Fuming Over A Hazardous Export

By Barbara Rudolph

During his eight-year tenure as Surgeon General, C. Everett Koop campaigned passionately against cigarette smoking among Americans. Last week Koop took on the tobacco industry once again, but this time he was fighting the sale of U.S. cigarettes in Asia. Testifying before a committee of the U.S. Trade Representative's office, Koop blasted the industry's contention that the U.S. Government should pressure Thailand, which bans all cigarette imports, to open its market to American manufacturers. Said Koop, who retires Oct. 1: "At a time when we are pleading with foreign governments to stop the export of cocaine, it is the height of hypocrisy for the United States to export tobacco."

American cigarette makers want Carla Hills, the U.S. Trade Representative, to break down Thailand's import barriers so that they can charge into that country's market. Specifically, the industry filed a petition under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 accusing Thailand of unfair trade practices. Hills is investigating the claim. But the American tobacco lobby is bitterly opposed by U.S. public-health advocates and the Thai government, which has the somewhat contradictory motives of protecting its citizens' health and defending the interests of its entrenched cigarette monopoly.

A move into Thailand would be the latest victory in an aggressive campaign by U.S. tobacco companies to conquer Asian markets. Since 1986, U.S. trade negotiators have helped cigarette makers break down import barriers in Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. As a result, America's worldwide cigarette exports reached $2.6 billion last year, double the sales of 1986. The U.S. industry has come to depend on exports for growth, since a declining number of Americans are smoking. Consumption of cigarettes in the U.S. has fallen about 2% a year, to a volume of 562 billion in 1988.

U.S. tobacco companies contend that they have a right to demand fair competition. Said Trade Representative Hills last week: "Where other nations permit local cigarettes to be advertised and sold, we say there may as well be U.S. cigarettes because we believe in nondiscrimination." Cigarette makers also insist that they are not inspiring new smokers but offering better choices for people who already have a taste for nicotine. Says Brenda Follmer, a spokeswoman for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco International, which sells the Winston , and Camel brands: "People say we are trying to make the Asians light up. But they're already lighting up."

The industry's critics argue that the U.S. should be just as responsible for the hazards of the products it sells overseas as for the goods it consumes at home. Says Representative Chester Atkins, a Massachusetts Democrat: "Our trade policy sends a message to our partners that Asian lungs are more expendable than American lungs." Many Asians voice resentment about that notion. At the hearings in Washington last week, Thai National Assembly Member Surin Pitsuwan asked, "Where is the concern for humanity once felt by the United States?"

When they arrive in Asia, U.S. cigarette producers often try to light up the female and teenage market, a strategy that particularly angers health experts. In Taiwan street peddlers hired by U.S. firms hand out free cigarette samples at discos. Marketers for R.J. Reynolds last year planned to charge five empty packets of its Winston cigarettes as admission to a rock concert in Taiwan but dropped the idea in the face of a public outcry.

Yet a growing challenge to U.S. cigarette sales in Asia may be the local competition. Japan Tobacco, a former state-run monopoly that is being privatized, is already learning the marketing ways of the Marlboro man and the Virginia Slims woman. To attract younger customers, the company introduced a brand of cigarettes known as Dean, playing off the popularity of Hollywood legend James Dean. Since antismoking campaigns are only beginning to build in most Asian countries, the region's cigarette-marketing wars are likely to produce plenty of smoke and profits for several years to come.

With reporting by Gisela Bolte/Washington and Paul Mooney/ Taipei