined with the governments strict anti-tobacco laws has made smoking quite taboo in our generation. Quite the contrary in countries like Malawi. The article from the UK based Independent mentions collusion of tobacco companies and the government to create low tobacco prices. In the article Anna Gilmore (Professor of Public Health at the University of Bath) mentions that that although tobacco sales are dropping in the West, tobacco companies are making record profits. This seems to be all through targeting the countries that have little or no tobacco regulation.

One of the aims of World No Tobacco Day is to persuade countries like Malawi to sign treaties that ensure the government enforces tobacco laws. 

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/the-unstoppable-march-of-the-tobacco-giants-2290583.html

The Economist on Smoking in China

Ah, you can always trust the economist to be impartial on all issues, including tobacco smoking and its health burden. They just display the facts, no spin. The biggest and not the most surprising element of this rise in tobacco use is the fact that men smoke, far, far , far more often women do, it is often touted as saying over half of all men (on average) in developing nations smoke (including China below). This prevalence of smoking is viral, since the turn of the century, the tobacco industry has nearly quadrupled in size. Also interesting to note is that whilst a huge amount of people smoke in China (300 million), over twice that (700 million) are exposed to second-hand smoke, including women and children, couple that with already crippling air pollution and this becomes a top-tier health issue.

Smoking is on course to kill 100m Chinese people this century. Will the latest anti-smoking policies curb it?

 

The blog and its aims.

For those of you out on the blogisphere this blog is all aimed towards educating people about the dramatic rise in tobacco smoking in the developing world. This is an issue that demands attention today, before these countries suffer the health outcomes tomorrow. During the life of this blog we aim to bring you up-to-date and accurate information regarding this issue in the best media available. Whilst we will be predominantly posting statistics on the incidence and prevalence etc. of tobacco smoking and its effects in the developing world, other sources of information regarding policy or legislative changes and local remedial strategies on how these developing nations are coping with this burden, will also be shown. Enjoy and keep track on this issue by visiting regularly 🙂