Last month Imperial Tobacco gave an update to the markets, congratulating itself on further progress in emerging markets. British American Tobacco (BAT) will likely do the same at its next market update. As Western markets become increasingly “dark” and smoking prevalence declines, so they target eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America, markets with huge numbers of young people and relatively limited restrictions on marketing of this deadly product.
Imperial and BAT are two of the largest tobacco companies in the world, both FTSE 100 businesses. Yet in the recent UK government Tobacco Control Plan for England there was no mention of the UK’s key role in the worldwide tobacco business. We may be world leaders in tobacco control at home, but we are exporting tobacco related death and disease to the developing world on a large and growing scale, cheered on by many in the City.
Is it too much to hope that the next tobacco control plan will directly address our leading role in the forthcoming lung cancer epidemic that will affect the developing world?
Imperial is well named; developing country ministers would do well to recognise the imperial ambitions of all the transnational tobacco companies, and implement to the full the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. After all, these companies seek to profit by creating a lung cancer epidemic in your countries in the decades to come.
