THURSDAY 27 JANUARY 2000

MR MARTIN BROUGHTON, MR PETER WILSON, MR GARETH DAVIS, MR DAVID DAVIES AND DR AXEL GIETZ

  1080. You engage in the sale of cigarettes.
  (Mr Davies) We do not want people under age to smoke. We have taken enormous steps in order to fulfil the commitment we have to that principle.

  1081. I have no argument with that. I just find the reason you give for the answer to the question odd when it is not compatible with other views your company has given on other pieces of legislation.
  (Mr Wilson) I have no problem with the suggestion to raise the age from 16 to 18. However, it will not address the fundamental problem with which I am even more concerned, which is smokers aged 14 and 15 today.
  (Mr Davis) I think very similarly to what has been said. It is very much an issue for government because government has to be joined up and there are lots of things that people can do at 16. In many cases, they are economically empowered; they can go to work and many other things. Only government can take those societal trends into account. Certainly if the common wisdom in the government was that it should be raised to 18 we would certainly not oppose it.

  1082. I am right in thinking that what you are basically saying is that you have done no research and you are unaware of any research into the reasons for under age smoking or under 16 year olds smoking?
  (Dr Gietz) We do not research minors, no.

  1083. Given your stated opposition to under age smoking and following the question put to you earlier by Eileen Gordon, would you disown the comments which have been made to us by FOREST regarding the activities of Trading Standards officers using children to test whether retailers sell cigarettes to children and their view that this was a form of entrapment? Would you dissociate yourselves from that view?
  (Mr Broughton) I would take the view that sale of tobacco should be fiscalised in the same way as other similar products. I would agree with the Trading Standards people adopting exactly the same practices in relation to tobacco as they do to alcohol, betting shops, X movies, porno magazines or anything that is designed with an age control. I think the Trading Standards should use the same approach on all of those products. Whatever that approach should be, it should be consistent.

  1084. Would you be opposed, as FOREST is—yes or no, all of you—to the use of children by Trading Standards officers to determine whether retailers are selling to under age children?
  (Mr Broughton) I would be opposed against it only if they did not use the same methodology on pubs for selling beer etc. If they are using the same methodology, I have no problem. If they are using a different methodology simply on tobacco, I would have a problem with it because I do not understand it.
  (Mr Davies) We support the enforcement of minimum age laws. I must defer to the law enforcement authorities on how they do that. We simply support it.
  (Mr Wilson) I agree with that. It is a matter for the law enforcement authorities. I would not express a view on the use of children for entrapment.
  (Mr Davis) I would like to see the emphasis put on the positive aspects of Trading Standards and ourselves and schools which happened with the No Excuses campaign that Mr Wilson referred to that we ran in the north east in 1997. We are all parties who were working very closely together and that was seen to achieve some real results and think that should be the emphasis as we go forward.
  (Dr Gietz) I concur with what my colleagues have said. It is up to the authorities to make sure existing laws are enforced. Whatever means they use to achieve this they must decide. It should be applied to any age restricted activity or product, obviously. We have covered retail and advertising; we are now covering this particular issue. We should remember last time we spoke a lot about the silver bullet approach in finding the one substance that may cause disease or not in cigarette smoke. The same problem we faced there we have here. We should not think, which my company has suggested in our submission, that if we raise the minimum age to 18 we can all sit back and say the problem is solved. There is no silver bullet. It is a combination of many measures that we jointly must conceive, work on, enforce and practise.

  1085. In terms of enforcement, Eileen Gordon asked earlier about whether you would continue to supply to those who have been convicted of breaking this law, but do you think the penalties which are imposed on retailers are sufficient disincentives and would you like an increase in the penalties?
  (Mr Davis) I do not know precisely what the penalties are but like any penalty a penalty should work and should be seen to work.
  (Mr Davies) More needs to be done to address access as well as education, the issue that Mr Broughton referred to. Clearly not enough is being done. If we, the industry, working together with the retailers, governments, parents and teachers, are all going in the same direction, we can achieve progress.

  1086. Can I turn to the issue of cigarette marketing in the developing world? Mr Broughton, perhaps I can kick off with remarks that you made at your company's AGM last April. According to the information we have, you said, "Regrettably the World Health Organisation", which as you know we have taken evidence from, "has got the smoking issue completely out of proportion with its Tobacco Free Initiative ... Indeed the World Health Organisation seems to have been hijacked by zealots in its desire to set itself up as some sort of `super-nanny'." The World Health Organisation tell us that by the late 2020s they estimate that there will be around ten million deaths per year and 70 per cent of these will occur in developing countries. This eclipses the sum total of deaths from malaria and tuberculosis worldwide. Do you stand by the comments you made, attacking their efforts?
  (Mr Broughton) Yes, I do.

  1087. Can you tell us why? It seems perfectly reasonable, if we are losing 70 million people.
  (Mr Broughton) First of all, I think it is easy to make extrapolations.

  1088. You are questioning their figures?
  (Mr Broughton) There are two things I want to question. One is the figures and one is the conclusion. I think you will find the figures are based on an extrapolation to the world of a 1980 US, all white study. There have been a lot of other studies.

  1089. The study was done by all white males?
  (Mr Broughton) It was of all whites. It was taking a specific section of the US community. It was a 1980 study which meant it was largely unfiltered cigarettes that were giving the history leading up to it. It was then taking that particular piece of information and extrapolating it to the entire world; whereas there is a huge amount of information which says that if you look at different cultures, different parts of the world, different peoples, you just cannot switch across the numbers. First of all, I would challenge the numbers in a big way. The main point that I was going to was not the challenge of the numbers. We can all predict numbers because they are just extrapolations at this stage. The ministers of health in developing countries do not see tobacco as one of the two priorities. The WHO sees its two priorities as malaria and tobacco. That is a western driven, donor country agenda. It is not the agenda that the ministers of health in the developing countries would see as the appropriate agenda. They see it as a rich world agenda, not a poor world agenda, and there are surveys to demonstrate what they think is important. It is quite different to what the WHO thinks is important.

  Chairman: On the calculation of their estimates, we understand slightly differently from the information you have given to us and perhaps we could correspond about that.

  1090. Do the cigarettes that you sell in the Third World have health warnings on them?
  (Mr Broughton) The cigarettes do not but the cigarette packets do, everywhere.

  1091. They are in a language which can be understood by those who get it?
  (Mr Broughton) In the main, they are in the language most likely to be understood. That is difficult in some countries. In India, there are 3,000 different languages, for example, so I cannot say that in every part of India it is in the language of the local dialect. In the main, we would put them in the local language. It is not always the case. Exports will sometimes be in the language of the exporter but generally it would be in the language of the target country. It does depend a little bit on whether there are any regulations. Where there are no regulations, it will sometimes be the US Surgeon General warning or the EU warning.

  1092. Have you considered whether some pictorial form could be used for the health warning in Asian countries?
  (Mr Broughton) We have always used a written form. I do not think we have given serious consideration to a pictorial form. Studies have shown that the knowledge of the health risks is extremely high. A specific study I recall was in Chad which is recognised as a very backward, central African territory. 94 per cent of the population there recognise that smoking is seriously damaging to health. The message is getting through, even without pictures.

  1093. It may be worth considering some pictorial form of getting the message across or reinforcing the message.
  (Mr Broughton) I take your point.

  1094. What steps do you take to ensure that cigarettes are not marketed to young people in the Third World and to stop under age smoking?
  (Mr Broughton) Fundamentally, they are similar steps to here. In some countries, that is a lot more difficult. For example, in Bangladesh, we put priority on making sure that retailers are over age. We think it is inappropriate that the retailers should be under age because they are more likely to be selling to people under age. We do try and educate. We have education programmes in place in countries like Bangladesh that address the age of the retailer. Shops conjure up a different picture. It is often a kiosk or a tray or something like that. We are trying to get to the retailer age, first of all, but, secondly, to educate people not to sell to minors. We have the same point about the use of people in advertisements being at least 25 years old. That would be true throughout the world. We do take the same kinds of steps as we do in this country, with various degrees of success. It depends very much on the local culture.

  1095. Do you do any work to measure how effective this is?
  (Mr Broughton) We do not do work to measure youth smoking anywhere. We think it would be misinterpreted if we did.

  1096. Your company specifically held conferences on environmental tobacco smoke in South Africa and Sri Lanka in October 1994 and another in Florida in 1997. They were funded by your company?
  (Mr Broughton) Yes. I think we have had more than just those three but those particular three were funded by our company. They were not just on environmental tobacco smoke; they were on tobacco issues in a wider sense. In each case, the delegates, the attendees, were journalists.

  1097. But they were journalists on a wider basis than the country in which you held the conference?
  (Mr Broughton) Yes. Sometimes they would have been regional. The Sri Lanka one, for example, would have had journalists from that part of the world, the Indian subcontinent.

  1098. They would have people from outside Sri Lanka?
  (Mr Broughton) I think so, yes.

  1099. Do you undertake to avoid product placement in films or other media in developing countries?
  (Mr Broughton) Yes. We do not have produce placement; we do not pay for product placement anywhere around the world. Neither do we pay for advertisement placement. You will see in some movies, for example, adverts for cigarettes. We do not pay either for the adverts or for the product right throughout the world and we have not done for several years. It has been a different period of time in different countries.
  (Mr Davies) Our position is the same.