Clearing Away the Smoke

AFTER SEVERAL MONTHS of deliberation, the Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility (ACSR) recommended this month that the Corporation divest its $20 million of stock in cigarette manufacturer Philip Morris, Inc. Yet despite the ACSR's complaints against Philip Morris--which include the unique magnitude of the health hazard constituted by cigarette smoking, the inherent rather than potential harmfulness of cigarettes, and the active promotion through advertising of smoking-a Crimson undergraduate poll revealed that half of those surveyed felt Harvard should retain its tobacco holdings.

The reluctance to view cigarette production as immoral is widespread. Supporters of companies like Philip Morrison reason that the guiding tenet of American commerce has been consumer freedom of choice, from the days of wagon-pushing peddlers selling magic elixirs to computerized, stylized Madison Avenue marketing. As long as smokers understand the risks cigarettes pose, many believe, others have no business trying to discourage or eliminate tobacco production.

This freedom-o-choice argument may convince some that the 300,000 annual deaths in the U.S. linked to smoking to do not warrant shareholder steps like divestiture. The question becomes much less fuzzy, however, when we look beyond our own borders to the rapacious marketing practices of tobacco companies in foreign countries, especially the Third World. The ACSR recommendations addresses this concern only briefly, but details of these practices reveal the truly exploitative intentions of films like Philip Morris and provide a moving case for Harvard to divest in tobacco stock.

During the mid-1970's, domestic cigarette sales plummeted as American consumers became more aware, and fearful, of the health consequences of smoking. Meanwhile, government price supports for tobacco created excess tobacco stockpiles to aggravate the problem. In presumably smoke-filled rooms, executives of major U.S. tobacco companies--like Philip Morris and U.S. Tobacco--decided the answer to the problem was to expand markets and foist American tobacco on the rest of the world.

But because the excess U.S. tobacco was of poor quality and at best crudely refined, and because foreign smokers too were lighting up less frequently, the U.S. companies found their cigarettes couldn't compete in the cutthroat European and Japanese markets. Anywhere in the developed world, the problems were the same. As Robert Wagman of the North American Newspaper Alliance explained. "The tobacco companies . . . need consumers who will consume high tar tobacco in blissful ignorance of the danger it poses to their health."

They found such consumers in the Third World. The growth in the past decade of the Third World tobacco market, particularly in Africa and Latin America, has been phenomenal, surpassing the tobacco companies' wildest hopes. There, the American firms take advantage of the freedom from restriction they find in less developed countries, where a pack of Marlboros isn't required to carry a health warning. The same U.S. law which requires such warnings in the U.S. exempts the tobacco companies from providing them abroad. Such inequities deprive consumers in the world's least developed regions of the ability to make an informed, objective, and free choice about whether to smoke.

Ads promoting American cigarettes in Third World countries are similarly unregulated, further clouding the possibility of an informed choice. Ads for U.S. cigarettes in the Third World project the same messages which used to mark American ads, saying in effect. "You're smart if you smoke" or "Smoking is good for your sex life," the World Health Organization magazines has reported. All of the important people, the ads imply, have ridden to a position authority on a magic carpet of smoke.

One particularly poignant photograph in the magazines shows as emaciated and shoddily else home. Overlooking the scene, in the background, stands a great billboard depicting cigarette-smoking business executives clothed in expensive suits; their brand of cigarette, the sign announces, is "the brand for the Very Important Person." According to the World Health Organization, advertising in the Third World... offers the fulfillment of three main aspirations; unity, social status, and sex-role identification." Virility is smokiness' promoted and accepted result.

The double standard practiced by tobacco companies not end with marketing techniques. Hooked American smokers, fearful of tobacco's health hazards, can at least turn to safer "low tar" cigarettes. Instead of defiantly boasting "I'd rather fight than switch," health-conscious smokes can mumble, "Well, I guess I'd rather switch than wait to see which gets me first--the cardiovascular disease or the lung cancer." But low tar cigarettes cost firms like Philip Morris much more to produce than the high-tar variety. As a result, the tobacco sold abroad contains much higher tar levels than domestic cigarettes.

The Christian Science Monitor recently discovered that a Third World cigarette often contains up to four times as much tar as a cigarette of the same brand sold in the United States. This callous, if not criminal, exploitation greatly magnifies the health risks posed by smoking. The results are beginning to show: The newly created epidemic of smoking-related diseases in Third World countries already rivals even infections diseases and malnutrition--historically the Third World's greatest medical problems--in many areas. And since the result of smoking often take 10 to 15 years to manifest themselves, the worst effects still have not appeared. As one expert succinctly put it, "Millions more lives will soon be going up in smoke."

DESPITE THE VALIANT EFFORTS of international organizations like the World Health Organization, the tobacco firms seem unlikely to start policing their own operation. For every dollar spent trying to educate Third World smokers about the health consequences of their habit, the tobacco companies spend $10 to $20 on advertising. The ACSR labeled Philip Morris' response to a shareholder resolution last year concerning the company's activities in the Third World "callous and misleading." And the governments of victimized Third World nations also offer little hope for a solution--many have yet to recognize the health hazards that await, and where smoking-related disease is already widespread, most governments cannot spend scarce funds anti-smoking campaigns.

Until Congress awakens to the deadly ramifications of U.S. tobacco trade, the problem will remain intractable. But powerlessness should not excuse Harvard from adopting a policy of divestiture of its Philip Morris stock. Even if divestiture dots nothing to force Philip Morris to alter its foreign trade practices, the moral justification for financially supporting tobacco production and export is even thinner than for investing in South Africa or nuclear weapons production, the other hotly debated divestiture issues. Continuing to ignore--or worse, endorse--the injustice our tobacco industry imposes crisis. Instead, our silence will not add to our responsibility for the consequences.