By Madeline McInTyre
Mark takes a drag on his cigarette, the ember flares momentarily between his fingers. ‘Aaaah’ he sighs, the relief is instantaneous as his body eagerly receives its nicotine hit. It is freezing, a sharp wind is sweeping in from Wellington’s harbour, but he and the other teen smokers brave the cold for the long-awaited lunchtime smoke break. Sucking back over 4000 chemicals with every drag, Mark is inhaling products that can be found in floor cleaner (ammonia), car batteries (cadmium), gas chambers (hydrogen cyanide) and rocket fuel (methanol). With every inhalation, Mark’s life expectancy is being cut shorter and shorter. Smoking is killing him.
He isn’t the only one - far from it. Over one billion people smoke on a daily basis and around 80,000 to 100,000 children under the age of 18 start smoking every day. Tobacco use kills 5.4 million people a year and this number is increasing. Sadly, smokers aren’t the only victims of the powerful international tobacco industry known as ‘Big Tobacco’. As Mark slowly burns his life away, another person, perhaps the child who picked the tobacco leaves that are in Mark’s cigarette, is being slowly poisoned by nicotine.
Growing Pains
Tobacco is grown throughout the world. The industry claims that some 33 million people are involved in tobacco farming world wide. Originating from the Americas, the majority of tobacco is now grown in China, which produces 40 percent of the global tobacco crop every year. More and more tobacco is being grown and exported from majority world (developing) countries such as India, Indonesia and Malawi.
Tobacco plantation
These countries often have bigger or more pressing problems than opposing or regulating the tobacco industry. In fact, tobacco companies are often actively - or at least tacitly – encouraged to continue to expand. In countries where poverty is rife and where people exist at a subsistence level, some governments welcome tobacco companies because of the potential employment and income they bring. Tobacco giants find it easy to take advantage of the fact that people are desperate for work. They have little difficulty employing cheap labour, and often this is child labour.
As in most areas of agriculture in the majority world child labour is prevalent in the cultivation of tobacco. Children, often working alongside their families, are used in many areas of production such as sowing new seedlings, fertilizing and watering crops, weeding, and plucking tobacco leaves. Often, they are expected to operate heavy machinery within factories and roll hundreds of cigarettes every day.
In Malawi, the world’s fifth largest producer of tobacco, children working in tobacco fields are expected to work from first light until dark. The humid weather means that residual moisture on the tobacco leaves helps nicotine to be absorbed into the skin more quickly, making the threat of nicotine poisoning a daily concern. Otherwise known as green tobacco sickness (GTS), these children are exposed to the equivalent of 50 cigarettes a day, causing nausea, headaches, abdominal pain and breathlessness. No one knows yet what the long term effects will be.
New horizons, new smokers
It seems that as well as capitalising on child labour, the tobacco industry is also targeting young people in the majority world for the consumption of tobacco products. Smoking rates in the minority world (developed) are on a downward slide, largely due to better information about the dangers of smoking, the success of anti-smoking campaigns, and laws aimed at restricting cigarette smoking. So Big Tobacco has turned its attention to easier targets. They have set their sights on the majority world, not only as a cheap and easy place to set up production, but also as a booming new market.
Boys selling cigerettes in Indonesia
To get life-long customers it helps to target youth. Adolescents are impressionable and want to grow up quickly. Research has shown that when smoking is promoted as a cool ‘adult’ activity, young people will be drawn to it. For example tobacco companies spend millions of dollars every year having their branded tobacco products featured in films (Hollywood, Bollywood and even Wellywood!), on clothing and associated with rock icons such as Alicia Keys, whose tour of south-east Asia was promoted by a tobacco company (much to her disgust when she found out!).
Tobacco companies use subliminal methods to promote smoking to the youth market and cleverly tap into the youth subculture. They sponsor free rock concerts and sporting events. In majority world countries where such events are perhaps rare or rarely available to the poor, such treats make a huge impact on young people.
Despite their website claims that they are ‘responsible’ and ‘don’t want children to smoke’, the programmes tobacco companies have set up to prevent young people smoking have been shown to be weak at best. British American Tobacco, for example, say that they work with retailers as “a front line in the battle against under age smoking” but this is an empty gesture. Retailers make their living from selling. They have no incentive to not sell cigarettes.
So, what is being done?
Tobacco Treaty
Five years ago the World Health Organization’s Tobacco Treaty came into force. It is the world’s first and only public health treaty and 168 countries have signed up to it. The treaty obliges governments to protect their people from exposure to tobacco smoke and reduce demand through high prices and taxes, regulating packaging and labeling and also by restricting advertising and sponsorship. This was a huge step in the fight against Big Tobacco. Despite this, World Health Organization director-general Dr. Margaret Chan estimates only slightly more than five percent of the world’s population is protected by national smoke-free laws.
It seems that while Big Tobacco’s influence is retreating in minority world countries such as Aoteoroa New Zealand, with smoking rates being at an all time low, it is on the march across the new frontier of the majority world. The already vulnerable populations are easy targets for the tobacco giants as they dominate the largely unregulated markets and take advantage of the cheap child labour on offer. Whether they are working in the tobacco fields or buying cigarettes in the market place, children in the majority world are at a greater risk of falling victim to the poisonous influence of Big Tobacco.
TAKE ACTION
- Sign up to www.ash.org.nz and help work towards an Aoteoroa New Zealand that is free from the harm caused by tobacco.
- Check out the websites www.notourfuture.co.nz or www.quit.org.nz for facts on smoking and help on quitting.
- Insist that your school is a smokefree environment (www.smokefree.co.nz) and support smokefree events such as the annual Smokefree Rockquest.
- Sign up to international organisations such as ECLT (Eliminating Child Labour in Tobacco Growing). www.eclt.org
LEARN MORE
www.tobacco.org
www.stopcorporateabuse.org/tobacco-campaign
www.tobaccoatlas.org
www.who.int/topics/tobacco/facts/en/index.html
www.smokefree.co.nz
www.tereomarama.org.nz
Glossary
Majority world – The developing world is increasingly being defined as the majority world. It refers to countries that make up the majority of the world’s population, but have limited access to the world’s resources.
Minority world – The developed world is increasingly defined as the minority world. It refers to the countries that make up the minority of the world’s population but utilize the majority of the world’s resources.
This article was originally published in the Global Focus pages of Tearaway Magazine.
According to its website, PRODUCT(RED) is neither a charity nor a campaign, but an “economic initiative that acts to deliver a sustainable flow of private sector money to the Global Fund.” The key word here is sustainable. Rather than simply asking these corporations to donate a chunk of money to the Global Fund, a sustainable and longer lasting flow’ of money is created through giving a percentage of the profits from consumer purchases. Sounds good right? Before we can dig any deeper into this issue though, we need to know what exactly holds together the PRODUCT(RED) initiative.
If you went over to your local hospital with a group of friends and volunteered to clean and repaint the entire children’s ward, only to demand afterwards that you all be shown on the 6 o’clock news so that the entire country can see what great people you are, would this be considered socially acceptable? No, of course it wouldn’t be.
differences in the amount they actually contribute and the small proportion of the retail cost which actually finds its way to the fund. For instance, one percent of all spending on American Express’s (RED) card goes to the Global Fund as does fifty percent of the net profit from the sale of Gap (RED) items, and just $8.50 from the sale of a Motorola (RED) Motorazr. In effect, companies are contributing relatively little while being portrayed through PRODUCT(RED) marketing as giving generously to the cause.
Many critics have also ignored a crucial statistic which blows their argument into tiny fragments: the amount of money raised for the Global Fund is now over four times more than the amount the private sector had contributed prior to the establishment of PRODUCT(RED). An increase of over four times their original funds! Surely you can’t say that PRODUCT(RED) is just an attempt by companies to improve their corporate image if they’ve managed to quadruple the finances of the Global Fund within a two year period?
Whatever the motivation of PRODUCT(RED) companies, the initiative has undeniably made a real difference to the medical treatment of AIDS victims in Africa. Does it really matter that the companies are in it for themselves or that only a tiny proportion of the funds are actually going to the Global Fund? No. I don’t think that’s the important thing.
The Mapuche, are a people originally from the south of Latin America, whose name means “people or persons of the earth”, and whose worldview has been intimately connected to the natural environment. It is said that “Mapu à‘uke”, or Mother Nature, has given the Mapuche culture and society the knowledge they possess. This knowledge is transmitted through conversation in sacred places of the natural world linking Mapuche to the earth and to family.
Every part of the natural world, including human beings and the dead, possess a spirit. Amongst them there are caring and guiding spirits of nature. For example, stones and serpents have an important role in the Mapuche way of life. Even now, the Mapuche ask permission to pass through certain places that are considered sacred. On such occasions, the Mapuche people take time to appreciate these places and ask for the protection of the earth and their families, as part of their attempts to overcome the unfortunate realities for their people.
Chile and Argentina have increased their efforts to transform their culture into spitting images of Western society. Big business has also appeared on the scene. These businesses have claimed — and continue to claim — to those same governments that Mapuche land would be better utilised through the development of economic projects such as single-crop forestation. Yet they do so without planning nor providing for the harmful effects on both human and environmental health.
The Chilean government has, throughout history, pushed through “social integration policies” which have attempted to destroy the unique customs of the Mapuche people, and in this way the Mapuche social organisation has been twisted and modified through the imposition of unknown and destructive social models. These politicians, who are not part of the Mapuche culture or way of life, do not understand or value the traditional lifestyles of the Mapuche people, instead imposing new lifestyles upon them.
To speak of Mapuche political prisoners, and to speak of their ethnic, political, and territorial demands, has been criminalised by the Chilean government, placing the interests of big business over and above those of the Mapuche communities involved. Because of these events, Chile has received international condemnation and many recommendations to end the criminalization of the Mapuche people. One such recommendation came from the UN’s Rodolfo Stavenhagen.
The bill looks at creating a joint trans-Tasman (Australian and New Zealand) regulatory scheme for the regulation of natural health products products. Standards will be set to control their quality, safety, efficacy (whether the product does what it says it does) and performance. The manufacture, supply, import and promotion will also be monitored.
Finally, opponents say natural health products are being unfairly targeted with no justification as they are actually extremely low-risk. The Government hopes the Bill will protect New Zealanders from dodgy medicines. Health Minister Pete Hodgson claimed that between 1996 and 2007, three deaths resulted from natural health products. However it was found that coroners in each case ruled the cause of death could not be attributed to natural health products taken.[1] In addition it was it pointed out that during this same period 8000 deaths were attributed to the adverse effects of pharmaceutical drugs, with a further 16,000 permanently disabled!
According to Hon. Annette King (Minister of State Services), opponents have been “peddling misinformation” and earlier this year, before the compromise was made, she claimed “the preparation of therapeutic products as part of the traditional practice of medicines will be exempt from the regulatory scheme.” She also denied that “complimentary ingredients or finished products…will be subject to pharmaceutical style regulation.” If that was true, it is ironic that the “compromise” is proposing precisely what the minister was peddling in the original bill.
Many of the world’s environmental problems have been caused by multinational corporations and states in their constant drive for profit and control of humanity. Across the globe there have been many brave acts of resistance against those exploiting both humanity and the environment. Unfortunately as global awareness of environmental issues increases so does repression of those brave enough to stand up.
Across the majority world large numbers of people have been imprisoned for daring to stand up to multinationals destroying the environment. In West Papua, which has been the scene of violent Indonesian Military operations since 1962, there has been large scale repression against students protesting the operations of US mining company Freeport McMoRan. Every day Freeport’s Grasberg copper and gold mine dumps 700,000 tonnes of mining waste into Papua’s rivers. According to the New York Times this has destroyed nearly 90 square miles of wetlands, which were once ‘one of richest freshwater habitats in the World’. This has angered many indigenous West Papuans, so Freeport pays the Indonesian Military to provide security. The Military has murdered many mining opponents.
On March 16th 2006 university students set up blockades in Papua’s capital, Jayapura, demanding the closure of the Freeport mine. The Military and Brimob (paramilitary police) violently attacked the demonstrators, leading to clashes in which three policemen and one soldier died. Brimob entered the university arresting scores of students, who were then beaten, tortured and forced to admit to taking part in the killings. Students’ families were also targeted. One student, who has since fled to Papua New Guinea, told an Australian human rights activist “After the March 16 clashes Intel [Brimob] arrested my mother, then took her from the house to the university. They wanted to kill her in front of the university but she was struggling and shouting hard, and so they took her to POLDA [Police Station] and tortured her, burned her with cigarettes and beat her up for three days at the gaol”.2 Some of the students have since been given lengthy prison terms, even though no evidence to suggest they took part in the killings was produced. Hundreds are still in hiding.
Coca Cola has bottling plants the world over, allowing the company to take advantage of very low labour and production costs in certain countries, as well as decreasing the bill for the shipping of its products to its customers. One might think this makes the company more environmentally friendly, through reducing emissions caused by the transportation of goods around the world. However there are some who would tell you differently, very differently. These are the people who live on the doorsteps of the Coca Cola bottling plants all over India.
Villagers all over India have found themselves in a similar situation, with Coca Cola bottling plants helping themselves to precious life-giving ground water and causing their wells to drop by, in some cases, up to fifty feet (about 15 metres). Lax environmental regulations in the country did nothing to prevent this from occurring. Villagers have been forced to travel large distances in search of adequate drinking water, while the water once readily available to them is now only available in the form of a caffeinated, sugary carbonated drink, bought in planet-polluting plastic bottles.
Mmmm. A sugar rush. You can’t beat it eh? But how much sugar do we consume? A lot more than just what we add to our tea or cereal. What about all those fizzy drinks, lollies and cakes? And it doesn’t end there - sugar is a staple ingredient in most processed foods including savoury ready-made meals. Globally, sugar consumption increases by about 2% per year, and is currently around 150 million tons!
As well as being terrible for our bodies, and almost addictive, sugar also widens the gap between the world’s rich and poor.
