No smoke without adverts
Nepal's cigarette producers, supported by a Government media hungry for advertising revenue, are allowed to encourage the young and old to consume deadly smoke. The entry in 1987 of Surya Tobacco Company into the previously protected market was significant. Its advertising hardsell and superior marketing has left the public defenseless while propelling the company to be the country´s premier cigarette producer, far outstripping the former Government monopoly of Janakpur Cigarette Factory. While it is Surya's and Janakpur's business mandate to make money off the lungs of Nepal's population, what does one make of the sellout by the Government's radio, print and television media? A look at the data reveals the surprising information that public media can survive without cigarette (and liquor) advertising. Somebody just has to insist. Following is an investigation by Manisha Aryal.
"Nepal fascinates me.
While studying in Europe, I saw the Alps,
…but nothing to beat my Nepal, my pride.
1 remember the day father and I visited the Palace ofNuwakot.
I went there again!
The drive was still as enjoyable, the mountains as mysterious,
and the palace, …breathtaking!
Suddenly I heard a flute,,
..the same tune I had heard long ago.
I remembered the flute seller who ´d sit in a corner, playing.
I followed the sound and found him.
Do you remember me?
I picked one up
and played the same tune he had taught me years ago,
…and then he smiled!
… a beautiful mountain panorama, a Nepali village …the soft, educated tones of the voice-over conjures up an image of an unlikely Kathmandu aristocrat who shops at Hanods and vacations in Monte Carlo.
This expertly shot commercial is not meant to lure Western tourists to Nepal. It is the Surya Tobacco Company´s up-market television commercial to sell its deluxe filter brand, Surya.
At a time when governments all over the world are enacting stringent measures against tobacco advertising, public debate about the issue has barely begun in Nepal. Cigarette manufacturers are allowed free rein to peddle their drugs on Government television, radio and print media. Sponsorship deals have never been better and the Ministry of Communications does not seem to have been reminded by the Ministry of Health about the Government´s "Health for All by 2-000" commitment.
Death Dealers
Shikhar, the next in Surya Tobacco´s lineup, aimed at the upper middle-income bracket, and is marketed as "the symbol of success" . Another brand, Khukuri, seems to target cash-in-hand blue-collars and is sold as sahasi ko ek maatra chaahana — "the only craving of the corageous" Unfiltered Bijuli, produced to satisfy rural smokers, is sold less by advertising than through a finely-tuned Nepalwide marketing network.
Until Surya Tobacco entered the field in 1987 with marketing expertise of the Indian Tobacco Company (JTC), the industry was a near-monopoly of Janakpur Cigarette Factory, gifted to the Nepali Government by the Soviet Union in the!960s. In a desperate attempt to recapture a market lost to an upstart Surya Tobacco, Janakpur has resorted to nationalism, pushing its´Yak´brand as the country´s oldest filter and the "most Nepali" of cigarettes. Going down the ladder, Janakpur´s brands are Lali Guians, Yak Gaida, Koseli, and the recently introduced Sagun. A third Nepali producer, the Nepal Tobacco Company (Gorkha Filter, Action and Nepal Gold Flake), keeps a low advertising profile to match its low capacity.
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 2.5 million deaths annually worldwide are smoking related; and that an additional 1000 non-smokers (passive smokers) die each week because of the accumulated effects of inhaling other people´s tobacco smoke. While there is no specific data, Nepal has more than its population-wise share of these mortalities.
Each puff of tobacco smoke releases a hit of between 50 and 150 microgrammes of nicotine which reaches the brain within 30 seconds. Nicotine slows blood circulation and increases the risk of cardiovascular diseases. With nicotine, a smoker inhales a deadly cocktail of chemicals including mutagens, carcinogens, and co-carcinogens which wreak havoc throughout the body. Carbon monoxide combines with haemoglobin much more readily than oxygen does; the combination cuts the amount of oxgen reaching the tissues, particularly of mouth, throat and lung. Smokers fall prey to lung cancer much more often than do non-smokers.
Nepal has the worst figures in the world for female smoking. Medical research has already shown that women who smoke are more susceptible to diseases of the reproductive tract. Smoking during pregnancy can also cause premature delivery, low-birthweight babies, pre-natal deaths and miscarriages.
Do not expect Surya Tobacco to market that bit of information, though, or that children born of smoking mothers have an increased risk of acute respiratory infection, including pneumonia. Or that they will likely suffer chronic bronchial infection at age one, asthma at two.
Respectable Smokescreen
Smoking is becoming less and less popular in the West as more and more people understand how tobacco kills and maims, but cigarette peddlers in the developing world are hardly going to let on this fact.
Cigarette producers Iheworldoverbecomedefensive when confronted with the powerful ethical reasons supporting a ban on advertising. A high-level Surya Tobacco marketing man (who asked not to be named), when questioned why they insist on selling what medical research has already proved as being harmful to the health of the people, said, "Well there is research and there is research. It is just a question of choosing and believing." He maintained that all the studies being quoted were West-based and since there was no Nepal-specific data available, there was nothing to suggest that it was harmful to Nepalis.
Meanwhile, making a unique demand of Nepal´s newfound democracy, a Nepal Tobacco Company representative argued that a ban on advertising would be unconstitutional and would threaten freedom of speech itself. However, he would notrespond to whether it is´constitutional´to broadcast harmful messages. The common defence is that through advertising the producers are merely providing information to allow a viewer to make "informed choice". But a glance at the promotional schemes suggests that neither information nor informed choice is really on offer.
Surya Tobacco has a large budget from which to commission advertisements that link smoking to material and social success. Its sponsorship ranges from sporting events to ari. exhibitions and even to surgical eye camps. In 1990, Surya Tobacco sponsored the televising of the World Cup at acostofNRs 1.3 million.This year, itpaidoverNRs2 million to sponsor the Barcelona Olympic Games on NTV. The drive for respectability even led the company to team up with 24-hour Television, alapanese charity, and the Netra Jyoti Sangh to provide eye camps "which treated 4000patients and performed 1400operationsforcataract."Wasthe relationship between cigarette smoke and cataract — as suggested by research atIndia´sCentreforCellularandMolecularBiology—lostonthe company´s marketeers, 24-hour Television, and the eye hospital?
In September, Surya Tobacco wooed Kathmandu´s elite, who they view as the target buyers of their Surya brand, with a sponsored art exhibition. Journalists were invited to a press briefing and presented with alarm clocks. When a photo-journalist asked for a glass of water, he was taken aside and offered a glass of straight whisky. Not only had Surya Tobacco been "contributing large sumsof money to Government coffers," wrote the company Chairman, Prabhakar S. J. B. Rana, in a letter to a Kathmandu English weekly, but it had also "as a matter of considered policy decision decided to partake in tho social and conservation field."
Would that Rana´s company did less of such ´socially responsible´ activities. For sponsorship of public events reinforces social acceptability of smoking and wins producers — in this instance Surya Tobacco — the false image of being responsible public benefactors.
Western television serials and sports programmes, popular among young viewers, are aired on Nepal Television mostly under sponsorship of cigarette and beer companies. Said an NTV official, "Other companies either don´t have the money, or do not understand what promotioncan do."
Cigarette manufacturers world over claim that they advertise to convince people to switch brands and not to lure non-smokers into smoking. But the blatant message of cigarette ads and the subliminal messages imparted by sponsorship hardly support this claim. In common with other Third World companies, Surya Tobacco in its advertisements suggests absurdly that smoking is an integral part of Western lifestyle. It ties smoking with sophistication, success, sex and fun.
Forging a link between inhaling smoke and social, professional, aihieiic and sexual success is an organised attempt to iccruit more non-smoking youngsters to addiction. The seductive imagery of advertisements strangle the possibility of creating a non-smoking generation. As an American activist once said, "When the tobacco companies decide they want to sell to a certain segment of the population, what they are deciding is that they want that segment tu die at a higher rate."
Elusive company representatives, when this writer was able to get appointments,defensively pointed to the statutory warnings on the packets. But in Nepal these warnings are invariably tucked in comers and printed in difficult-to-re ad type. Warnings on television and radio tend to be deliberatedly drowned Out by back ground music.While else where, rotating statutory warnings are required, not so in Nepal.
David and Goliath
Opposing the huge promotion machine of the cigarette industry, andSurya Tobbacco as the single most powerful player, are the advocates of a tobacco-free media—ahandful of doctors and some volunteers, unorganised and unpaid. Their tentative efforts, such as collecting 30,000 signatures and presenting them to the Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala (a smoker himself) and organising cycle rallies, have not made even a dent on the industry´s powerful fortress. Neitherhas the Government´s recent executive order declaring public places as smoke free zones. The occassional health message in the media is poorly made, and presented without creativity.
Neither is the Ministry of Health´s budget allocation any match for Surya Tobaccos deep pockets. Last fiscal year, the Government´s Department of Public Health spent less than NRs 90,000 on anti-tobacco messages on television, radio and print media combined. Compare this against the NKs 7 million that NTV alone expects this fiscal year from Surya Tobacco commercials and sponsorships {figure includes NRs 2.6 million for the Olympic sponsorship). Nepal Television´s income from promoting cigarettes rose by a stunning 183 per cent in the period ending Junel992over the previous fiscal year. Surya Tobacco´s television budget increased by 116 percent for this period, while to counter this rivals Nepal Tobacco and Janakpur increased their own television advertising budgets from near-zero to NRs 313,225.
The time seems ripe for a ban on cigarette advertising. But, according toDr.MrigendraRajPandey, who heads the quasi-governmental National Anti-Tobacco Committee, "…the Government is hesitating to introduce a ban because it is fearful of choking the medis" This is the standard refrain of the media managers as well. For example, NTV Business Director Bishwo Prakash Maskey is fearful that thestation would "crumble and die" without the support of cigarette and liquor industries.
Letters against cigarette and liquor commercials sent to the Ministry of Communications (which ´censors´ advertisements) by irate television viewers are dutifully forwarded to NTV "to do the needful". The station writes back to the Ministry that without such commercials it would have to close shop, and pointedly asks for Government subsidies. This blackmail is enough to silence the Ministry officials. NTV officials claim that the Government has cut them loose to earn their own keep, and that they would support a ban if the station could afford it.
Nepal Television, in the figures it provides to the Ministry, claims that 30 to 40 per cent of its advertising income is from beer and tobacco. This, however.does not tally withadetailedstudy of NTV´s "Advertisement Register", which was made available to this writer. Analysis of the figures in the Register showed that cigarette promotion, including commercials and sponsorships, contributed a mere 5.1 per cent of NTV´ s total revenue from advertising for the year ending June 1992, and 2.6 the year before. (Beer contributed 2.8 per cent of advertising revenue for the period ending June 1992. NTV defines beer as halka peya padartha, or soft drink.)
Would a ban on cigarette and liquor advertising deal a death blow to NTV? Deputy General Manager Durga Nalh Shanna concedes that a ban might set the station´s development back a bit, but suggests, "There is also the whole market of Indian consumer goods that could be tapped." There is presently a boom in television advertising, with the market expanding beyond the standard line of tobacco, beer, soap, detergent and soft drinks.
The dangers to NTV from a ban on cigarette and liquor advertising thus are clearly oversold. Threats of closure seem to be used by media managers to keep this tap of easy money flowing. In fact, Radio Nepal and the Government print media too could survive in the absence of cigarette and liquor advertising.
An official at the Government-run Gorkhapatra Sansthan, which puts out the Gorkhapatra daily, says no one has calculated how much cigarette advertising contributes to the corporation´s total-revenue from advertising. However, he was of the view that the figure should not be more than 5percent.General ManagerUttam LaiPradhan, in fact, says thataban on cigarette and liquor advertising would not affect the paper at all. Is Gorkhapaira then contemplating a self-imposed ban? "There is no hurry," said Pradhan, "It´s not a matter of pressing importance."
Radio Nepal, whose signal reaches over 75 per cent of the country, would probably suffer the most from a ban. It does not recieve the little financial backup fror.i the Government that NTV does. Tobacco and beer commercials account for 12 per cent of Radio Nepal´s total earnings from advertising. Bhairab Bahadur Adhikari, who heads the station´s commercial section, says it could survive without cigarette and beer ads if theGovemment subsidised it for the difference, or allowed it tax allowances.
Will it help to charge a premium on carry ing cigarette advertisements? In fact, acting together, Radio Nepal, Gorkhapatra and NTV have just slapped a 50 per cent surcharge on cigarette and beer advertisements. This could be considered a major step towards discouraging harmful advertisements. However, the managers underestimate the budget at the advertisers´ command, and the hike in rates will only increase the Government media´s income without protecting the public in any way. In any case, these are merely cosmetic gestures which will not work, and cigarette advertising should be banned as a policy measure.
The Government, which has a responsibilty for the health of all citizens of Nepal, must start somewhere in trying to curb smoking in a developing country with some of the worst smoking statistics in the world. The easiest first step would be to ban cigarette advertising in the public media, which the Government controls. Such action would be ethically sound and, as we have seen, relatively painless, except for the cigarette producers themselves.
But an advertising ban would only be the first step to undo a present travesty and to tackle Nepal´s high smoking figures among men and, especially, women. Other measures would have to follow, including the Government´s relinquishing its unheardofowncrship of a cigarette factory, and a concerted effort to counter the efficient countrywide marketing by the cigarette companies. For, even while banning cigarette advertising, politicians, administrators and activists must remember that a majority of Nepal´s population does not watch television, listen to radio, or read the Gorkhapatra — but smokes.