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Pakistan's tobacco companies score

Tobacco companies are having a field day with viewers across Pakistan glued to television sets playing out the World Cup cricket mania.

Commercials boasting the power, freedom and style of smokers are bouncing off television sets as quick as runs and catches are being taken by the world's best teams in live telecasts from the jam-packed cricket stadiums of England.

Promotion of smoking is not illegal in Pakistan, and cigarette manufacturers have doled out big money for space on government- run television, newspapers and even in restaurants to turn the cricket festival into an advertising event.

The giant Pakistan Tobacco Company, manufacturers of the hugely popular Wills Kings brand, has sponsored big television screens at an Islamabad restaurant-hang out for young people.

Hand bills, advertising the screenings, were put out all over the Pakistan capital, luring viewers with the promise of ''thousands of prizes'' to the hep 'Sogo 2000' restaurant.

Jean-clad Shahzad clutches a packet of Benson and Hedges. He has been puffing on a cigarette all evening as he and his friends watch the electrifying face-off between rivals India and Pakistan on the cricket grounds of Old Trafford in Manchester, on Tuesday.

As the tension builds, the smoke and noise level rises. ''I enjoy cigarettes,'' the teenager shrugs, taking a deep drag. ''There's nothing else to do in Islamabad. That's all young people do, smoke,'' he adds before going back to noisily cheering his team on.

For tobacco companies, sporting events watched avidly by the young, are an advertising opportunity. ''Last year they (Pakistan Tobacco Company) sponsored the screening of the World Cup football matches,'' said an old-hand at the restaurant.

But anti-smoking groups want to stop the advertising blitz. A letter campaign addressed to prime minister Nawaz Sharif on May 31 (World Tobacco Day), to ban tobacco ads, was supported by thousands.

Tobacco ads play a central role in persuading young people to smoke, the lobbying Pakistan Institute of National Development (PIND) said in the appeal.

''Whether that be in a glossy magazine or on the side of a sleek racing car, young people receive a clear and constant message that smoking is glamorous, smoking is exciting, smoking is mature, and smoking is a desirable way to behave,'' it said.

Not enough people, the Pakistan Medical Research Council says, know that at least one third of more than 50,000 cases of cancer reported in the country annually are attributable to smoking.

Significantly, cigarettes are among the top 20 industrial products that have shown constant signs of growth, the national economic survey states. And government earnings have gone up: every tenth rupee it spends comes from cigarette revenues.

''The tobacco companies form the largest tax-paying entity in Pakistan,'' said the network, an Islamabad-based health advocacy group, in a report on the 'Tobacco situation in Pakistan', pointing out the government's reluctance to rein in the industry.

PTV or the state-owned Pakistan television has earned more than six million dollars through ads during the ongoing World Cup with 60 per cent coming from tobacco companies including Lakson.

"Cigarette ads are bad," say the Pakistan Pediatric Association (PPA), which believes that it influenced the 1,000 to 1,200 school-going children between the ages of six and 16 years who take to smoking every year.

''What's the point of advertising cigarettes in the middle of cricket matches - the companies certainly want to make a link between health and smoking,'' declares Dr Sohail, a medical practitioner in Islamabad.

For the first time, the National Health Survey, conducted by the Medical Research Council, has looked at smoking. ''According to our findings, one in six men between the ages of 15 and 24 years smoke cigarettes or 'bidis' (indigenous cigarettes).''

Young smokers are ready with all sorts of reasons for smoking, from peer pressure to thinking that smoking would make them feel a ''real man''. One said it looked stylish. ''Yaar, that's what the girls like about guys, they must look cool.''

Many also know that cigarette-smoking is injurious to health, but as young Sharjeel said cockily, ''It's my choice -- I know what smoking does to people, but again not all smokers die of lung cancer. At least, I haven't seen one dying of any tobacco- related diseases.''

The problem is serious enough for the Sharif government's National Health Policy to have put smoking as one of the major causes of growing number of non-communicable and chronic diseases in the country.

Yet the government's ministry of commerce promotes tobacco cultivation, and public sector banks are bound to give huge loans to the industry to purchase tobacco from the growers.

''We urge you to ban tobacco cultivation, import and production. No company should manufacture cigarettes, cigars or other products. No one should advertise or sell it,'' PIND has pleaded in its letter to the prime minister.

''What we need,'' says the network's executive director Dr Zafar Mirza, ''is a law that could regulate marketing of tobacco products directly or indirectly. We also need a law to ban juvenile smoking, which is also a requirement of the convention of the rights of the child.''

But before that, he adds, the government of Pakistan, which is addicted to tobacco money, has to give up the habit.

IPS