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Excerpts from Canadian west is world leader in fighting smoking

USA Today [12/31/99]

At midnight tonight, Canada's westernmost province broadens its war on tobacco -- already perhaps the world's toughest -- by banning smoking in all indoor workplaces, even bars, casinos and nightclubs. The province, more than twice the size of California and nearly as trendy, may well represent the future.

As the 1900s witnessed a global boom in tobacco use, largely driven by U.S. exports, the next century is likely to see a spread in tobacco control, some of it made in the USA. "The 21st century will be the decline of this product," says Derek Yach, director of the World Health Organization's Tobacco Control Initiative. He predicts that 100 years from now, people will look at tobacco's current popularity and ask, "How could individual governments have allowed this to happen?"

Some are already calculating the cost. Tobacco-related illnesses, which now claim 4 million lives each year worldwide, will emerge in the next 30 years as the world's leading killer, according to WHO. By the late 2020s, WHO says, tobacco will kill 10 million people a year, 70% of them in developing countries.

Anti-smoking efforts are proliferating worldwide:

* A French court ruled in early December that Seita, maker of Gauloise and Gitane cigarettes, was partly responsible for the cancer death of a three-pack-a-day smoker. It was the first time a tobacco company was held liable for a death in France.

* Canada last week filed the world's first lawsuit against Canadian companies to recoup taxes lost because of alleged cigarette smuggling by the firms. It sued in a U.S. court.

* At least seven other countries have sued in U.S. courts: Guatemala, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Thailand, Bolivia, Panama and Ukraine. They're suing U.S. companies to recoup the health-care costs of treating smoking-related illnesses. They cite the success of U.S. state attorneys general, who have settled similar claims for $ 246 billion to be paid over 25 years.

* WHO is drafting a treaty, to be ready for signing in 2003, that could call for higher tobacco taxes, strict advertising limits, warning labels and ingredient disclosure. In November, it began airing some of California's anti-smoking ads, in six languages, in its 191 member countries. One ad shows a Marlboro-Man figure on a horse, telling another cowboy that he has cancer.

* The World Bank has urged nations to raise tobacco taxes in a bid to curb usage and reduce health-care costs.

* The European Union is planning, by 2006, to ban almost all tobacco ads and sponsorship in its 15 countries.

British Columbia has drawn on U.S. experience. It's modeling its new workplace smoking ban on California's similar law. It used Minnesota's trove of tobacco industry documents, obtained during that state's lawsuit against the industry, when it became the first Canadian province last year to sue cigarette makers. It cites Massachusetts for inspiring its own graphic anti-smoking ads.

Others say the ban has boosted sales. Diego Trozzo, owner of the Bird of Paradise Pub, says he's attracting more non-smokers who had stayed away because of the smoke. He's held onto neighborhood smokers, with low prices and a heater on his front porch.

American tobacco companies offset a 17% drop in domestic U.S. consumption from 1988 to 1998 by boosting cigarette exports 70 % during that time, U.S. figures show. In many of their overseas markets, smoking rates remain high: 55% for men in Japan and higher for those in China, Russia and South Korea. And tobacco ads remain prevalent. In the Philippines, they appear on calendars next to images of the Virgin Mary.