Global Anti-Smoking Initiative Gets Huge Financial Boost

July 27, 2008— -- These days, you'd never see a concert billboard in the U.S. with a cigarette logo on it. But it's happening more often in the developing world. In Indonesia, big billboards advertising Alicia Keys' upcoming concert line roadsides, sporting the logo of a major regional tobacco company tied to Phillip Morris International.

While smoking rates are dropping in the U.S., they are rising in much of the developing world, including Indonesia.  According to the world's largest tobacco seller, Altria, the maker of Marlboro, cigarette sales in the U.S. are declining 2 percent to 3 percent percent a year. At the same time, international sales jumped by almost 10 percent in 2007.

Douglas Bettcher heads the anti-smoking initiative for the World Health Organization in Geneva. "5.4 million persons per year now are losing their lives due to tobacco use. That's 14,000 a day, and if you calculate it on an hourly basis, it would be like a  jumbo jet, like an A380, going down every hour," Bettcher said.

Thirty-six percent of the world's smokers are in China, where warnings on cigarette packs are still not required. But now, the tobacco companies are being challenged by two of the world's richest men.

This past week, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Microsoft founder Bill Gates announced they will spend $500 million to reduce global smoking rates. During a press conference, Bloomberg drove home a sense of urgency. "If we do nothing, tobacco will kill 1 billion people by the end of the century."

Health officials say the money will fund a multi-pronged strategy that will include educating people about the risks, pushing for higher taxes on cigarettes, and even using religion to help create a social stigma around smoking.

But there are big obstacles to curbing the global smoking rate.

National governments often make money on tobacco sales and don't want to pass public smoking bans. Meanwhile, global health officials say that while they try to get their message out to kids in the developing world, so are the tobacco companies.