WASHINGTON -- In a sunny archive a few steps away from the Washington Monument, boxes of cassettes hold testimony to the U.S. tobacco industry's export genius. The cassettes, part of an oral history project that documents famous advertising campaigns, show how cigarette giant Philip Morris deftly used American-style marketing to turn the Marlboro man into a globetrotting cigarette salesman.
One of the campaign's most successful stops was Hong Kong. There, Philip Morris downplayed the Marlboro man (studies showed that Chinese did not respond well to a wizened old guy chasing cows through the dirt) and sponsored activities aimed at teens and young adults. Most of all, the tobacco company won customers by equating smoking with America:
"Hong Kong is such a small place, it's congested. America to them, it's the land of opportunity," William Kwan of Philip Morris Asia's Hong Kong office told historians from the Smithsonian Institution. "It's open. It's freedom. It's spacious. It's a dream."
Little wonder that Philip Morris linked smoking with the United States. For the past 10 years, the federal government has been tobacco's best friend in finding new markets. While losing no opportunity to browbeat tobacco companies and smokers at home, Washington has bullied foreign countries into allowing sophisticated advertising and marketing campaigns that have increased the rate of smoking, especially among women and young people.
This international lobbying effort on behalf of tobacco, however, is starting to come unraveled. The Clinton team, which has unleashed an unprecedented attack on tobacco at home, has slowly begun to withdraw U.S. support for tobacco's overseas forays, although it did recently use America's weight to stymie tobacco regulation in Thailand.
America still does not export the sort of health practices that it advocates at home, but domestic anti-tobacco sentiment seems be slowly seeping into its export policy.
"The United States government treats tobacco as a trade problem," said David D. Yen, chairman of the John Tung #F Foundation, a Taiwan foundation that fights smoking. "It's not a trade problem but a health problem -- for us."
After Hong Kong, the companies set their sights on prosperous Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and fast-growing Thailand and China. But these countries posed a challenge not present in Taiwan; their markets were closed to imports and the local market dominated by a government-controlled monopoly.
Enter Uncle Sam: Starting in 1985, the U.S. Trade Representative began pressuring Asian countries to open their markets. Using potent Chapter 301 of the 1974 Trade Act, U.S. negotiators threatened retaliation unless talks resulted in success by a certain date.
The successes came fast. The first country to submit was Japan in 1986, followed later that year by Taiwan and South Korea in 1988, giving U.S. manufacturers access to 60 million smokers and another 70 million potential smokers.
Those new markets helped U.S. tobacco manufacturers rack up increased foreign sales that helped offset dramatic decreases in cigarette sales back home. In Philip Morris' case, foreign sales of cigarettes make more money than domestic sales.
Reagan and Bush administration officials said the campaign to open foreign markets to U.S. tobacco companies was only designed to give U.S. companies a fair shot at closed markets. Many Asians are heavy smokers, they said, so it was only in support of free trade that they asked Asian countries to let in U.S. tobacco companies.
"My view [is] if a nation is selling its own cigarettes to its own citizens, that it ought not to bar the trade of cigarettes by another nation," former U.S. Trade Representative Carla Hills said.
But Philip Morris Cos. and RJR Nabisco Holding Corp. were doing more than just taking smokers away from tobacco monopolies in Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. As in Hong Kong, the American tobacco companies' sophisticated marketing campaigns were changing smoking patterns by winning new smokers among the young and women.
Increased smoking among young people has been especially dramatic, with the number of cigarettes sold to minors increasing from 6.5 billion to 36.1 billion between 1986, the year U.S. companies entered the Japanese market, and 1992. Health officials say the trend is not surprising; shortly after entering the Japanese market, U.S. tobacco companies began setting up vending machines on street corners, giving minors easy access to cigarettes.
The strategy of targeting young people seems deliberate. As the Smithsonian's oral history project shows, Philip Morris used promotional material to reach youths in discos and through support of sports programs -- "the places where young people go," in the words of Philip Morris' Mr. Kwan.
Women also are smoking in increasing numbers. Traditionally shunned by Asian women for cultural reasons, smoking has become increasingly identified with equality -- the same trend that caused an upsurge in female smoking rates in this country a generation ago. One brand that tries to encourage that trend is Virginia Slims, Philip Morris' brand aimed especially at women is now available in many Asian countries.
Among women, overall smoking rates decreased from 3.8 percent to 2.5 percent after the United States entered Asian markets, but among young women the rate more than doubled from 0.5 percent to 1.1 percent. In Taiwan, surveys also show an increasing number of high school girls attracted to smoking.
"The thing that is really shocking is that these American companies are using tactics that they have long since been forced to abandon at home. They advertise on TV, sell to minors and do not post warnings about their products," said Judith Mackay, head of the Asian Consultancy on Tobacco Control in Hong Kong. "It's like the 1950s all over again in Asia."
These marketing methods are more than just offshoots of the tobacco companies' entry into the new markets; they are the direct result of intervention from Washington.
When the federal government pressured Taiwan to open its tobacco market, Taiwanese officials asked if its advertising ban could remain in place. Washington said no and threatened retaliation.
Taiwan caved in and agreed to allow cigarette advertising, as well as the U.S. companies' barrage of free cigarettes, decals and posters that glamorized smoking.
U.S. pressure didn't end with the initial 1986 deal. Under its agreement with the U.S. Trade Representative, Taiwan must always seek U.S. permission when it wants to toughen restrictions on tobacco. In 1990, it asked if it could ban cigarette advertising from magazines read primarily by youths. A year later, it asked to move warning labels from the side to the front of cigarette packages.
Both times the answer from Washington was no. Cigarette ads could continue to be aimed at readers and warning labels pushed off to the side of the package.
The new line in Washington is that the Clinton administration will not oppose health restrictions on U.S. tobacco companies as long as they are fair and apply to domestic companies as well.
For example, U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor -- who has worked for the tobacco industry as an attorney fighting smoking bans -- has pledged not to oppose legislation in Taiwan that would ban tobacco advertising and sales from vending machines.
Mr. Kantor's office also has set up a working group with representatives from the Department of Health and Human Services to look into the role the government plays in exporting tobacco.
But last September, the U.S. embassy in Bangkok gave a sign that Washington may continue to roadblock the sort of tobacco regulation that it advocates for its own citizens. In an effort to conduct an investigation into tobacco products' health risks -- much like the one the Food and Drug Administration is currently undertaking -- the Thai government asked Philip Morris and RJR to release a list of cigarette additives. The tobacco companies refused and the U.S. embassy backed them, saying that this would be tantamount to releasing trade secrets.
Ironically, tobacco companies recently released that list in April in Washington -- at the request of the federal government.
The Clinton team also has hedged on whether it would push China -- with 300 million smokers -- to open its market. China previously agreed to open its market by 1995, but is unlikely to make a great effort to free foreign cigarettes from bureaucratic restrictions unless pushed by Mr. Kantor and his office.
If they are allowed in, the U.S. companies are likely to expand an embryonic strategy to make smoking more desirable to men and women.
The long-term costs, however, will be higher. China, for example, currently receives $4 billion a year in revenues from cigarettes, but spends $5 billion in health care costs. Because of the time lag between the start of smoking and the health care costs that it causes, these costs are expected to increase exponentially in the coming decades, WHO studies show.
But this looming public health crisis could be turned around, public health officials say.
As in the United States, public awareness campaigns in Asia can reduce smoking rates. Rates in Singapore have decreased from 19 percent in 1983 to 15 percent in 1993 -- lower than the U.S. rate of 25 percent.
"One natural ally would be the United States," Ms. Mackay said. "They've been very active in their own country in limiting tobacco's effects. But so far they've only been interested in pushing tobacco on us, not helping us."
TOMORROW: With tobacco's power at home broken, Washington gangs up for the kill.
THE BEST CUSTOMERS
?3 15 top importers of American cigarettes in 1993
Number of cigarettes)
Japan ............... 55.6 billion
Belgium ............. 51.2 billion
Hong Kong ........... 11.0 billion
Saudi Arabia ........ 9.6 billion
United Arab Em. ..... 7.8 billion
Singapore ........... 6.5 billion
Turkey .............. 6.1 billion
Lebanon ............. 5.3 billion
Russia .............. 5.2 billion
South Korea ......... 4.5 billion
Taiwan .............. 2.9 billion
Paraguay ............ 2.6 billion
Israel .............. 2.5 billion
Cyprus .............. 2.2 billion
Netherland Antilles.. 2.1 billion