Asia Times: Paying lip service to anti-tobacco pledge


	June 3, 2000	atimes.com

India/Pakistan

Paying lip service to anti-tobacco pledge
By Nadeem Iqbal

ISLAMABAD - Accused by health activists of inducing children to smoke, Pakistan's state-run television is seeking approval from the highest level for continuing with cigarette advertising that it was ordered to stop six years ago.

Indeed, the government's Pakistan Television Corporation (PTV), which never heeded a 1994 ruling by the Federal Ombudsman banning it from carrying tobacco spots, may actually have succeeded in this.

Officials in the federal Law Ministry who did not want to be identified told IPS that President Rafiq Tarar overturned the ombudsman's ruling earlier this year. The ombudsman, which listens to citizen complaints against government agencies, had banned tobacco advertising on PTV, agreeing with a public interest petition that this could encourage children to smoke.

According to the Pakistan Pediatric Association, everyday more than 1,000 children between the age of six and 16 years, pick up the smoking habit. It is estimated that more than a third of men and some 4 percent of women in the country are smokers.

PTV, which earns a third of its revenue from tobacco advertising, had appealed to then President Farooq Leghari. Appeals against ombudsman rulings are sent by the president to the Law Ministry for its advice. A PTV spokesman told IPS that it was in the television channel's ''commercial interest'' to accept cigarette advertising. Anti-smoking campaigners too could buy time on PTV, he added.

Pakistan's anti-smoking campaigners argue that PTV may be a business company, but it is owned by the government which has a responsibility to protect the health of the people. Health activists remind the government that Pakistan is also a signatory to the World Health Assembly's resolutions calling on member states to eliminate all direct and indirect advertising, promotion and sponsorship of tobacco.

A Health Ministry official said that every year, the government spends some $20,000 on anti-smoking messages on PTV. But cigarette companies spend millions of dollars annually on advertising. PTV officials told IPS said that the channel has, in the past, buckled under pressure from the powerful tobacco industry. They recalled how an anti-tobacco spot prepared by PTV in the early 1990s was taken off air under pressure from cigarette companies.

Those campaigning to take cigarette advertising off television got a shot in the arm from a message on World Tobacco Day Wednesday by one of the country's best-known sports stars. In a statement, former national cricket team captain-turned-politician Imran Khan urged sportspersons not to accept tobacco sponsorships. ''I have witnessed from close, the power and persuasiveness of tobacco promotion,'' said Khan, who called for ''banning all kinds of advertisements, promotion and sports sponsorships'' by tobacco companies.

But anti-tobacco campaigners are up against the immense clout of cigarette companies that spend millions of dollar annually to promote smoking in Pakistan. According to the prestigious advertising magazine Age, the Lakson Tobacco Company spent an astounding $6.4 million on publicity during 1998, making it the third largest business advertiser in Pakistan that year.

Anti-tobacco campaigners accuse the government of being swayed by the tobacco industry. According to independent estimates, the Pakistani government collected some $311 million as tobacco tax in 1990, slightly more than a tenth of the government's total revenue earnings that year.

Every year, tobacco companies sell 50 billion sticks in the country. This does not include some 10 billion cigarettes that are either spurious brands or smuggled into Pakistan. Cigarette production went up from 29.9 billion sticks a decade ago to 48.21 billion cigarettes in 1997-98.

The tobacco industry argues that it not only swells the government's coffers, but is a big employer. An estimated 80,000 people are engaged in tobacco production and marketing. Tobacco farms occupy 0.2 percent of the country's irrigated land. In 1995-96, the tobacco crop was grown on some 46,100 hectares with a total production of 79,900 tonnes.

The government's concern about the health risks of tobacco use has so far produced only a barely legible mandatory warning on cigarette packs that ''smoking is injurious to health'', say the critics. They are also unhappy with the fact that the higher law courts have tended to rule in favor of the tobacco industry. In early 1997, the Lahore High Court, which is the country's second highest, had put some curbs on the tobacco industry advertising on radio and television. But six months later, the court's ruling, on a petition of the Pakistan Chest Foundation and Anti-Tuberculosis Association, was overturned by a larger bench of the same court on appeal by tobacco companies.

In 1994, the country's top court had dismissed an appeal to ban cigarette advertising that was made on the ground of violation of human rights.

(Inter Press Service)

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�1999 Asia Times Online Co., Ltd.

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