During the 1980s, the drug pusher was elevated to the level of public pariah, a shady figure that existed on the periphery of society and in the darkest imaginings of parents. Scare stories in the Sun had the pusher hovering at school gates, heroin needle in hand, ready to lead children astray like a malevolent pied piper. In reality, though drug use and crime did increase in the 1980s, two drugs, alcohol and nicotine, both legal and culturally sanctioned caused far more harm that any of the illicit alternatives.
Tobacco remains the most lucrative addictive drug in the world. In 2018, the tobacco industry had a turnover of $62 billion, giving those who own shares in it a virtual licence to print money. Even after decades of public information campaigns and an overwhelming body of scientific and medical research showing the connection between smoking and lung cancer, heart disease, alzheimers and other conditions, tobacco industry profits have continued to grow, even while the numbers of smokers in the western world has decreased.
How has this been possible? A new film by the Guardian has presented several explanations:
* The tobacco industry has raised the prices of cigarettes above and beyond the increased costs of their products which have resulted from higher taxation. However, with a declining customer base in the first world, rising prices can only account for a limited share of those increased profits. The industry understands that addiction means that the demand for their goods are price inelastic; this means that a percentage increase in the cost of a cigarettes does not see an equivalence percentage decrease in demand; demand remains high because addicts have no choice than to pay higher prices and consume cigarettes at the same rate.
* A more plausible explanation as to the origins of increased profits is the exploitation of less well regulated markets in poorer countries. Since the 1990s, cigarette manufacturers have focused their attention on developing new smokers in India, China, Indonesia, the Philippines and across Africa. These markets are attractive because they contain the vital ingredients that tobacco manufacturers need to survive.
Lots of young people
Young consumers are vital for cigarette company profits, partly because older people are less likely to form new habits and 40 something non smokers tend to avoid starting at that stage in their lives. However, the tobacco industry for decades has cynically calculated that their profits lie in developing lifelong customers by drawing them into addiction as teenagers and keeping them hooked until old age and illness claim them. Advertising smoking as a cool, attractive, lifestyle choice has long since been banned in Britain, America and Europe, but in poorer countries advertising has succeeded in reaching a new market of young people with disposable income. In the past two decades, the globalisation of the world economy has lifted entire generations worldwide out of poverty, giving billions of people new levels of disposable income; an enterprising tobacco industry has seen these individuals as the markets of the future.
Light touch regulation
Half a century of public health awareness, law suits, congressional and parliamentary hearings and social and cultural change in America, Britain, Europe and other wealthy parts of the world have created public support for tight regulation of tobacco. Governments in countries where strong civil societies and political institutions have emerged are hard to push around. When it comes to the tobacco industry, finding poorer countries with weaker regulatory cultures is essential; those that don't already have anti tobacco advertising laws are ideal, those that do and which can be bullied into relaxing them are also highly sought after.
Poor countries to bully
Lobbyists are paid large sums to change the attitudes of government ministers across Africa and Asia. Many, no matter how public spirited, often cave under relentless pressure and implied threats. Presenting an impoverished country like Togo or Malawi with the threat that 'excessive' regulation of tobacco products might result in economic damage is a way of not so subtly hinting that the powerful tobacco industry and its connections with various governments and international trade organisations might help make poor countries even poorer. Whether this is an empty threat or not is rarely a risk that governments teetering on the edge of bankruptcy are prepared to take. The irony, of course, is that an increase in smoking in any country automatically makes it poorer.
Making poor countries poorer
Profits from tobacco products are normally extracted from the country to sun themselves in tax havens or in the corporate headquarters of the tobacco giants. The country in question is left with a less healthy population with a lower disposable income and an increased pressure on health services. Tobacco advocates often counter this claim with the line that taxes and duties on cigarettes contribute to public coffers and offset the extra cost of health care to smokers. This argument is a nonsense for several reasons. Firstly, it is the smoker that pays the duty, not the tobacco company. Secondly, the increased level of addiction in society is rarely offset by the increased taxes that smokers are forced to pay as a result of their addiction rarely covers all levels of societal harm caused by smoking. Thirdly, the personal trauma of developing heart disease, lung cancer or a range of other illnesses cannot be financially quantified, it is quite simply, incalculable. No matter how many new oncology wards set up courtesy of taxation on cigarettes, the harm and suffering imposed on addicted individuals can never be undone.
Tobaccolonialism
Exploiting the world's poorest people is nothing new; plundering the most vulnerable and desperate societies in the world for their labour, raw materials and land has been the way in which wealthy countries have established and maintained their wealth for centuries. The addiction industries, and in this case, specifically, the tobacco industry have found new territories to exploit; the very bodies of men, women and children which can be induced into craving tobacco for life. As the western world has grown wise to this cynical and brutal industry and people have increasingly refused to play by its rules, new markets and easier targets have been sought out, selected and targeted.