King-size creeps

We've heard about Nestle's violation of World Health Organisation Rules in their drive to push artificial baby foods at mothers in the Third World. But what about the increasingly aggressive marketing ploys of the tobacco giants? Mike Phipps reports.

How would you feel if a stranger offered your child free cigarettes? In Chile British American Tobacco is doing just that - employing glamorous women to hand out free cigarettes to young people in malls, video arcades and discos. In Cambodia cigarette companies advertise on ice cream vans. In Sri Lanka BAT sponsors a "Healthy Child Contest" and a campaign for "child safety". This aggressive targeting of poorer countries is the natural outcome of selling a product which kills 350,000 loyal customers every year. As law suits mount in the West, European and North American tobacco companies are eyeing the vast markets of Africa, Asia and Latin America. As a Rothmans executive said in one west African country recently: "The average life expectancy here is about 40 years, infant mortality is high; the health problems which some say (sic) are caused by cigarettes just won't figure here."

With only 7% of women in developing countries thought to smoke, compared to 24% in the industrialised world, the push for new women smokers is also on. Small wonder BAT's former chief believes these to be "the most exciting times in the tobacco industry in the last 40 years." As cigarette consumption falls in the west, it increased 67% in poorer countries between 1970 and 1994.

The World Development Movement has launched a campaign to make global the kind of restrictions and regulations that tobacco companies face in the West. For more information, contact the WDM, 25 Beehive Place, London SW9 7QR, tel: 0171-737 6215; web: http://oneworld.org/wdm/.

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