| Tobacco Abroad: Infiltrating Foreign Markets
David Holzman Abstract
 Three million deaths each year, or one person every 10 seconds, are attributed to tobacco-related illnesses, a rate that is expected to rise to 10 million by the 2020s. Such deaths are five times more likely in the West than in the developing world, but this is shifting. While smoking decreases by 1.1% annually in the West, it is increasing by 2.1% in developing countries, providing cigarette manufacturers with untapped markets in China, Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Africa.
Transnational tobacco companies (TTCs) infiltrate these new markets by establishing manufacturing agreements with state-held companies, then purchasing those companies, thereby taking over the national cigarette production monopoly. But TTCs are advertising before they even crack the market, as in Thailand, where companies took out billboard advertisements for cigarette brands that, at the time, were illegal to sell.
TTCs penetrate foreign markets by other dubious means and have even been accused of setting up smuggling networks. About one-third of the cigarettes exported worldwide "disappear", a figure some suggest is too large to be explained by anything other than the companies themselves being involved.
Another tactic is for the U.S. government to threaten foreign countries with trade sanctions unless U.S. tobacco companies are allowed access to their markets. U.S. foreign policies simultaneously promote and discourage the use of tobacco products, but the amount of money spent promoting use is exponentially greater than the amount spent discouraging.
Across the globe, the most powerful deterrent to smoking appears to be the cigarette tax. It is estimated that for every 10% increase in cigarette price, there is a 4% decrease in sales. However, increased competition will lower the price of cigarettes ; combined with rising standards of living and the fracturing of state cigarette monopolies, this means the developing world will soon overtake the West in the number of smoking-related deaths.
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