My cigarette pack looks different. On packs sold in Britain, I’m used to seeing the Marlboro sign nearly obscured by an enormous warning label telling me that ‘Smoking kills’. In Argentina, however, there is no such label. Just a small unremarkable note on the side of the box that says, in Spanish, ‘Smoking is harmful to your health’, and in even smaller writing ‘Only for Adults’.
The appearance of even that small label is the result of a struggle over tobacco control policy between the Argentine authorities and major tobacco companies that has been going on since the 1960s.
Argentina attempted to put through the first bill on tobacco control in 1966, concerning the presence of warning labels on cigarette packs, but it was not passed. In 1973, a similar bill was proposed, but international tobacco companies, such as Philip Morris International (PMI) and British-American Tobacco (BAT), intervened formally to stop it being passed.
Further bills were proposed in 1976 and 1979, but the Chamber of Tobacco Industry offered a self-regulated advertising code as an alternative to the proposals.
During the 1980s, three proposed bills particularly worried the tobacco industry. The Maglietti bill, in 1984, was vetoed with help from the tobacco industry who claimed that any limitations on the freedom to advertise would be unacceptable infringements of rights. The Neri bill, in 1985, was heralded as potentially ‘the most severe tobacco law on planet Earth’ by worried advertising account executives at Camel. It never passed, although another bill by the same senator was proposed in 1990. Following a two-year period of lobbying from PMI, including letters sent directly to then-president Carlos Menem, the bill failed again.
In a country where 35% of the adult population smoke, there is only one national law in Argentina that states anything to do with tobacco control.
The Pepe Law, passed in 1986, made the aforementioned inconspicuous warning label mandatory, and put restrictions on tobacco advertising on TV and radio. A tobacco watershed was created, which made it illegal to advertise tobacco products between 8am and 10pm.
Nowadays, however, you will not find tobacco advertising on TV or radio at any time of day or night, but this is not mandated by law. The tobacco companies themselves do not to advertise on TV or radio.
It is these self-imposed restrictions that have stopped meaningful tobacco control policy from being put into place in Argentina, according to Ernesto Sebrie, a research fellow at the Roswell Park Cancer Foundation in New York.
Aside from lobbying against tobacco control bills in general, the tobacco companies have also turned their attentions to the younger generation of potential smokers as well.
Youth Prevention Programmes
According to the Global Youth Tobacco Survey, 25% of 13-15 year olds in Argentina smoke; 30% of Argentine 11-year-olds have tried smoking already.
Since the early 1990s, transnational tobacco companies have promoted ‘Youth Prevention Programmes’ as part of their Corporate Social Responsibility campaigns in Latin America.
In Argentina, Massalin-Particulares, a PMI affiliate, spearheaded a campaign called ‘Yo tengo P.O.D.E.R’ (I have power: Purpose, Pride, Determination, Enthusiasm, Responsibility), a broad-based youth education programme intended for educators to help children handle peer pressure on a variety of lifestyle decisions. According to Massalin-Particulares, UNESCO recognised the programme as ‘the best educational practice in Argentina’.
They put into practice their own cigarette marketing codes and a retailer programme that implemented the posting of PMI-sponsored signs that say ‘I do not sell cigarettes to minors’ at points of sale. PMI is also responsible for the voluntary label on cigarette packets that say ‘Only for adults’.
In light of the worryingly high prevalence of smoking among Argentina’s young people, it should be encouraging that there are such programmes in place. The tobacco companies seem to be attempting to redress the balance caused by the world-wide endemic of smoking that they supply the tools for. Sebrie alleges, however, that these programmes are not all they claim to be.
He maintains that there is in fact ‘no evidence that such programmes reduce smoking amongst youths’. They do, however, meet the industry’s goal of portraying the companies as ‘concerned corporate citizens’ and undermining effective tobacco control interventions that are required by the World Health Organisation (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC).
An Oxymoronic Situation
A cigarette company trying to stop kids from picking up smoking? Surely this is simply shooting themselves in the foot? If they stop the younger generation from smoking, then they lose their future customers. The older smokers will die, half of them prematurely from smoking-related diseases, the younger generation will evolve into an older generation of non-smokers, and the tobacco companies will have no-one to turn to.
The PMI website is forthcoming with information about the programmes. “We do not consider young people our future clients,” it states. “If our youth smoking prevention efforts and strict marketing standards mean that fewer young people choose to smoke when they become adults, so be it.”
The tobacco companies seem to be playing the martyr – ready to sacrifice themselves for the health of future generations. While it would be excellent to believe that they have young people’s health as their priority, given their previous efforts to prevent effective tobacco control policies, it would seem there is almost definitely an ulterior motive behind these programmes. If they look like they are doing something proactive to prevent children from starting smoking, then they have all the ammunition they need to stop actual regulations from being put into place. They will still be able to promote cigarettes legally.
Kids Against the Companies
No doubt peer pressure is an important factor in young people’s starting to smoke, but it can also be an important factor in getting them to stop or even not to start in the first place. BASTA, Young Latin Americans Free from Tobacco, a cross-continental organisation of young people who actively want to be free of tobacco, is a major force in the combat against the actions of the tobacco industry.
BASTA states that it is ‘not against the smoker’. Instead, it is ‘against the industry that is constantly pushing us towards a nicotine addiction so it can replace its dying consumers’. There is an extraordinary amount of information on their website, including ‘365 reasons not to smoke’ and a section called ‘Enough of the Lies’. It details all the spin that the tobacco industry has perpetuated, such as quotes from BAT stating that it should really consider itself ‘more of a pharmacological company than a tobacco producer’.
BASTA’s manifesto cites that young people should be free to make their own decisions, but they are tired of being ‘manipulated into making decisions that will affect the rest of our lives’. BASTA and PMI seem to concur on one point; the choice to smoke is just that, a choice. BASTA, however, is not encouraging young people to make that choice under the umbrella of a cigarette company.
Fumigating the Future?
Sebrie claims that the only way that Argentina can hope for a more smoke-free future is to follow through with implementing all the policies recommended by the WHO FCTC – 100% smoke-free policies, a complete advertising ban, tobacco tax increases, and pictorial-based health warning labels.
Over a third of Argentines may smoke, but that percentage is down from 40% in 1999. The Argentine minister of health Ginés Gonzélez Garcia is attempting to push through a new bill with much stricter restrictions on tobacco sale, warning labels, and a minimum age for buying cigarettes that would become national law if passed. There appears to be public support for a nationwide 100% smoke-free policy.
And indeed, Latin America in general appears to be moving towards tobacco control: comprehensive smoke-free policies have been implemented in Uruguay, Panama and Mexico City. Even in Argentina, the provinces of Santa Fe, Tucumán, Córdoba, Mendoza and Neuquén all have 100% smoke-free policies in place. And organisations like BASTA prove that there are at least some Argentine kids who are not for turning.
Argentina needs stronger, regulated, actual laws in place concerning tobacco control, rather than initiatives from the tobacco companies themselves. The number of bills that have been proposed show that there is at least a willingness to start some kind of changes – there just needs to be a bit more determination to see them through.
For more information on Basta, visit http://basta-argentina.blogspot.com