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With the merger of two of the world's biggest cigarette companies - British
American Tobacco (BAT) and Rothmans - the threat of smoking to the health of the Third World population is even bigger now, as the new giant pursues its main objective of targeting emerging markets in the developing world.
Two of the world's biggest cigarette companies - British American
Tobacco (BAT) and Rothmans - have merged to create a group selling more than 900 billion cigarettes a year around the world. Faced with a decline in sales in the developed world mainly as a result of anti-smoking legislation and publicity [link widoczny dla zalogowanych], the new giant plans to target the expanding market in the 'developing' world, where there is less awareness of the threat of smoking to health and where laws against cigarette advertising is virtually unknown.
The $13 billion merger, announced in January, makes the new group the second largest private tobacco company after the American Philip Morris, which sells Marlboro - the dominant global brand. (The Chinese State-owned tobacco company is the largest tobacco producer in the world.) The tie-up
which brings together brands such as 555 State Express, Rothmans [link widoczny dla zalogowanych], Benson & Hedges, Dunhill and Peter Stuyvesant, is expected not only to put Philip
Morris's dominance in doubt but also to trigger off other mergers.
The tobacco companies, including the new group to be known as New BAT, admit that their main objective is to target emerging markets. A New BAT spokesman admitted in January that the group would target the growing markets in China, Africa, India and South-East Asia. If New BAT succeeds in its promotional pitch, it will cause more deaths than any war, disease or famine has yet claimed.
In other words, the sleek brands that will flood those regions as a result of the targeting are the biggest single killer known to history, and are, therefore, more lethal than the cruise missiles rained by Uncle Sam on Iraq, for instance [link widoczny dla zalogowanych], but scarcely attract a fraction of the publicity.
Health experts estimate that cigarettes will claim four million lives a year worldwide by 2000 and 10 million a year by 2030, of which seven million will be in the developing world. Anti-smoking organisations [link widoczny dla zalogowanych], health experts and scientists in the West - including ASH, the anti-smoking pressure group, the British Medical Association (BMA) and Oxford University dons �C have opposed the merger, arguing it will lead to more deaths in the developing world.
The BMA have accused the New BAT of seeking new smokers in the developing world because its sales are under pressure in the developed world, where lawsuits, anti-smoking legislation and adverse publicity have tarnished its image. It said after the announcement of the merger: 'This is an industry on the defensive. What is alarming is that it is overtly striving to recruit new smokers in the developing world because it is under huge pressure in Western markets.'