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Re: Nigerian Cover (April 2005)

On Jan 19 2005, having been alerted to the extraordinary statement shown on the cover of this issue of the journal (April 2005), I emailed the letter below to Dr Chris Proctor at BAT in the UK. He replied the next day asking when I would need the information sought. I replied immediately that I would like it within a week. No further response has ever been received from Dr Proctor.

I invite him here publicly to now reply.

Simon Chapman Editor

Dr C Proctor BAT UK

Dear Dr Proctor,

On January 16 2005, in an article in "This Day" (Lagos) headlined '5.3m Nigerians Smoke Tobacco' a comment ("tobacco use is risky but counterfeit cigarettes are lethal") was attributed to Mr Richard Hodgson, Managing Director of British American Tobacco (BAT) Nigeria.

We intend commenting on this statement in a forthcoming issue of Tobacco Control and would be grateful if you would answer the following questions.

1. What is it that makes counterfeit cigarettes "lethal" but "tobacco use" only "risky"? 2. Is Mr Hodgson's position consistent with official BAT global policy on communicating with the public about the health consequences of smoking? 3. Do you believe that Mr Hodgson's statement would be interpreted by the ordinary reader to mean that "use" of BAT's tobacco products in Nigeria is less dangerous to health than the use of counterfeit cigarettes? 4. Do you agree that this statement is without foundation and so grossly misleading and irresponsible? 5. What has BAT done to issue a public retraction of Mr Hodgson's highly misleading statement and to discipline him?

I look forward to your early reply.

Yours sincerely,

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Re: Response from BAT Nigeria

Dear Professor Chapman

I am responding to your email to Dr. Chris Proctor concerning media remarks attributed to Richard Hodgson, Managing Director of British American Tobacco Nigeria that, "tobacco use is risky but counterfeit cigarettes are lethal" which was published in ThisDay of January 16 2005

The Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) is the regulatory body focusing on tobacco control in Nigeria, and SON has joined with the Nigerian Customs Service to try and eliminate counterfeit cigarettes.

SON has been analysing some seized counterfeit cigarettes, and their published results confirmed that they have hugely higher levels of tar and nicotine beyond the prescribed limits for tobacco products in Nigeria which constitutes serious health hazards to unsuspecting Nigerians.

The Head of Enforcement unit of SON has publicly described counterfeit cigarettes as lethal and suggested that they are more dangerous than regular cigarettes. Furthermore SON has consistently communicated to the Nigerian public through the media that smokers of counterfeit cigarettes which usually contain microbes are exposed to a higher risk than those who consume genuine brands manufactured in factories under their control and supervision.

BAT Nigeria's factories manufacture products under the regulatory supervision of SON

Mr Hodgson reported remarks at an interactive session with media editors, was made in the context of SON's views on the issue above.

Our position on smoking and health is well documented and published on our website www.batnigeria.com

We think national governments are the most respected voice in informing people of the dangers of smoking and in British Anrican Tobacco Nigeria, we are working in collaboration with the Nigerian government to support this through various initiatives.

With kind regards

Kehinde Johnson Corporate & Regulatory Affairs Director British American Tobacco (Nigeria) Limited 35 Idowu Taylor Street Victoria Island Lagos email: kehinde_johnson@bat.com

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Re: Re: Response from BAT Nigeria

BAT Nigeria Limited Mr. Kehinde Johnson Corporate & Regulatory Affairs Director

Re: Risky v. Lethal Cigarettes

Mr Johnson:

I am the former Vice President of R&D of one of your sister companies.

I read your response to Professor Chapman on the issue that counterfeit cigarettes are lethal, whereas genuine brands that you manufacture under controlled supervision are only "risky". Are you inferring that your manufactured product is safer or when used as intended does not kill?

Does your so called "risky" cigarette contain less combustion by-products, such as CO, polycyclic hydrocarbons, polyaromatic hydrocarbons, tobacco specific nitrosamines or any less human carcinogens?

In the manufacture of your product do you continue to use intentional additives on the tobacco, such as glycerol, chocolate, simple sugars, honey or ammonia based chemicals that when pyrolyzed produce a less toxic tar or less free nicotine?

Are the cigarettes that you manufacture under controlled manufacturing conditions free of burn retardants or accelerants to control the burn rate of the cigarette?

Are you inferring that when you manufacture your "risky" product that you remove the entire natural soil flora (microbes) and the unintentional additives derived from the agronomic process? In other words do you sterilize the tobacco prior to formulation into a cigarette to eliminate all the soil microbial spores or wash out the residual pesticides and herbicides? Have you cultured your tobacco after it has been made into a cigarette? Or have you assayed for residual agronomic pesticides or herbicides?

I also glean from your response that Mr. Hodgson agrees with the statements of SON or otherwise would not have repeated them. Does Mr. Hodgson have an independent thought on the issue or was he just conveying that the BAT Nigeria manufactured product is safer and therefore deliberately misleading the public?

Do you not have a moral imperative to clearly and succinctly communicate that all cigarettes are lethal or does this honesty not fall within the domain of your corporate responsibility statements?

Sincerely,

JS Wigand, PhD, MAT, PhS

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Re: Open letter to British American Tobacco & BAT Nigeria

Kehinde Johnson, Corporate & Regulatory Affairs Director, British American Tobacco (Nigeria) Limited, writing on behalf of Dr. Chris Proctor, of BAT's UK headquarters, fails to respond to the principal questions asked by Professor Simon Chapman of the University of Sydney and editor of the journal Tobacco Control.

In his posting to Tobacco Control's e-letters page, Mr. Johnson relies heavily on the judgment of the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON), which has allegedly analysed some counterfeit cigarettes and "confirmed that they have hugely higher levels of tar and nicotine beyond the prescribed limits for tobacco products in Nigeria which constitutes serious health hazards to unsuspecting Nigerians."

First, Mr. Johnson does not specify what "hugely higher" means and provides no scientific basis on which to judge how much such counterfeit cigarettes would increase risk for regular smokers. Second, although the SON website describes its import inspection procedures and explains that it issues "poor quality products reprimands," SON does not post any values for 'safe' tobacco products among its hundreds of Nigerian Industrial Standards (NIS).

The International Agency for Research in Cancer lists the following as carcinogens present in tobacco products: aromatic amines (e.g. 4- aminobiphenyl), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (e.g. benzo[a]pyrene), tobacco-specific nitrosamines, benzene, acrylamide and acrylonitrile. Are these less dangerous when present in what Mr. Johnson terms "genuine brands manufactured in factories under [SON] control and supervision"?

There are also hundreds of known additives to tobacco products, many of which make tobacco products less harsh on the throat and, therefore, easier to inhale, especially for first-time smokers, largely drawn from the youth population. Therefore, could those "hugely higher levels of tar and nicotine" referred to by Mr. Johnson not actually make counterfeit cigarettes less dangerous, rather than more so, by discouraging inhalation?

Mr. Johnson presents no clear evidence on disease risk, one way or the other. He does, however, refer readers to the BAT Nigeria website, where the section on smoking and health allows that tobacco use incurs "real risks of serious diseases such as lung cancer, respiratory disease and heart disease". However, the website information proclaims serious doubts about the worth of epidemiological studies and notes that science has "up till date, not been able to identify biological mechanisms which can explain with certainty the statistical findings linking smoking and certain diseases. Nor has science been able to clarify the role of particular smoke constituents in these disease processes."

First, that is not entirely true, as some smoking disease mechanisms have, in fact, been identified. However, a larger question again goes begging: If BAT and its Nigerian subsidiary have so many doubts about the "lack of complete understanding at a biological level of the disease mechanisms and role of particular smoke constituents [that] creates uncertainty for efforts to design less risky cigarettes", how can the firm criticise counterfeit cigarettes? If you do not deny that thirty, forty or fifty years of smoking will lead to lung and other cancers, plus respiratory and heart disease, nor do you deny there are severe neonatal risks from smoking in pregnancy (though nothing is said about the passive smoking risks from parental tobacco use over much shorter spans), then, again, how much riskier are those counterfeit products? Will they kill more smokers in twenty years rather than thirty or forty? Will they lead to 5.9 million tobacco deaths a year rather than the 4.9 million currently estimated by the World Health Organization?

How exactly are you "working in collaboration with the Nigerian government to support [informing people of the dangers of smoking] through various initiatives" and, finally, when does merely "risky" behaviour become "lethal"? Many lives depend on your answers.

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Re: Response to BAT

Dear Mr Kehinde Johnson,

It's so sad that you have joined your CEO to pretend not to know the facts here.

The products you produce in your factory are extremely poisonous apart from being addictive. All tobacco products irrespective of where they are coming from contain considerable quantities of nicotine and alkaloids. It has also been proven that tobacco from low or high yield cigarettes contain the same amounts of nicotine. Moreover, it is not new that your CEO is denying the toxicity of your product. Can you ever have a 'less toxic product?' A toxin is a toxin either it is being produced in a cosy environment or smuggled through the borders.

You and I know that the romance that used to exist between the Nigerian government and BAT would not permit a fair assessment of the toxicity of your product. I am not even sure of when your so-called SON certification was issued. Or have you forgotten the fanfare and jamboree that heralded the entry of your company into Nigeria? The Federal Government of Nigeria on September 24, 2001, at what it called the first official Investment Summit, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with your company, British-American Tobacco (BAT). Under the agreement, the tobacco giant was to invest a whopping $150 million in the country. It was part of government’s search for “foreign investors.� According to a widely advertised statement by your company, the investment was “to build a state-of-the-art factory in Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria. According to government, the investment was to be an integrative process that will impact on all aspects of the tobacco industry, from leaf growing to the manufacture and distribution of tobacco products.� The factory, sited on the very strategic Lagos-Ibadan expressway, and sitting on a large expanse of land of approximately 26.5 hectares has since been rolling out its toxins. The issue of whether tobacco contributes to ill-health and causes cancer and other diseases has always been denied by the industry’s baron for a very long time.

I know the Nigerian government knows better now and this is why the government signed the FCTC and banned advertising of tobacco on billboards and media.

We are aware of the activities of BAT to undermine the process of ratification of the FCTC in Nigeria and I must say that the latest statements by your CEO give us the opportunity to ask President Olusegun Obasanjo that the time to ratify the FCTC in Nigeria is now! This insult must stop. I know your CEO's statements is another opportunity that will make OBJ (President Obasanjo) regret having listened to his advisers that asked him to open the door for BAT in the first place. I'd advise you to start looking for another job.

Cigarettes produced in your factory are not only risky but equally LETHAL.

Time is up for tobacco in Nigeria.

Regards,

Babalola Faseru, University College Hospital, Ibadan, Nigeria.

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Re: Who dominates the illegal cigarette industry?

Tobacco leaves which are used for manufacturing cigarettes are cultivated by the tobacco industry themselves, throughout the world.

If the tobacco industry is honestly keen in stopping the availability of counterfeit cigarettes on this earth, they should first of all stop cultivating tobacco leaves. One of the strategies that the industry employs to protect their business is to misuse the illicit cigarette industry.

Also they use the illegal cigarette industry to get the maximum support from the government, i.e. to justify the industry promotions being launched to capture customers, especially the children, to reduce prices, to increase the market share etc.

In many countries, tobacco industry is a monopoly. Therefore there is no question of price decrease or the need to justify promotions. As such the illegal cigarette industry represents as an invisible competitor. For instance, in Sri Lanka Ceylon Tobacco Company (CTC) always insists the government not to increase the price of cigarettes in an affecting amount, put forwarding logics that such decision would increase the consumption and availability of illegal cigarettes.

They then say that the government's revenue would go down, if the availability of illegal cigarettes increases due to price increase of legal cigarettes. As they put such arguments the government does not increase the price of legal products at all.

The tobacco industry needs promotions to increase the consumption. But amidst the protest being made against the company by several sectors in the society, the government has to control it even to a certain extent. In such circumstances carrying out of such promotions by the industry effectively is not that easy. Therefore they always pressurize the government that it needs to promote the legal industry in order to decrease the market for illegal cigarettes.

The best strategy and the support for the tobacco industry throughout the world is the illegal industry. It is how the industry earns huge amounts of money to spend for their propaganda work, especially to capture politicians, policy makers, media personnel etc. It is a known secret that the illegal cigarette industry is being maintained by the legal industry! I had the opportunity to interview the officials of the illegal cigarette manufacturers in Sri Lanka and they revealed that it was the legal cigarette industry who supported them to set up the industry and even raw material and machinery were provided to them by the legal industry at the initiation process of the business.

Finally, with regard to the statement made by the Managing Director of British American Tobacco, Nigeria, "tobacco use is risky, but counterfeit cigarettes are lethal." Mr. Manager could you please define the extent of this risk and how would the risk affect the consumer and the benefit of the product? Also, when you say ¡°lethal¡± how do you justify this?

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Re: RE : "tobacco use is risky but counterfeit cigarettes are lethal"

To: BAT Nigeria Limited Mr. Kehinde Johnson Corporate & Regulatory Affairs Director

"Should we swallow a bait and have a lethal hook thrust in our throats just because the bait looked so appealingly delicious? What the tobacco companies manufacture has no single benefit, no redeeming feature. All it does is to kill and ruin .They are unwanted, loathsome and unwelcome "(Ugochukwu D. Ejinkeonye- The Black Business Journal )

Dear Sir,

Was the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) able to determine:

• how many « risky » ingredients does BAT-Nigeria add to its cigarettes ?

• how many toxic chemicals are there in BAT-Nigeria’s cigarettes’ smoke ?

• if there is more than the FDA 600 permitted additives to the tobacco in the counterfeit cigarettes ?

• if there is more than 4000 toxic chemicals in the counterfeit cigarettes’ smoke ?

What are the ‘prescribed limits for tobacco products’ in Nigeria ? Do these limits guarantee the SAFETY of these products ?

Are the ‘genuine brands’ manufactured in BAT-Nigeria Ltd nicotine- drug delivery devices that affect the health of smokers and that of the people around them less than the counterfeit cigarettes do? How much less? Do we have some comparative epidemiological studies on that issue? Could your ‘well documented position on smoking and health and published on our website’ give us these details?

BAT-Nigeria Ltd is ‘working in collaboration with the Nigerian government’. Perhaps you mean the Minister of Commerce, Hon A.D Idris Waziri who was present at the shameful BAT investor award ceremony or Hon Kola Jamodu, the Minister of Industry (http://www.summitreports.com/nigeria1/tobacco.htm), or the President Olusegun Obasanjo who’s reforms ‘greatly encouraged BAT (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/business/1561228.stm)

However, the Minister of Health rightly abstained from your meeting of your Social Report.

Your business is profit on a highly addictive, risky and lethal product, our concern is health and quality of life.

Ms. Véronique Le Clézio Manager de ViSa- Mauritius ViSa Mauritius

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Re: Still A Cannibal In Our Midst!

In June 2002, months before this column was published, I published an essay in a number of Nigerian newspapers entitled: "The 17 Billion Poison House In Ibadan." The piece was my own way of pouring out my spilling disgust and accumulated indignation because of reports in the media earlier in April of the same year that the Obasanjo Administration had celebratorily granted permission to a so-called "leading cigarette company", British America Tobacco (BAT), to invest a "whopping $150 million (about 17 billion naira)" in the construction of a tobacco factory in Ibadan, "the biggest and most modern" of its kind in Africa. The prominent attraction of the company, according to reports, was that, when completed, it would provide employment to 1,000 Nigerians.

Expectedly, the article provoked immense interest, and was rewarded with an unimaginably wide circulation on the Internet. In fact, I have continued to see several links to it on a number of internet sites, including TOBACCO.ORG. Indeed, Op-Ed News which still maintains a link to the piece describes it as "Talking about Tobacco like we Never See in the US" (The piece is still available on the net at: http://www.usafricaonline.com/tobaccongr.ugoejinke.html).

I even got a letter from an attorney in Houston requesting more information about the activities of British America Tobacco and other cigarette companies in Nigeria so he could commence legal action against them in order to force them and their lethal business out of Nigeria. What amazed me after the publications, was the panic reaction of BAT. They immediately mounted an unprecedented image-packaging blitz through countless full-page glossy adverts in several newspaper and magazines.

Today, I am reopening this battle, not just with BAT now, but with all other cigarette manufacturers in this country, and I invite all concerned Nigerians, health and environmental activists, to join this clearly winnable struggle. The question I have always asked cigarette producers is: can they boldly come out in the open and assure me that the commodity they manufacture and distribute to hapless individuals cannot be rightly classified as poison? Again, they should tell me just one single benefit the human body derives from cigarette smoking. Has it not been convincingly proved everywhere, and publicly admitted by tobacco producers, that tobacco is a merciless killer, an unrelenting cannibal that devours a man when his life is sweetest to him? If then tobacco is a proven killer, can’t those who manufacture and circulate it in society be classified as murderers? Hasn’t even our own Federal Ministry of Health unambiguously endorsed this position by its insistence and persistent warning that TOBACCO SMOKERS ARE LIABLE TO DIE YOUNG?

The implication of the Health Ministry’s statement is simple: If tobacco smokers are liable to die young, then anyone offering you a cigarette is only informing you that the best wish he could possibly make to you is that your life be cut short! He is just telling you in very clear terms: May you die young! And that is exactly what BAT, other tobacco companies, and the government that licensed them to operate here are wishing Nigerians! How wicked and heartless could they be!

I know that after this piece now, BAT and their co-poison manufacturers will start again to erect new and more beautiful billboards, and fill several pages of newspapers with glossy adverts. I see this as nothing but the huge, shameless strategem of a smiling, gentle, but ruthless murderer to persuade his victims to allow him to live among them so he could strike when they least expected. Well, this time around, I am waiting for them to boldly tell Nigerians that tobacco, the product they manufacture and circulate in Nigeria, is no more the resilient, implacable, silent killer, the lethal poison, and the heartless cannibal that seeks accommodation in the midst of hapless humanity with the sole intention of effecting their eventual decimation. I want to hear that cigarettes are no longer generous distributors of devouring cancer, tuberculosis, sundry terminal lung and heart diseases, etc.

Unfortunately, cigarette adverts are among the most alluring in society. The pleasant pictures of vivacious achievers smiling home with glittering laurels just because they are hooked to particular brands of cigarette which we see on glossy billboards are proving irresistible baits to several people, especially youths. The danger is so evident in the unparalleled glee with which youths adopt these cigarette adverts stars as their most cherished heroes and models. I was a victim too. As a youth, the elegant, gallant, athletic rodeo man whose image marketed the 555 brand of cigarette was my best idea of a handsome, hard-working winner. My friends and I admired him, carried his photographs about, and yearned to smoke 555 in order to grow up and become energetic and vivacious like him.

One wonders how many youths that have been terminally impaired because they went beyond mere fantasies and obsession with their cigarette advert heroes and became chain-smokers and irredeemable addicts. Managers of tobacco adverts are so adept in this grand art of deception that their victims never suspect any harm until they have willingly placed their heads on the slaughter slab. Indeed, only very few are able to look beyond the deceptive pictures and the pernicious pomp of cigarette promotional stunts and see the blood-curdling pictures of piecemeally ruined lungs and other sensitive organs, murky, chimney-like breath tracts and heart region, the looming merciless and spine-chilling fangs of an all devouring cancer, tuberculosis, sundry lung and heart diseases, and their associate unyielding killers. The warm reception given to BAT in Nigeria by both the Federal and Oyo State governments is nothing but criminal, ungodly and anti-people.

There were reports that BAT paid 2billoin naira tax in 2001. I have even heard that it sponsors scholarships and community help projects. But how many people have their lethal product sent to their early graves? How many widows, widowers and orphans are they producing with alarming rapidity? How many among their 1,000 employees are gradually ruined daily because of the insidious fumes they inhale during production of cigarettes? How many cancer, TB, lung disease patients do they produce in a year?

Indeed, in civilized countries, Tobacco Companies and their owners are being isolated and choked with harsh laws. Now, they have invaded Nigeria with their filthy billions because we have an incompetent and insensitive government that has no qualms welcoming urbane, but ruthless killers in the name of “foreign investors.�

The development in the United States on June 7, 2001 where a Los Angeles Superior Court in California slapped an unprecedented $3 Billion in damages on Phillip Morris, another giant Tobacco Company in response to a suit by a tobacco casualty, Richard Boeken, who had developed incurable cancer of the brain and lungs after smoking two packs of Marlboro cigarettes every day for 40 years should serve as eye opener to Nigerians that with several class suits from victims of tobacco, these evil merchants can be forced out of Nigeria. According to the New York Post editorial of June 9, 2001, 56-year-old Boeken who began smoking as a teenager in 1957 claimed that "he continued smoking not because it was addictive, but he believed claims by Tobacco Companies that smoking was safe." He told reporters in a post-trial interview: " I didn’t believe they would lie about the facts that they were putting out on television and radio."

That is exactly the point. Tobacco companies are deploying well concocted lies to lure people into taking their fatally poisoned wraps called cigarettes. Their billboards present vivacious winners and achievers puffing away, instead of cancer patients treading the cold, dark, lonely path to a most painful, slow death. Every society has a responsibility to defend its unwary and the ignorant. Nigeria cannot be an exception. The argument that smokers ought to be dissuaded from smoking by the hardly visible warnings they put out, and that people are merely being allowed to exercise their right and freedom to make choices, is akin to endorsing suicide as a lawful __expression of freedom? Why allow a killer- poison to circulate in the first place? Do we all have the same capacity to discern and resist the allurement of danger? In court and in several enquiries, tobacco producers have admitted that their product contains very harmful substances. It is widely believed that many Tobacco producers are non-smokers because they know too well how deadly their product is! Tobacco is a killer. So are its manufacturers. Nigerians should rise and resist this cannibal in our midst. Certainly in several families, there have been tobacco victims. There are relevant laws under which these people can be sued. You have a choice in this matter, to not only refuse to patronize their lethal product but to help your hapless, less- discerning neighbour do likewise. This fight is winnable.

P/S: For more information about the destructive mission of tobacco, log on to http://www.tobaccofree.org/children.htm

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Re: Watch it BAT(Nigeria) Limited: the days of ignorance are over

British American Tobacco (Nigeria) Limited (BAT) and their cohorts the world over should come to terms with the fact that the truth cannot be hidden forever even from the man on the streets.

Mr Kehinde Johnson did not need to comment at all because there was nothing to comment about! He should have apologised for being a part of this systematic elimination of defenceless people the world over.

Dr. Chris Proctor's statement typifies the message that British American Tobacco (Nigeria) Limited has tried to pass across to unsuspecting people, that their tobacco is "safer" than smuggled brands.This is most unfortunate because it is not based on any scientific evidence. In fact, the scientific findings in this area are to the contrary. A time will come in our developmental process in Nigeria that such misrepresentation of facts will attract severe punishment!

Another trick which is employed by the company is the use of Nigerian symbols of success and national pride such as historical materials as a means of advertisement for their products. Advertising cigarretes under the guise of promoting national pride is another slap in the face of the Nigerian people by BAT (Nigeria) Limited. Nigerians know when to be proudly Nigerian. Certainly, our national pride is not baased on tobacco but on the legacy of our fore-fathers.

I take succour in the Yoruba saying that "If a lie goes on for twenty years, the truth catches it in a day". This lies have gone on for more than twenty years and the truth has caught up with them.

It is time for all those who know the truth to speak up. We need a critical mass of determined and committed folks to finish this work and make our world truly tobacco free!