Polluted Profits
“Your gold and silver are rusted away, and their rust will be as a witness against you.”—James 5:3.
“Unnecessary Deaths”
“CIGARET marketers are focusing on the Third World, where they rarely have to print the health warnings that curb sales elsewhere. They dump lethal substandard tobacco on unsuspecting buyers while the local media, eager for tobacco advertising, keep awareness low. Cigarets sold in the Third World usually contain twice as much cancer-causing tar as identical brands elsewhere.”—World Press Review, April 1980.
The tobacco industry began to eye the third world countries as a vast untapped market when sales sagged in North America and Europe. Aggressive advertising followed that was designed to create and exploit a demand in these countries. It has proved to be tragically effective. Per capita cigarette consumption between 1970 and 1980 rose less than 4 percent in the United States, but it soared 33 percent in Africa and 24 percent in Latin America. Each year between 1971 and 1974 the average value of tobacco exported by the United States was $650 million. By 1979 the figure had shot up to $2,150 million.
Tax Dollars Contribute to Unnecessary Deaths
The money of American taxpayers has shared in the growth of tobacco consumption and exporting. In 1979 alone more than $337 million in tax money was spent to encourage domestic tobacco production. Not only does the government use tax dollars to subsidize the growth of tobacco; it uses that money to buy some of the surplus. Millions of tons have been shipped to less developed countries as part of the Food for Peace program. Food for peace? Tobacco is food to relieve starving millions? Nonsense!
As late as 1977 more than 13 million metric tons with an estimated value of $55 million was sent abroad by the United States. U.S. tax dollars support the World Bank and the United Nations Development Program, and those institutions finance projects to expand tobacco cultivation overseas.
In the United States the government demands that cigarette packs carry the warning that cigarettes are hazardous to people’s health, but it encourages and finances cigarette consumption in third world nations. The New York Times, April 13, 1980, comments on the result: “The stage is being set for a new epidemic of smoking-related diseases in the less-developed nations.”
And the World Press Review article quoted in the opening paragraph comments: “Joseph Califano, former U.S. Secretary for Health, Education, and Welfare, told a WHO [World Health Organization] meeting in Stockholm that to young people ‘the invitation to “Come to where the flavor is” is a ticket to the cancer ward.’ The WHO Expert Committee on Smoking was more blunt: ‘The international tobacco industry’s irresponsible behavior [directly] causes a substantial number of unnecessary deaths.”’
“The Valley of Death”
POLLUTION is bringing death even before birth to lives in a city in Brazil. As a result, it has been called “the valley of death.” Cubatão is intersected by four rivers, but all of them have become dead rivers. The city itself lies under a venomous mist. Daily the 50-square-mile area has dumped upon it 473 tons of carbon monoxide, 182 tons of sulfur dioxide, 148 tons of particulate matter, 41 tons of nitrogen oxide and 31 tons of hydrocarbons. In 1977 in one slum area surrounded by three of the city’s 24 industries, a pollution monitoring machine broke down under the intensity of the contamination.
One of Cubatão’s lifeless rivers billows with the suds of detergents. Another boils from the effect of the chemicals poured into it. A third river is so hot that its course is marked by the steam rising from it. Fish taken from the nearby ocean outlet have been found blind and deformed from ingested mercury. There are no birds, no butterflies and no insects of any kind. When it rains, it is acid rain that burns the skin.
Of every 1,000 babies born, 40 are dead at birth and another 40 perish within a week. Most of these victims are deformed. The number of stillbirths and deformed fetuses has increased dramatically. The average weight of normally born infants has decreased markedly. Of 40,000 emergency medical calls, 10,000 were for tuberculosis, pneumonia, bronchitis, emphysema, asthma, and other nose and throat ailments.
Those Who Can, Commute
The mayor of this city of 80,000 refuses to live there. A group of state functionaries left when they were refused the gas masks that they had requested. Of the 55,000 workers in the city, only one third live there—they can’t afford to move. Although the industries have given the city the highest average per capita income of any city in Brazil, the profits are not spread out equally. Thirty-five percent of the workers live in shantytowns with no social services. Typical worker communities have many small rundown cabins with a cot inside known as a “hot bed.” By day a night worker sleeps in it, by night a day worker occupies it.
The managing director of one of Cubatão’s steel companies observed that flagrant pollution by industries is no longer accepted by the highly unionized workers of so-called developed countries. “In view of these considerations,” he said, “the iron foundry is an activity more suitable to third world countries.”
Apparently the policy is, pollute wherever it is profitable and permitted. And peddle the cigarettes wherever you can, regardless of how many unnecessary deaths they cause.
“The love of money is a root of all sorts of injurious things.”—1 Timothy 6:10