War on drugs: the tobacco connection
Some 10,000 people die worldwide each year from the effect of
illicit drugs, writes Peter G. Bourne in the Los Angeles Times, but: “More
than 2.5 million die from the effects of tobacco. More Colombians die from the
effects of American tobacco than do Americans from cocaine, and more Thais die
from our tobacco than do Americans from Southeast Asian heroin.”
At the same time that the administration is campaigning to
prevent drug trafficking to the U.S., writes Bourne, who is president of the
American Association for World Health, “our government is actively
promoting the sale of U.S. tobacco products to the rest of the world.” It
has “threatened three countries with trade sanctions for refusing to open
up their markets to United States tobacco products, and is threatening other
countries that have banned or are strictly regulating their advertisement and
promotion. It is a modern version of the Opium Wars of the 1840s, when the
British sent a military force to compel the Chinese government... to continue to
allow its population to be supplied by British and American opium
merchants.”
The United States, Bourne argues, “can not plausibly lead
the global effort to control drug trafficking while it remains the world’s
primary purveyor of drug-related death and disease through the export of its
tobacco products.” A shift in U.S. policy “would go far to
re-establish the sagging credibility of the President’s anti-drug effort
and provide strong leadership for the war on drugs worldwide.”
from: World Development Forum Vol. 7 No. 17, September
30, 1989
World Development Forum is a twice-monthly report of
facts, trends and opinion in international development. It is published as a
public service by the Hunger Project.
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