To keep the money rolling in, the tobacco industry stoops to the systematic seduction of children, especially disadvantaged children. This is no exaggeration--and it is no small vice at stake.
The churches have borne little witness against the tobacco industry so far. The signs that this may be changing should be welcome, for the children lured into smoking by the tobacco pushers face a grim prospect: They are likely to die young.
Nicotine addiction is lethal. The average male smoker in the United States, for example, loses eight years of life expectancy. Losing older customers because of premature death jacks up the pressure on the marketing side of the tobacco enterprise. Counting smokers who quit as well as those who die, the industry needs more than two million new smokers a year just to maintain current sales levels.
Attention must focus on the young. Only 10 percent of new smokers begin after the age of 20. The rest are in their teens or are even younger. This means that some 6,000 children and teen-agers have to begin smoking each day in order for the tobacco industry in the United States to replace the customers it loses.
One-fourth of all new smokers are 12 years old or under. So every day the tobacco industry must recruit some 1,500 preteen-aged children to smoking. The industry knows this and shapes its advertising accordingly. But as Rep. Henry Waxman of California has remarked, advertising cigarettes is "the moral equivalent of a national campaign to 'Drive Drunk--Just for the Fun of It.'"
The surgeon general's recently released report, Smoking and Health in the Americas, affords new opportunity to confront the facts about the health effects of smoking. Tobacco use, said Surgeon General Antonia Novello, is "now easily designated the single most important risk to human health in the United States."
According to the Centers for Disease Control, 434,000 preventable tobacco-related deaths occur each year in the United States alone. That's the number that would die in a year if three 747 jumbo jets, fully loaded with passengers, crashed every day plus two additional crashes on weekends. In addition, some 53,000 Americans die each year from passive smoking.
THE SURGEON GENERAL'S new report says 100,000 people in Latin America and the Caribbean now die annually from tobacco-related illness. But that figure is bound to rise, especially if tobacco use increases in these areas, as now seems likely.
For one thing, the wealthy tobacco interests are facing a consumption downturn in the United States and Canada, especially among better-off and better-educated citizens. So the industry is redoubling efforts to expand overseas, particularly in what the surgeon general's report calls "the developing economies."
The tobacco industry focuses much energy on Latin America, but the transnational conglomerates are looking elsewhere, too. While cigarette sales were declining 7 percent in the United States during the 1980s, they were rising by 33 percent in Africa.
Worldwide, deaths from tobacco-related illness will number 3 million per year during the 1990s. If current trends continue, in 30 years 10 million tobacco-related deaths will occur annually. On the evidence so far, the industry will continue and increase its focus on attracting children for customers.
The downturn in tobacco use in the United States has certainly meant heightened attention on the vulnerable in this country. The industry puts its ads where children and the undereducated poor are most likely to see them. Magazines for the young, teen movies, sports events, and pop concerts all figure centrally in the industry's promotion strategy. Ninety percent of all cigarette (and alcohol) billboards nationwide are in black and Latino neighborhoods.
Many advertisements feature cartoon figures, such as the Old Joe camel character, who appeal directly to children. Indeed, since the Old Joe character began appearing, the Camel brand's share of customers under 18 years of age has increased from 0.5 percent to 32.8 percent. As Professor Gilbert Burnham of Johns Hopkins University remarks, Camel has captured "one third of the pediatric cigarette market." This illegal traffic in cigarettes for children under 18 now accounts for $476 million per year in Camel sales.
DEATH FOR PROFIT, especially when the profit is wrung from children and others who are vulnerable, is surely the worthy object of Christian witness and activism. The 1992 report of the surgeon general offers clear evidence that efforts toward tobacco control can make a difference. The report cites many examples of "immediate change in tobacco consumption subsequent to the enactment of new laws and regulations."
Tax measures, for instance, have worked dramatically. In 1984, Canada quadrupled the excise tax on cigarettes, and consumption has since declined 28.5 percent. In 1988, California raised cigarette taxes by 25 cents a pack. Most of the $550 million generated each year by the tax goes for medical services for the poor, but 20 percent supports tobacco education, including prime-time, anti-smoking advertisements on television. Since 1988 the percentage of adults in the United States who smoke has gone down 8 percent; in California the decline has been 17 percent.
Right now California's governor is under pressure to kill the ad campaign. In tobacco control as in other truthful undertakings, vigilance is necessary. But the payoff in better health seems assured.
So far the issue of tobacco has been a low priority for the churches, with some noteworthy exceptions. The Interfaith Council on Corporate Responsibility has spoken out. The Interreligious Coalition on Smoking or Health has become active in Washington, D.C. Some inner-city pastors, such as Rev. Calvin Butts in Harlem, have resisted the tobacco industry in their neighborhoods.
But why shouldn't the churches, in their legislative advocacy and other means of witness, make tobacco control a high priority? The evil--abuse of adults, and especially of children, for profit--is surely sufficient to merit attention. And experience so far, especially in taxation, shows that wise public policies can actually make a difference. They slow the smoking rate. In the long run, they will save lives.
Charles Scriven was the senior pastor of Sligo Seventh-day Adventist Church in Takoma Park, Maryland, and program chair of the Washington Institute of Contemporary Issues when this article appeared.
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