We entered the disco at about midnight. Within a minute, a “golden girl” approached me, holding out a box of Benson & Hedges: “Here, take one”. I took it. She extended her hand again, this time holding a small glowing orb—a cigarette lighter, I soon realised. I balked; she encouraged me: “Go ahead—I want to see you smoke it now”. I told her I thought it would make me cough. “No, these are smoother, not so strong” she reassured me. “I want to see you smoke it now.” I put the cigarette in my pocket.

Tamsyn Seimon, notes taken at the Golden Tones Disco, Nuwara Eliya, Sri Lanka, April 1997

Facing an intensifying anti-tobacco climate within the United States and Europe, British American Tobacco (BAT), like other multinational tobacco corporations, has shifted its focus to the vast markets of developing countries. In the small island nation of Sri Lanka, BAT’s subsidiary Ceylon Tobacco Company (CTC) uses discos, music shows, free giveaways, powerboat races, attractive employment packages, and other pointed measures to draw smokers. Exuding the essence of “the good life”—in perverse denial of the prevailing somber mood in Sri Lanka—these lavish campaigns target the country’s most vulnerable groups, preying especially upon the young and a vast, untapped female population.