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Those ever-insidious multinational tobacco companies

Not content having poisoned more than millions through the sale of their cigarettes and now faced with increasing limitations around the world on the advertising of tobacco products (or printing dire warnings on cigarette packets - or even plainly packaged packs) the giant multinational tobacco companies are looking to sell their cancer-laden products in poor nations around the world.    Disgraceful!

"Facing greater restriction in the USA and other industrialized countries, international tobacco companies are increasingly marketing their products in developing countries, particularly among women and adolescents.

As many developed countries around the world, including the UK, introduce tighter restrictions on tobacco sales, the billionaire and former Mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, has told the BBC of his determination to combat the spread of smoking in poorer countries. “We are in this to help countries that cannot defend themselves against an industry that is trying to kill one billion people this century. If that is not a noble cause I don’t know what it is,” said Bloomberg.

While smoking rates in some industrialized countries are decreasing at about 1% a year, those in developing countries are increasing at around 3% per year. It is estimated that, if current trends persist for the next 30 years, seven million people from developing countries will die every year from smoking-related diseases.

For the past several years, international corporations such as Philip Morris, RJ Reynolds, and British-American Tobacco have been expanding rapidly in Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Tobacco-provoked deaths can only add to the inequities in health of ethnic and minority populations. Jeanette Noltenius, an expert on tobacco and alcohol abuse issues, stated, “In the US, minorities such as Hispanics have been specifically targeted by the tobacco companies since the early 1960s, and have received a double dose of advertising (in Spanish and English).”

According to data from the Bureau of Census, US Department of Commerce, Latino smoking youth will triple in size in 2020 in the U.S., increasing from 9% of the national youth population to 19%.
Since the early 1980s, US trade officials, with help from the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR), have led a sustained campaign to open markets in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand among the Asian nations."

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