Dumping health risks on developing nations.

"While smoking is declining and exercise and healthy nutrition habits are improving in the developing world, cigarette manufacturers, to name one group, are licking their corporate chops as they successfully replace shrinking domestic markets with increased sales in Third World countries," asserts John W. Farquhar, professor of medicine and director of the Stanford University Center for Research in Disease Prevention. "It's clear that wellness is becoming a global problem. Industrialized countries have a social obligation to ensure that they are not preying on the rest of the world. It's important that countries such as the United States and Canada not only share the gains of health promotion activities, but refrain from literally exporting health problems. There is a sad irony that economic improvement in the Third World also frees some income for unproductive purchases, such as tobacco or alcohol."

In May, 1992, the International Heart Health Conference issued the Victoria Declaration, a 44-page global blueprint for reducing health risks. It included recommendations for governments to adopt legislation that would end advertising and promotion of tobacco products, seek a multinational ban on tobacco exports, and create a tobacco superfund in each country--funded by a 10% tobacco sales tax--to be used for creation of a smoke-free society.

"While smoking has slowly but steadily declined in the...