Source: International Herald-Tribune Contact: http://www.iht.com/ Copyright: International Herald Tribune 1998 Pubdate: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 Author: Thomas Crampton, International Herald Tribune RISE IN CIGARETTE SMOKING DOESN'T BOTHER BURMA GOVERNMENT MANDALAY, Burma---When U Soe Thein Oo attended a concert a few months ago by Iron Cross, the most popular Burmese heavy metal band, he got more than just an earful of "Desert Moon," the band's hit love ballad. Along with all the other ticket holders he received free Golden Eagle cigarettes and a plastic lighter to ignite them. Like most people at the concert, he smoked through the pack. At U Hoke Ho's tea shop, in the town of Shipaw, farther north in Burma, a haze descends each time young women flock through handing out free Golden Eagle cigarettes and lighting them up for customers. "They don't give them to children, but even those who don't smoke try the cigarettes," the tea shop owner said. "People always like to get things for free." Across the country young people tell similar stories of how they were drawn to cigarettes by free handouts and slick advertising tactics never before seen in Burma as tobacco multinationals focus their powerful marketing machines on potential smokers. This has led to a rapid increase in smoking among young people in Burma - ---and in other couatries in Southeast Asia where cash-strapped goveraments have a financial stake in tobacco sales. Tobacco companies themselves also rely increasiagly on profits from the region's poorest countries. Rothmans Industries of Singapore whose London brand is the market leader in Burma, runs a factory ia a joint venture with a holding company owned by the country's ruling military. The three-year-old venture turaed a profit after just one year, company officials said, and there are already plans to expand production. Rapid sales growth ia Burma and Vietnam helped push up Rothmans' pretax profit by 15.4 percent in the first half of 1998, despite shrinking cigarette sales in Singapore, the company's only other market, according to a company announcement last month. The Burmese govemment likes dealing with multinational cigarette companies because it can more readily collect revenue from large factories or importers than it can from small-time producers of hand-rolled smokes like Burma's traditional cheroots, according to Brigadier General Maung Maung, head of the foreign investment commission. After Rothmans, Burma's secondlargest foreign investor in cigarettes is the Indonesiaa giant Sampoerna, followed by a small South Korean stake in Myanmar Glacier Tobacco. Imported cigarettes commonly available in Burma include brands produced by British American Tobacco---including 555, Benson & Hedges, Lucky Strike and Viceroy---along with Philip Morris's Marlboro and RJR Nabisco's Camel and Salem. Domestic production has increased to 4.4 billion cigarettes in the last fiscal year, fromless than 1 billioncigarettes in 1992, to according to government statistics. From zero a decade ago, tobacco imports to Burma rose to more tha4 1,700 metric tons in 1996. Tobacco imports in 1995 were worth $142 million and accounted for about 6 percent of the nation' s total merchandise imports, according to a study by the U.S. government. General Maung Maung said the Burmese goverament was very concerned about the increased number of young smokers and had already begun imposing controls, such as a recent ban against tobacco advertising on televislon. Marlboro cowboys recently stopped riding acnzss viewers' screens, but other brands still broadcast ads regularly on television despite the ban, and few in Burma come in contact with cigarettepack health warnings. A pack of 20 cigarettes costs the equivalent of about one day's salary for manual laborers, so most smokers support their habit cigarette-by-cigarette instead of buying packs, many of which have the warnings written in English. The cigarette companies say their advertising is aimed at adults and is intended to maintain brand loyalty or to entice those who already smoke to change brands. But the young people of Burma have received a very different message. "My generation smokes, not my father's," said U Win Aung, a 26-year-old in the town of Maymyo who began smoking at age 17. "Cigarettes are modern and free-style. I am not so choosy about the brand so long as it has Virginia tobacco." U Win Aung said that even strong health warnings would not deter him from smoking now. He enjoys spending one evening each weekend drinking Mandalay rum and smoking with friends at Summer Feelings, a popular new bar along the dusty main street of Maymyo. "The cinema is censored, and there are no nightclubs or live shows," he said. "Beyond smoking there is no entertainment. " - --- Checked-by: Joel W. Johnson