Thai Protests at Global Tobacco Industry Conference
Thailand may have a reputation for indulging visitors in their various vices, but smoking is no longer one of them. On Tuesday, more than 600 fired-up protesters invaded a convention center in Bangkok in an attempt to smoke out representatives of the global tobacco industry, who were holding a conference in a country with some of the strictest tobacco controls in Asia.
“They’ve come here because they want to target women and children in Asia with products that kill,” says Bangorn Ritthiphakdee, director of the Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance, a civil-society group, referring to attendees of Tabinfo 2009, a three-day conference organized by Tobacco Reporter, a U.S.-based magazine. “Their presence is a nightmare. We came to tell them they are not welcome here.” (Watch a video about France’s smoking ban.)
The tobacco industry sees Asia as its most promising market, says Bangorn. Though Thailand has strict controls on smoking in public places and bans advertising of tobacco products, more than 14 million of its 65 million people are smokers. In Southeast Asia, 125 million — or 31% of adults — smoke, and China alone has some 350 million smokers. The alliance claims that 2.4 million people in Asia die each year from tobacco-related causes, the equivalent of 6,575 people a day.
Billed as “the biggest tobacco exhibition in Asia,” Tabinfo 2009 has been years in the making. Nonetheless, the meeting apparently caught Thailand’s government by surprise.
