The New Straits Times, February 19, 1998
The National Anti-Dadah Week sponsored by the National Narcotic Agency began on Wednesday. This is timely as drug abuse is still the country's No. 1 enemy. Malaysians must think of new strategies and create new awareness to combat this menace.
One way is to educate Malaysians about the addictive nature of tobacco; to be followed by strategies to create a drug-free and smoke-free society. The need for such an approach is amplified by the recent revelation about the secret formula used in Marlboro cigarettes.
Also, a local tobacco company recently said that it "believes smoking to be a risk factor for diseases such as lung cancer." It "accepts that smokers as a group are more likely to contract lung cancer than non-smokers".
Although it is short of admitting that tobacco is addictive, it is refreshing to hear for the first time a local tobacco company admitting that its cigarettes harm consumers. It won't be long before the industry is forced to accept research about the addictive nature of tobacco.
The Marlboro's secret success story was made public early this week in a legal suit by the State of Minnesota in the United States.
Two expert witnesses for the State told the jury how tobacco companies like Philip Morris (which has a share market of about 10 per cent in Malaysia) through Malboro outdid other brands in the market.
"The secret of Malboro is ammonia," according to a 1989 document from the industry which emerged during the lawsuit. Various concentrations of ammonia use will enable smokers to get a stronger dose of nicotine, the addictive drug in a cigarette.
The experts - a Mayo Clinic authority on nicotine addiction and a Stanford University chemical engineering professor - said ammonia changes a portion of the nicotine into "free nicotine" so that it can be more readily absorbed in the lungs.
As a result, the chemical effects of nicotine are felt in the brain within seconds. In other words, boosting free nicotine by the use of ammonia will ensure cigarettes will remain addictive even though the companies were producing low-tar, low-nicotine brands, said the experts.
The use of ammonia, often nicknamed "impact booster" for this purpose, is reminiscent of the practice by many drug addicts who concoct their own mixture to increase the impact of drugs.
The "Marlboro secret formula" is no different from other concocted drugs.
Thus, this revelation is another fact as to how addiction is being introduced and marketed without us knowing it.
Sadly, we remain oblivious of this addictive substance as though it has no relevance to the larger problem of drug addiction. Despite the reminders, we forget that most addicts started by smoking cigarettes, sometimes at a young age.
Even though the figure quoted could be as high as 90 per cent of the addict population, we ignore it. As a result, smoking continues to be a drain on the country's finances and people.
What makes this point worrying is that there have been studies that drew similarities between addiction due to nicotine and addiction to cocaine, amphetamine and heroin. However, consuming the latter is punishable by death, with the former receving a fine, if the user is underaged.
In a nutshell, we cannot win the dadah war as long as there are double standards and hypocrisy in our attempt to beat drug addiction. It is not so much the substance but the dependency inherent in it.
Using this as a yardstick, tobacco should be no exception. We have shied away from saying that tobacco is equally addictive and, therefore, must be subjected to more stringent control.
This has been the concern expressed many times before by health activists and tobacco control advocates here and across the world.
In Australia, cigarette packets carry a warning: "Smoking is Addictive".
In Malaysia, not only is such explicit warning absent, tobacco companies are free to "stretch" the use of their brand names so that it belittles the addictive nature of tobacco products carrying the same brand name.
Tobacco companies knew all along about the negative effects of smoking and the addictive nature of smoking decades before they were forced to admit them in court.
We read about chief executive officers of the industry comparing the addictive nature of smoking to "candies" and "carrots". It is only when faced with the possibility of lawsuits and the penalties amounting to billions of dollars that the industry backed down.
Internal documents from the industry made public last year provide testimony as to how irresponsible the industry can be in misleading the public.
Let us resolve the problem by posing three questions about a neutral product, "X", instead of tobacco.
Firstly, should a company go on selling and even exporting the product "X" that it "believes" and "accepts" to be a risk to users? Secondly, should any government continue to allow the manufacture and sale of such a product that is known to be a "risk factor" and "more likely" to cause cancer?
Thirdly, must the public still condone the use and promotion of this product openly and freely in a society that is plagued with addiction problems?
If all the answers are "No", then why should tobacco (or any similar product) be treated differently, especially following the admission by the tobacco industry that smoking is addictive?
Given all these, we hope a new scenario will prevail in this country. We will keep urging the authorities, especially the National Drug Agency, to think about additional mandates to enforce stricter control on tobacco use, marketing and promotion.
What better time to do this than National Anti-Dadah Week. Cigarette is the "gateway drug" to addiction and it also contains poisons and carcinogens. We need to move quickly before all our drug strategies fail again.
