According to Yahoo News, the tobacco industry is increasingly marketing smoking products in the developing world due to more relaxed restrictions on promoting smoking.
The study, which looked at tobacco marketing in 462 communities spread across 16 countries, was published by the Bulletin of the World Health Organization, a journal created by the UN agency, but the contents of which do not reflect WHO’s views.
Data on cigarette promotion was collected since 2005, when a global convention on tobacco controls, including marketing bans, came into force for nations that had signed on.
The study found that “people living in poor countries are exposed to more intense and aggressive tobacco marketing than those living in affluent countries”.
Report contributor Anna Gilmore, director of the Tobacco Control Research Group at the University of Bath, said the tobacco industry’s marketing is designed to drive up smoking among children and adolescents.
The tobacco industry’s “sales are falling in high-income countries and so its future profitability depends on getting young people hooked on smoking in low-income countries,” she said in a statement.
