14 - 20 June 2001
Issue No.538
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 14 - 20 June 2001 Issue No.538 |
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Tobacco, exposed
Campaigns against smoking and tobacco companies have never been fiercer, writes Amira Howeidy
Sunday morning at 11, in central Cairo's Lutfi El- Sayed street, a taxi idles in a traffic jam right beside a neon billboard that reads "reject smoking." The elegant black and red poster features a beautiful woman with laughing eyes looking straight at the camera. Her arms embrace a lively-looking baby next to the word "no," in contrasting white. The two taxi passengers turn to gaze at the billboard. For at least a minute, they do not turn back.
That is exactly what a young woman on the other side of town wants. Her name is Fatimah Al- Awwa and she is making it her business to fight tobacco. For one thing, she is the regional adviser for the Nasr City-based World Health Organisation's (WHO) Tobacco Free Initiative (TFI). And she is passionate about it. It was she who pushed for the nationwide anti-smoking posters campaign. And although TFI has "no budget," in the words of Al-Awwa, and funding is on a project-by-project basis, her initiatives are getting concrete results. We see them in billboards warning of the hazards of smoking. We see them in nation-wide WHO-sponsored posters (80,000 of them), featuring a fatwa (religious ruling) that deems smoking haram (taboo). After this poster appeared small grocery shops in various areas across Egypt, such as Alamein, stopped selling cigarettes.
A thing of the past? Generations of smoking ads Anti-smoking efforts took a more serious turn last April when Mrs Suzanne Mubarak opened an anti-smoking conference. Recently, the Health Ministry added its weight and launched a television campaign with the motto "smoking when young leads to addiction when old." Capitalising on this, WHO marked "World No Tobacco Day" on 31 May with a four-day workshop about enhancing the role of the media in tobacco control. But the event was no mundane "smoking is bad for your health" affair. It drew the attention of the 20 Egyptian and Arab journalists who attended the workshop to the wealth of documents placed on the Internet by the tobacco companies as part of a 1998 settlement between the US state of Minnesota and the cigarette companies.
The documents, which extend from the 1950s to the present, allow the public, the media and policy-makers to see what the tobacco industry knew in private, compared to what it said in public, about several issues: the health effects of tobacco; corporate influencing of governments; suborning of journalists; the secretly-paid "experts"; and the undermining of the WHO.
The online documents researched by Al-Ahram Weekly reveal how tobacco companies' efforts successfully stymied anti-tobacco legislation in Egypt.
The story began in 1980. That year saw the first indications that Egypt might move into the direction of marketing restrictions, when an anti-smoking draft law was submitted to parliament, says an internal document by the international tobacco company, Philip Morris (PM), dated 10 September 1981, about the situation in Egypt. It was agreed that the industry would carefully monitor developments in Egypt. Philip Morris established contacts through the [state monopoly] Eastern Tobacco Company, with an Egyptian Member of Parliament (MP), who was vice-chairman of the Committee of Industrial Development for the Egyptian parliament. This MP, Hassan Soleib, assured Philip Morris that no draft law related to industry or trade could pass parliament without the advice of his committee. Moreover, he requested a "scientific paper" on smoking and health for use in his "capacity as a member of the People's Assembly," according to a letter from Rothman's G W Moore to Hassan Soleib dated 6 October 1980. One may wonder why Soleib chose the tobacco companies to provide his research.
An enthusiastic anti-smoking campaign has hit the street; so enthusiastic that two-faced ads have been put up on one-way streets photo: Sherif Sonbol
Moore's letter reflects the measures taken by the industry to stave off marketing restrictions. The contacts between Soleib and the industry relied on Soleib's committee's role in passing any draft law in parliament. In the end, however, neither side anticipated the sudden involvement of President Anwar El-Sadat.
In 1981, Sadat signed law 52, and it was published in the official gazette of 3 September. The law restricted tobacco advertisements, limiting them to cigarette packets; and required packets to display a health warning label and a summary of the cigarettes' constituents. After the law was passed, all the tobacco companies could do was delay its implementation. But next time they were better prepared. In August 1993, Sherif Omar, chairman of the parliament's Health Committee, attempted to modify law 52 so that it banned all promotion of cigarettes and other tobacco products. The companies responded with vigour. A Philip Morris document, "The Threat of a total ban on tobacco advertising in Egypt- Strategy guidelines and Action plan," laid out an aggressive action plan to thwart Omar.
The 24 page-long report, in a marvellous example of corporate euphemism, decided to, "determine the expected progress of the bill within the legislative and decision-making processes and identify key influential players within these processes; identify key allies that could be mobilised against the proposed bill and in defence of advertising freedoms in general; prepare adapted argumentation tailored to the particular perspectives of the allies who are expected to use them against the bill and in defence of advertising freedoms; seek to enlarge the cycle of the committee review of the proposed bill and to defeat (or as a minimum favourably amend it) through the intervention of key committee members with whom contact is established via natural allies; build and mobilise formal and informal coalitions against the proposed bill within natural allies and allied organisations; prepare broad-based opposition to the bill within the People's Assembly in the likely event that it is put to debate at plenary session; prepare a tailored media communications campaign in defence of marketing freedoms to be launched as appropriate in support of political and lobbying action undertaken." In other words, the tobacco companies planned to see which lawmakers could be persuaded to oppose the bill, organise and influence them to do so, and argue that health concerns are less important than being able to advertise whatever you like.
Omar's bill failed.
That it did is telling of the influence of multinational tobacco companies on local decision- making. Although there is nothing to indicate that such influencing has stopped, activists like Al- Awwa are fighting to ensure it will. "We cannot take tobacco companies to court. That isn't our role. But we're doing all we can to expose their tactics and enlighten public opinion," she told the Weekly. And with 20 reporters scrutinising tobacco documents online, exposure and enlightenment are likely to happen sooner rather than later.
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