Big Tobacco's Global Expansion

What do people do when the customers they seek are getting harder and harder to find? They look elsewhere, of course. It's getting more difficult for tobacco companies to find new smokers. What to do? Go to Eastern Europe, Africa, China or Mexico and big tobacco will and has found many men, women and children ready to become lifelong smokers.

When America and most of Western Europe got the memo that smoking was bad for your health, the governments took action and limited their ability to advertise. The tobacco industry, through a long history of deceit, deception and duplicity, has continued to find ways to profit in America, yet even with the strong restrictions of our government, has still been able to turn a nice profit. Cigarette sales have fallen in North America by about 5% in recent years, but the tobacco industry has more than offset that with expansion into global markets.

The tobacco companies are not bound by any borders in their insatiable drive for new customers. They have taken over local companies in Mexico, Poland, Tunisia, Indonesia, and now they're taking on China. Approximately 1.1 billion people 15 or older now smoke, worldwide. 72% of the smokers live in developing countries, a rate that is expected to rise to 85% by 2025. Currently 3.5 million tobacco related deaths occur each year, and this number is expected to jump to 10 million by 2025, according to the WHO.

The people that take up smoking in third world countries face dire consequences, not only because of the health risks of smoking, but because of the poor health services of their country, and the fact that they will face health related problems with very poor health services for them to turn to. The tobacco industry in particular is targeting women and children. Get the children hooked, and you've got them for life. Most of the countries that the tobacco industry is entering have little or no restriction on advertising, so they have been very aggressive over the past decade and it is paying big dividends for their bottom line.

This is just another example of how it's always the most vulnerable people who get the short end of the stick. We talk about minority groups not having representation, or poor people not having a voice in matters, and the tobacco industry getting new customers from poor women and children is just another exploitation. It's sad that all that matters to tobacco executives is the bottom line. Who gets hurt along the way is not their concern. They want to get to their goal, however they get there. In this case millions of new smokers will be hurt along the way, and as a result countries will face new, and unimaginable health issues.