ACT UP, SENATOR HELMS, AND TOBACCO: A PROPOSAL

ACT UP groups and others have called for a boycott of Marlboro cigarettes, because Philip Morris is a major corporate contributor to the election campaigns of Senator Jesse Helms, Republican of North Carolina, who has consistently sabotaged U. S. AIDS policy and impeded Federal efforts against the epidemic. The boycott is now supported by ACT UP chapters in Washington DC, New York, Boston, Provincetown, Atlanta, Shreveport, Indianapolis, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, and Paris, France. (For more information on the Marlboro boycott, call Michael Petrelis or Carl Goodman of ACT UP/DC, 202/543-1070.) This article proposes another tactic which we believe could be effective against Helms, and also valuable in its own right in building national and international health coalitions.
Recently, public opinion and government policies in the United States have turned strongly against smoking. But as smoking declines here, it is increasing in the rest of the world. Export to other countries has become a life-or-death issue to the tobacco industry, since its future may rest on international sales.
So while U. S. health officials are strongly discouraging smoking at home, U. S trade officials are forcing other countries to accept U. S. tobacco, and to allow U. S. -based multinationals to aggressively promote smoking within their domestic populations, even to children -- under threat of trade sanctions which can amount to sabotage of those countries' economies. South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan have already been forced to accept U. S. tobacco imports and advertising, and now the pressure is on Thailand. If Thailand refuses, all its imports to the United States could be stopped in retaliation, under the Trade Act of 1974, according to a New York Times article of May 18.
How do tobacco companies promote their products abroad, after the U. S. government has used its economic clout to prevent sovereign nations from implementing antismoking policies to protect their citizens? "In Kuwait the companies take photos of children next to Formula One race cars and hand out the photo, cigarettes, a lighter, and T-shirts to the children; in Thailand, where cigarette advertising is outlawed, Marlboro and Winston logos appear on schoolbook covers, kites, and T-shirts in anticipation of a favorable trade ruling; in Germany, citizens were handed packs of Camels as they came through the Berlin Wall," according to a recent issue of Cancer News, published by the American Cancer Society. After Taiwan and South Korea gave in to U. S. pressure, "cigarette promotion surged in these markets, and for the first time, advertising has been directly targeted to women who traditionally had very low smoking rates in these countries," according to the same source. If present trends continue, smoking will become a leading cause of death worldwide, especially in Third World countries; it is projected to kill 12 million people each year by 2050.
U. S. officials have argued that tobacco export is a trade issue, not a health issue -- that under the law it does not matter that smoking is dangerous to health, all that matters is that tobacco is a product. Last week Congressman Henry A. Waxman (Democrat of California) and others were outraged when Dr. James O. Mason, Assistant Secretary for Health, cancelled a May 17 appearance before Waxman's subcommittee on the tobacco-export issue. Dr. Mason had strongly criticized tobacco export last month at the World Conference on Tobacco and Health, but later he was apparently silenced by the Bush Administration.
How can the United States continue to protect its own citizens while forbidding other countries from protecting theirs? The answer is that those who suffer from these unconscionable export policies have no voice in them because they are not citizens here. It has been much harder to raise U. S. grassroots opposition to the export policies than to issues which affect millions of Americans directly (like secondhand smoke in public buildings and vehicles).
This situation presents a special opportunity for AIDS activists and groups like ACT UP -- and also for the arts community, which has its own problems with Senator Helms -- to have a disproportionately large impact. Tobacco is widely grown in North Carolina, and tobacco companies are among Helms' leading supporters. Exports are the future of the tobacco industry, because of the strong turn against smoking by the U. S. public. No country wants future deaths and huge medical bills, so exports depend on U. S. policies which force other countries to take the product. These reprehensible policies, opposed by the countries affected, by international organizations, and by U. S. organizations like the American Cancer Society, continue because it is hard to personalize export policy as a grassroots issue.
But Senator Helms could be the key to personalizing this issue as it could never be personalized before. For example, actions by AIDS activists or by artists at the offices of the U. S. trade negotiators, or directed at members of Congress who support the unconscionable policies, could force the press to explain the issue, amplifying the testimony of anti-smoking experts and mobilizing public revulsion at the hypocrisy and national dishonor of discouraging cigarettes at home while forcing them abroad. Endless grassroots projects are possible. Groups like ACT UP, or arts activists, could contribute unique visibility to the campaign against tobacco exports, which otherwise consists largely of testimony by experts to august bodies.
Helms himself provides the motivation to bring a colorful, ongoing, and permanent grassroots presence into an issue of vital importance to his biggest supporters. Such a campaign could change him from an asset to the tobacco industry into a central threat to its future.
And the same campaign would also help to build coalitions between AIDS activists and those of other diseases, in the U. S. and internationally. Last week the American Cancer Society launched its "Trade for Life" plan against the tobacco-export policies. Developed earlier in the year at a consensus conference of international tobacco control experts from 16 countries, the Trade for Life Global Plan was overwhelmingly adopted by nearly 700 delegates representing 67 countries at the Seventh World Congress on Tobacco and Health last month in Australia. A key element in the plan is an international computer network of the American Cancer Society -- ACS Globalink -- to provide tobacco control information and expert assistance throughout the world. Over 100 healthcare leaders, representing all major international health groups, have agreed to join this computer network.
Organizations or individuals who would like more information about the Trade for Life program, and how they might join in this effort, can call John Madigan at the American Cancer Society, 202/546-4011.