Two-thirds of Chinese men are smokers, and surveys show that as many as 90 per cent believe their habit has little effect on their health, or is good for them.
Even in China's medical community, 60 per cent of male doctors are smokers. Few are aware of the studies forecasting that cigarettes will soon be responsible for one-third of all premature deaths among Chinese men.
Little wonder that Western tobacco companies are hungrily circling the Chinese market, lobbying eagerly for entry into this lucrative market of 360 million smokers, the biggest market in the world.
In Poland the tobacco marketing was very aggressive. Once in a while I'd be wandering around the town square and there'd be about a dozen skinny Polish girls dressed in the most outlandishly bright yellow you've ever seen (but thankfully not that much of it) with little parasols that said, eg, "Jan III Sobieski", which was the name of Poland's poshest domestic brand (oh yeah, and also a famous King and leader of the forces that repelled a major Turkish invasion -- something along the lines of George Washinton Menthol Lights). There still wasn't a lot of employment going around so it wasn't hard for Polish companies to employ what to me seemed armies of young women who looked like they had New York modeling contracts and wanted desperately to make sure you smoked the right brand.
But that was nothing compared to the approach of the crass Americans! They would hire just as many leggy girls with expensive haircuts, but instead of placing them all in the town square they'd send them out individually to all the bars in town. They'd home in on the smokers, sidle up to your table, and sweetly ask if you wouldn't like to give them your Jan Sobieski's for a nice fresh pack of Marlboroughs. Now, Marl's are disgusting cigarettes, but at that time even the best domestic brand wasn't quite that good (and some of them literally tasted like newspaper sprayed with insecticide and rolled up*), so naturally most people went for it. After all, they cost more and you were trading a partial pack for a full pack. That always struck me as particularly underhanded.
*No, I'm not kidding.
Posted by: Alan Hogue at June 14, 2005 09:28 AM