Executives of British American Tobacco (BAT) recount an anecdote that casts it --and presumably the US cigarette industry -- in a particularly villainous role. When the cigarette rolling machine was invented in 1881, James Duked, the US founder of BAT, apparently asked for the atlas. As he flipped through the pages, his eye was not on maps but on population figures. Suddenly a huge figure of 430, 000, 000 - jumped out at him"That," he told his minions,"is where we are going to sell cigarettes." "That" was China.

In an updated variation of this episode, cigarette multinationals are now targeting populous Third World countries and those that are politically and economically unstable. Only this time, there is no fancy new cigaratte industry beyond the US and Europe are belligerent anti-tobacco moves on their home turf.

Wily US tobacco firms have circumvented cigarette advertising bans in Chaina to woo the country's 300 million smokers. The signs are visible everywhere: Philip Morris sells western apparel in Shanghai and Beijing under the Marlboro Classics brand name and R.J. Reynolds sponsors an annual tennis tournament in Beijing that uses its brand name Salem.

The cigarette giants are active in other parts of the world too. US companies have already taken over tobacco manufacturing plants in Hungary and the Czech Republic, while garnering a 17.5 percent share of the Japanese market. India seems to be another hot spot for the multinational brigade as Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds wait in the wings to make an entry.

It is penury that is forcing Third World governments to let in cigarette companies that might look a joyous bonanza in the short term but will be a medical nightmare in a couple of decades. India itself raked in Rs 2,700 crore from the cigarette industry in 1992-93 and is likely to collect Rs 3,000 crore in 1993-94 (see table). China's revenue rake-in was $4.8 billion in 1992.

The change under way in tobacco-consumption habits is also evident in projections of tobacco-related deaths worldwide from lung cancer, and respiratory and heart diseases. Currently, smoking kills 3 million people, more than half in the developed countries. However, WHO estimates that this figure will escalate to 10 million by the 2020s, of which 7 million will be in the developing countries. About 3 million estimated deaths will be in China alone, where consumption has shot through the roof from 500 billion cigarettes in 1978 to 1,700 billion cigarettes in 1992.

The problem cannot be ameliorated by simply throttling the tobacco industry: it would only leave tobacco growers -- some of the most wretched in India -- and distributors winded and unemployed. Tobacco is no better than a mass serial killer with legal sanction, but it does provide a livelihood to 25 million Indians, including labourers and marginal tobacco farmers.

The worst is yet to come
Unfortunately, the Third World seems to have given scant thought to their rehabilitation, engrossed in what they see as more pressing health problems. Medical experts warn that the worst is yet to come in Third World nations. "For the first 25 years of increased smoking within a population, there is little effect on the country's overall death rate. Thereafter comes a tidal wave of cigarette-induced deaths," says the human resource development and operations policy dissemination notes of the World Bank on February 19, 1993.

The tobacco issue has so much smokescreen blanketing it that it often becomes difficult to distinguish fact from bald fabrication. For one, the industry has successfully propagated the myth that tobacco has a huge export potential. In reality, however, most developing countries spend more on tobacco imports than on exports, with exceptions like Malawi (more than 75 per cent earnings from tobacco) and Zimbabwe (more than 25 per cent).In Africa, apart from the two above mentioned countries, the other trading nations had an aggregate deficit balance of trade of $417 million in 1985. In effect, the scarce foreign exchange of some of the world's poorest countries is being frittered away to purchase tobacco.

Among the numerous countries -- which carelessly splurge their hard-earned money on slow mass suicide -- that have chalked up substantial deficits in the trade of tobacco products are Angola, China, Bangladesh and Papua New Guinea. Tobacco has not only people by the throat, it has entire governments as well.

Environmentalists, too, express anxiety about the havoc wreaked by tobacco firms on the world's forests. According to some estimates, 12 per cent of the world's trees are mowed down every year for tobacco curing.

Tobacco is heavily dependent on pesticides; it consumes considerable amounts of paper for packaging -- about 6 km of paper per hour on modern packaging machines -- and spewing out deadly tobacco smoke that can kill not only the smoker but his innocent office colleague as well.

The history of battles held that forewarned is usually forearmed, but the Third World seems to be ignoring the no-holds-barred skirmish outside its very walls. The tobacco industry won't butt out so easily: legislation might take some wind off its sails, but, ultimately, saving individuals boils down to individual responsibility.