Peddling cigarettes abroad: the new opium war: (export and import of tobacco products) (Editorial)

• Author: McGinn, Anne Platt

When public health officials, tobacco control activists, and Chinese government authorities meet in late August at the 10th World Conference in Tobacco or Health in Beijing, they will be sitting on a ticking time bomb: China has the largest cigarette market in the world, and with the largest number of smokers, it will see an estimated 2.5 million of its people die of cigarette-caused disease by 2020.

Before blaming the Chinese, however, officials and activists would do well to focus their criticism on the other side of the Pacific. Last year the World Health Organization voted on a proposal for an international tobacco control convention; of the 80 member states present for the vote, only five did not approve it - and one of those five was the United States.

Home to several of the world's corporate heavyweights in the cigarette business, the U.S. is the world's second leading source of exported cigarettes and the fourth largest supplier of tobacco leaf. U.S. companies, often in collusion with the U.S. government, have exploited the peoples of developing countries with a barrage of marketing and promotion and a silencing of any opposition to the peddling of their drugs - all in the name of free trade.

Most Americans are now familiar with the facts: as early as 1963, scientists at Brown & Williamson acknowledged to each other that nicotine is addictive, and a senior B&W executive emphasized to his colleagues that they were, essentially, in the business of "selling nicotine." Recently exposed documents confirm that they recognized cigarettes to be, in essence, nicotine delivery devices.

Despite this...