The smoker has rights, too

Their reluctance may be understandable, but what prevents the Government of India from making this a statutory requirement? After all, it is the right of Indian smokers to be entitled to the same privileges that are being extended to their European peers. Bidi smokers, of course, are conveniently forgotten — they are too poor to matter, but that doesn’t make them any better off. The tar content of bidis, in fact, is 40-50 mg, which is twice the already unacceptable level of our filter cigarettes. Which means people who are most unlikely to have access to basic health-care, are consuming a product that is designed to harm their health. The basic building block of the right to life is the right to good health. What is our tobacco industry doing to safeguard this inalienable human right?

Nothing. Not only does it shy away from highlighting the tar and nicotine contents of its products, but also ignores developed-world practices, like carrying prominently displayed statutory warnings, on packs and on all forms of advertising, providing specific information. It is impossible to find a cigarette ad in an American publication, for instance, not being accompanied by a prominent warning saying: "The Surgeon-General has determined that cigarette smoking is harmful for pregnant mothers." If this can happen in the Mecca of the free world, what prevents our industry from voluntarily ensuring that all cigarette and bidi packs contain specific warnings, like Cigarette smoking has been proven to cause cancer,’ in all the 15 Scheduled languages. After all, you must put your money where your heart ostensibly is. It is laudable that someone finally is speaking up for the rights of smokers, but the concern must be more than selective.

The flip side of the right to choose is the right to withdraw, which the tobacco industry knows it cannot guarantee with a clear conscience. It has known all along that nicotine is addictive, which came to light after the industry was compelled to place 35 million pages of internal documents in the public domain following the now-famous Minnesota case. The reasons for the industry’s continued public denial of the addictive quality of nicotine — something its own research had established way back in 1964 — were spelt out unambiguously in a 1980 document of the American Tobacco Institute. It said: "Shook, Hardy Shook, Hardy, and Bacon is the law firm directing the industry’s legal strategy reminds us… that the entire matter of addiction is the most potent weapon a prosecuting attorney can have in a lung cancer/cigarette case. We can’t defend continued smoking as ‘free choice’ if the person is ‘addicted’."

But how do smokers become addicted to nicotine, thereby losing their right to choose? For the answer, all you have to do is read the October 7, 1998, edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association, from where I shall quote just a 1964 memo from the vice-president for research and development of British American Tobacco (BAT) to the company president. "There seems to be no doubt that the ‘kick’ of a cigarette is due to the concentration of the nicotine in the bloodstream which it achieves," wrote the veep to his boss, "and this is a product of the quantity of nicotine in the smoke and the speed of transfer of that nicotine from the smoke to the bloodstream." BAT, by the way, owns 30 per cent of ITC’s stock.

Now, there are two options open to the tobacco industry. One, it can bring the tar and nicotine content of cigarettes and bidis down to international levels. Two, because option one is just not enough, it must commit itself to investing as much on nicotine de-addiction as it spends on product advertising, which is expected to touch Rs 200 crore in fiscal 1998-99 (and remember, this figure represents just the cigarette industry’s ad spend and does not include the money it spends on relationship marketing). In other words, if the industry can afford to spend Rs 200 crore on ensuring people get to exercise their right to choose, then it can spend just that amount to uphold their right to withdraw. For, isn’t this one industry that cares for its consumers and their right to choose?