Asian children now target market of tobacco firms

MANILA, Philippines - Thailand-based Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance (SEATCA) has warned that Asian children are now the target market of tobacco companies.

SEATCA director Bungon Ritthiphakdee said recently that cigarette sales in Japan, United States and United Kingdom, the home countries of tobacco companies Japan Tobacco International (JTI), Philip Morris International (PMI) and British American Tobacco (BAT), respectively, have declined.

With this development, these tobacco companies have been dumping their cigarettes in Asia, with the youths as primary targets, Ritthiphakdee said.

“The big tobacco companies want Asia’s children for their profits. This fight is really about protecting our children and public health against an industry increasing its profits by selling a harmful product that addicts our youth and kills half of its customers prematurely,” she said.

SEATCA records showed that in 2010, JTI lost some 190,000 Japanese smokers.

The company, however, reported that more than 50 percent of its profits come from overseas sales.

“JTI sold 436.5 billion sticks overseas and has core revenue of about $12 billion versus sales of 116.2 (billion) sticks in Japan,” SEATCA said in a statement.

The group added that the prevalence of smoking in the US has been declining steadily from 24.7 percent in 1997 to 20.9 percent in 2005, then to 18 percent in 2012.

Meanwhile, PMI cigarette volume in the US from January to June 2013 is at 63 billion sticks, a reduction of six percent compared to the figure during the same period last year.