Anti-smoking push gains momentum worldwide

THE tobacco industry's multimillion-dollar campaign against the Australian government's plain pack measures comes amid evidence of the growing worldwide distaste for smoking.

A World Health Organisation report released yesterday on the ''global tobacco epidemic'' finds that more than half the world's population, 3.8 billion people, live in countries with at least some form of anti-smoking measure such as health warnings on cigarette packs, cigarette taxes and anti-tobacco mass-media campaigns.

The report cites the campaign by the tobacco companies in Australia against the increased cigarette tax and plain package measures, including messages inserted into cigarette packs urging smokers to complain to the government.

That generated about 1000 emails, about 200 of which were of questionable origin, a government spokesman said. That was ''relatively few'' given there were about 3 million smokers in Australia.

The escalating drive against smoking includes revealing videos in India showing lurid footage of patients who have had to undergo radical mouth and throat surgery as a result of cancer caused by the common practice of chewing tobacco.

In Uruguay the repellent images of mouth cancer cover most of the package and make Australia's warning pictures seem tame.


In contrast to Australia's disease-dominated campaign messages however, the Uruguay campaign also focuses on an unwanted social evil: ''You smoke, you stink. Smoking causes bad breath, tooth staining and unpleasant smell.''

Uruguay faces a similar legal action from the industry to that being brought against the Australian government - the claim that plain packaging laws would violate a trade treaty with Hong Kong.

In Uruguay's case the tobacco industry is claiming that the graphic images on cigarette packs violate that country's investment agreement with Switzerland.

In Turkey, radio and television stations are required to provide a minimum 90 minutes of free airtime every month for anti-smoking programming. The law has been tightened to ensure that 30 minutes of that is in prime time after stations tended to broadcast the segments early in the morning or late at night.

The power of the tobacco lobby has been at play in recent decades in the United States, one of the early movers on cigarette pack health warnings. But the US has fallen behind as a trendsetter and only next year will introduce graphic images on packs.

The WHO report says there are 425 million people in 19 countries, about 6 per cent of the world's population - where bans on tobacco marketing are now in place. Of those countries nearly all are low or middle-income countries.

Nevertheless, WHO says, the tobacco epidemic continues to expand because of marketing, population growth in countries where tobacco use is increasing and the ''extreme addictiveness'' of nicotine.