11/03/2004 Deaths due to poor diet and lack of exercise have risen by more than a third in the last ten years, said the US government this week, citing new research that suggests obesity could soon overtake tobacco as the leading preventable cause of death, writes Lindsey Partos.In 2000, 400,000 American - one in 700 of the population - deaths were related to eating badly and physical inactivity, slightly under the 435,000 figure linked to tobacco, finds the new study released by the government's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"Americans need to understand that overweight and obesity are literally killing us," said Health Secretary Tommy G. Thompson yesterday unveiling a new government drive to stem the rising tide. Far from a revolution, the new HHS and Ad Council advertising campaign aims to educate Americans that they can take small, achievable steps to improve their health and reverse the obesity epidemic.
Consumers don't need to go to extremes - such as joining a gym or taking part in the latest diet plan - to make improvements in their health - but they do need to get active and eathealthier, said the health secretary, looking to slash the estimated $117 billion that obesity costs the US in medical fees and lost productivity each year.
Approximately 129.6 million Americans, or 64 per cent, are overweight or obese, a physical condition shown to increase the risk for developing type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and some forms of cancer.
But solutions to the harmful consumption patterns of the Americans revealed by the study will not come overnight. They are rooted in a steady adaptation of the culture and in small steps to improve the consumer's relationship with food.
Paradoxically, parallel to the rise in obesity is the growing interest in functional foods formulated by the food industry. Suppliers of ingredients for health food products in the US, and Europe, have witnessed decent growth in this segment in the past five years. The campaign launched by Thompson this week will only further this growth as he enourages consumers to eat 'healthier foods'.
According to the $500 billion US food processing industry Americans spend an estimated $33 billion annually on weight control products.
For 2004 NIH funding for obesity research will come in at $400.1 million, a slight rise on $378.6 million last year. According to the government, the budget request for 2005 has been pitched at $440.3 million, a 10 per cent increase on the current year.
The .CDC study, "Actual Causes ofDeath in the United States, 2000", is published in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association.
brieftly introduction
Standards of evidence, both scientific and medical, must be met in cases involving large-scale, serious dangers to public health. A strong case can be made for imposing restrictions on the sale, promotion, and even consumption of a certain products, such as cigarettes, which harm public health and the global economy. There is now a substantial body of evidence demonstrating how damaging tobacco use is on individual nations and on the global economy. Because there are now laws restricting tobacco adverting in the U.S, the tobacco market has diminished in the U.S. Therefore, tobacco companies are focusing marketing on Asian countries.
In many Asian countries, smoking is fashionable. And, Asian smokers seem to be susceptible to glitzy advertising campaigns. Smoking American or European cigarettes is seen as "cool." According to The New York Times article "No gift is more appreciated in Vietnam than British-made ‘555' cigarettes. In China, the choice is Marlboro. Among the gentry of Thailand, it is Dunhill"(Shenon, 1994, p.10). “Rates of smoking are extremely high among Asian men: 60 percent in Japan and China, for example, and a whopping 73 percent in Vietnam” (Pollack, 1997. p.1).
Physicians and scientists are concerned about how increased smoking will affect the health of the Asian people. One scientist estimates that "because of increasing tobacco consumption in Asia, the annual worldwide death toll from tobacco-related illnesses will more than triple over the next two or three decades, from about 3 million a year to 10 million a year, a fifth of them in China. His calculations suggest that 50 million Chinese children alive today will eventually die from diseases linked to cigarette smoking" (Shenon, 1994, p.16).
History of the Problem
The tobacco industry, in general, and individual companies, in particular, conduct themselves to ensure a profit from smokers. But, this industry does have many enemies, and the issue that unites these various groups is health. Cigarette smoking has been linked with heart and lung disease and many forms of cancer. Are the giant multinational tobacco companies in financial danger? Probably not, because cigarette use is growing in Asia, Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and in the former Soviet Union. “In Asia alone, the World Health Organization estimated at the beginning of the 1990s that smoking would increase by one-third during the decade” (Allin, Mossialos, McKee and Holland, 2004, p.82).
While some Asian governments have followed the lead of Western nations and banned tobacco advertising on television and radio, the tobacco companies find ways to get their message to the people-at sporting events, for example, or through clothing that sports cigarette logos. In Japan, the tobacco industry and four multinational tobacco companies have voluntarily developed new, tough advertising standards, effective April 1, 1998. These standards are designed to control smoking by young people (Nakagawa, 1998). In strict Singapore, anti-smoking laws, such as laws against selling cigarettes to minors, carry heavy penalties. Such laws indicate that anti-smoking attitudes of Western countries are finding their way to some Asian countries, (Nakagawa, 1998).
Scope of the problem
The multinational tobacco companies say that they are not trying to get nonsmokers in Asia to start smoking. Instead, they say, they are trying to get Asian people who already smoke to change brands. The evidence suggests otherwise, however. “In previous years, the ministry had tried to include such a section but had been overruled by the more powerful Ministry of Finance, which represents the interests of the tobacco industry (note that the Japanese government owns a major share of Japan Tobacco),” (Pollack, 1997, p.16). In Hong Kong, very few women smoke. Thus, if companies are not interested in creating new smokers, Hong Kong would not appear to be a good market for a cigarette brand aimed at women. “Yet Philip Morris introduced their Virginia Slims brand aimed specifically at women in Hong Kong a few years ago (Shannon, 1994, p.17).
Under the Bush Administration particularly, the US government pushed for agreements that allow free trade in cigarettes, thus ensuring that Asian countries would be open markets for American-based tobacco companies. The 1993 annual report of R. J. Reynolds Tobacco claimed that "today, Reynolds has access to 90 percent of the world's markets, a decade ago, only 40 percent." (Greenberg, 2001, p.101). Clearly, trade negotiators' efforts to support the American tobacco industry have been successful.
Population
China is an especially attractive market to the multinationals because it has “a huge population (1.2 billion people) and a growing economy. The number of smokers in China is greater than the population of the United States” (Shenon, 1994, p.17). Other market groups targeted by the tobacco companies are Asian women and young people. While adult males have been the most common smokers in Asia, advertising aimed particularly at women and young people seek to change that. “Increasing numbers of Asian women see smoking as a sign of their liberation” (Pollack, 199, p.1).
Rationale
There are served reasons why this subject is important to me. It involves large-scale serious danger to public health in Asia and affects my family, and friends, as well as, the health of the next generation. This paper attempts to examine in the case of “cigarette companies who have promoted tobacco use, which is the number one cause of cancer-related death globally” (Williams, 1992, p.74.). The paper also focuses on the efforts to the tobacco companies to target Asian women and young people, and the dangers of passive smoke.
This paper also reflects on the lessons learned from the history of England and its use of drugs in China in the nineteenth century. Because China was richly resources that England did not have, England wanted to have China in its colonial plan. Therefore, “their plans failed Chinese Scholars recognized England’s intention and the result was the opium war” (Waley, 1979, p.15). Now again, Western tobacco companies and politicians uses cigarettes to exploit an in Asian market. Thus, it may be said that the cigarettes companies which have harmed public health in the past continue to the present have been were among the pioneers in the processes of market globalization that we are witnessing today.
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