Outlook India - The noose around tobacco companies is tightening, but they won't walk away without raising a stink

By Naren Karunakaran

The smoking ban in India, which came into effect from October 2, is not a signal for Big Tobacco to cower and slink away into the shadows. Given the record of tobacco giants, especially in developing countries lately, it is only expected to spur them to consolidate and also intensify measures, overt and covert, and weaken the tobacco control legislation. The recent intervention of the Prime Minister’s Office in an unseemly tussle between ministries (health and commerce) over a proposal by Japan Tobacco Inc (JTI) to hike its stake in its Indian joint venture is an indicator.

Even ITC, which bares its sustainability credentials with what is often seen as an obfuscating emphasis on its food and agribusiness divisions, cannot ignore the fact that around 70% of its profit comes from tobacco. Therefore, it didn’t hesitate to move courts and stymie the efforts of the Indian government’s public health initiatives.

This, even as adult prevalence of tobacco smoking in India hover around a high of 57%; among youth, both male and female, prevalence is around 14.1%. In fact, cigarette consumption is nudging 100 billion sticks a year. Tobacco kills over 5.4 million people a year worldwide, more than tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and malaria combined. The World Health Organisation’s 2008 report on tobacco says that over 80% of the deaths are occurring in the developing world.

"How can tobacco companies ever claim to be responsible," asks Hemant Goswami of the Burning Brain Society, a Chandigarh-based NGO. His recent skirmish with Godfrey Phillips India (GPI) in the courts prompted the company to erase ‘Red and White,’ a cigarette brand, as prefix to its annual bravery awards. "All companies are affiliated to Big Tobacco—a clutch of transnationals controlling the industry and working a plan to dilute tobacco control legislations globally. The industry has deployed game theoreticians in strategy making. Global plans are being unleashed locally," says Goswami.

The global big three in tobacco are the $55 billion Philip Morris International, the $51 billion British American Tobacco (BAT) and the $40 billion JTI. Philip Morris has a stake in GPI, while BAT is associated with the ITC.
 
Behind the smokescreen

Big tobacco, over the years, has set new highs in attempting to undermine legislations against tobacco, even in the US. In 1998, however, a truce of sorts was negotiated in what is known as the largest civil settlement in US history. As per the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) between tobacco companies and attorney generals of 46 US states, the tobacco industry agreed to pay $206 billion to the states as compensation for providing healthcare to people with smoking-related illnesses; in return, the states agreed to settle all existing litigation on tobacco-related issues.

The MSA also dissolved a number of tobacco trade organisations, including the Tobacco Institute. Importantly, several restrictions were imposed on lobbying against tobacco control legislation. Critics, however, rubbished the MSA as an attempt to confer stability and legitimacy to the tobacco industry. "It did lend legitimacy, in a way, but it also ensured accountability, which was missing pre-MSA," says Goswami.

The agreement also brought into the public domain over 9.7 million documents of tobacco companies pertaining to their advertising, manufacturing, marketing and scientific research activities. An avalanche of skeletons that tumbled out of tobacco cupboards consequently stung the world. Documents revealed that the industry had known for a long time that tobacco can kill, but played down and also undermined scientific evidence through dubious means.

Later, it was also revealed how Philip Morris and several tobacco companies had wormed their way into several UN agencies, especially the WHO, by acquiring food companies, and using them as a front for a position at health policy-making tables at national and international levels. That tobacco companies are rapidly diversifying into food is no accident. Food and nutrition are easy entry points into policy rooms.

In 1998, Big Tobacco agreed to pay $206 bn to 46 US states as relief for providing healthcare to people with smoking-related illnesss

A noting by former Philip Morris CEO Geoffrey Bible is indeed revealing: "The WHO has extraordinary influence on governments and consumers." He, therefore, sought to "reorient" WHO activities, and wanted his company to think through "how we could use our food companies, size, technology and capabilities with governments by helping them with their food problems."

Around the same time, the tobacco company acquired a string of food majors—General Foods, Kraft and Nabisco. Closer home, ITC has easy access to Indian policy high tables primarily on the back of its farming and food initiatives.

Rolled in paper

Big tobacco’s cohabitation with governments is a worrying issue. A global coalition is, therefore, preparing to lobby the third conference of the parties (CoP3) to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) scheduled for November in South Africa. The FCTC, known as the ‘global tobacco treaty’, has been ratified by 160 countries, including India, and came into effect in 2005. The treaty bans tobacco promotion and gives governments the right to put the health of citizens ahead of trade and commercial interests.

"The tobacco industry poses the single greatest threat to people getting the health protection they need under the treaty," says Kathy Mulveny, International Policy Director of the Boston-based Corporate Accountability International. "It’s plain nonsensical—and contrary to the treaty itself—to allow these corporations that are damaging our health to sit at the table when our health policies are developed."

The demand now is to strengthen Article 5.3 of the FCTC, which deals with safeguards against Big Tobacco’s conflicts of interest. "Once these guidelines are spelt out clearly, it will be difficult for tobacco companies to adopt questionable means to influence policy-making," says the Lucknow-based Bobby Ramakant, who is associated with the Network for Accountability of Tobacco Transnationals (NATT).

The key elements to be included in Article 5.3 include prohibition of government partnership or collaboration with the tobacco industry ‘for any purpose’; setting rules of, and ensuring transparency of, government’s engagement with the tobacco industry; rejection of "so called corporate social responsibility" by the industry; and the need for civil or criminal and/or administrative penalties for non-compliance with laws that support the 5.3 guidelines.

The NATT, which lobbied for the inclusion of Article 5.3 in earlier CoPs, now suggests the measures must apply to "all entities" that work to further the vested interests of the tobacco industry. The noose around the tobacco industry is evidently tightening. What now? Goswami answers: "Let me tell you; their game theoreticians have planned for an endgame too. And, be sure, it is nowhere near. Two decades is what it can be, if they are opposed with all the aggression and force."
 

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