
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, May 22, 1990                   TAG: 9005220091
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: A3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: BOSTON                                LENGTH: Medium

OVERSEAS TOBACCO SALES HIT

Government efforts to open overseas markets for tobacco are a "moral outrage" that seriously threaten the health of citizens in developing countries, former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop said Monday.

Foreign advertising aimed at women and young people, combined with a lack of warning labels like those mandated in the United States, cause many non-smokers to take up the habit, Koop said at the World Conference on Lung Health.

"There is no sense in planning for the long-term economic health of a foreign society and providing that society with foreign aid on the one hand, if the physical health of the people of that society is fundamentally endangered during that same long term," Koop said.

"Export of tobacco products is a moral outrage," he said.

Koop's view was backed by health officials from developing countries.

Dr. Judith MacKay, director of the Asian Consultancy on Tobacco Control in Hong Kong, said smoking may be declining in the United States but overseas the trend is in the opposite direction.

"For every smoker [who] stops in Boston, two more start in Beijing," she said.

Andy Copenhaver of the Washington-based U.S. Cigarette Export Association denied that government efforts to persuade Asian countries to allow U.S. tobacco imports would increase the number of smokers.

He pointed to Japan, Korea and Taiwan, countries opened to foreign tobacco companies only in recent years and said smoking rates in those countries either declined or increased at the same rate as before the companies arrived.

MacKay said American cigarettes sold in Asia often have a higher tar content than U.S. brands and the packages lack the health warnings required here.

Dr. Carlos Alvarez Herrera, president of the Latin America Coordinating Committee on Smoking Control in Argentina, said tobacco companies are entrenched in Latin America.

"[Tobacco] advertising is everywhere, at all times, theaters, opera houses, many sporting events, popular concerts," Herrera said. "We cannot compete with their public opinion."

Smoking in the United States dropped 5 percent in 1989, but U.S. tobacco exports rose 20 percent - to 100 billion cigarettes - during the same period, Koop said.

Between 1971 and 1981, cigarette smoking increased in Asia and Latin America by 30 percent more than the population increase, Koop said.

The Bush administration is negotiating with Thailand to seek openings for the tobacco trade.

by CNB