Big Tobacco conquers its new frontier

It was tipped to send tobacco companies' profits tumbling. The plain cigarette packaging High Court victory was hailed by the Attorney-General, Nicola Roxon, as an anti-smoking coup with global implications. Documentary: Sex, Lies and Cigarettes - How Big Tobacco is targeting kids in developing countries But the latest blow against cigarettes in countries like Australia needs some perspective: health experts warn that while the industry is beginning to lose its grip in developed nations, there is a humanitarian disaster looming in poorer countries, particularly in the Asia-Pacific. The region is now the world's biggest tobacco market, with 6 million new smokers recruited in 2009 and another 30 million expected to be added by 2014, based on industry estimates.

The World Health Organisation calculates that of the 6 million people who will die from tobacco use this year, 80 per cent will be in the developing world. Mike Daube, a WHO tobacco adviser and president of the Australian Council on Smoking and Health, has accused cigarette companies of perpetrating a ''tobacco holocaust'' in poor nations. ''This is an industry absolutely without a moral radar. They are just wilfully imposing a pandemic on developing countries, and they've known for more than 60 years that smoking kills.

This is going to cause far more deaths than any wars we've ever seen.'' Last week, The Lancet reported ''alarming patterns'' of tobacco use in developing countries, where consumption is growing by more than 3 per cent a year. At a time when Australia's adult smoking rate - one of the lowest in the world at 16.6 per cent - continues to drop by about 1 per cent a year, in parts of Asia as many as two-thirds of men are smokers, and women and children are increasingly taking up the habit. In China, schools are sponsored by the state-run tobacco industry.

The biggest commercial player, Philip Morris, has seen net revenue soar in the Asia-Pacific region from $5.6 billion in 2007 to nearly $11 billion last year, and the company has set up production bases in Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia. In a statement to The Sun-Herald, a Switzerland-based media adviser for Philip Morris International outlined the market's potential: ''A home to over half of the world's population, the Asian region is very important for any global consumer goods company. In terms of tobacco products, tobacco has been used in Asia for centuries and most countries have long-standing local traditions.''