文章cigarette.doc

The燤arlboro燤an燞as燜ound燝reener燩astures ? The cigarette-selling cowboy may be under siege back home in the United States from lawmakers and health advocates determined to put him out of business, but half a world away in Asia he is prospering, his all-American mug slapped up on billboards and flickering across television screens. And Marlboro cigarettes have never been more popular. ? For the world’s cigarette-makers, Asia is the future. And it is probably their savior. Industry critics who hope that the multination tobacco companies are headed for extinction owe themselves a stroll down the tobacco-scented streets of almost any city in Asia. Almost everywhere here the air is thick with the swirling gray haze of cigarette smoke, the evidence of a booming Asian growth market that promises vast profits for the tobacco industry and a death toll measured in the tens of millions. ? At lunchtime in Seoul, throngs of fashionably dressed young Korean women gather in a fast-food restaurant to enjoy a last cigarette before returning to work, a scene that draws distressed stares from older Koreans who remember a time when it would have been scandalous for women from respectable homes to smoke. ? In Hong Kong, shoppers flock into the Salem Attitudes boutique, picking from among the racks of trendy sports clothes stamped with the logo of Salem cigarettes. In Phnom Penh, the war-shattered capital of Cambodia, visitors leaving an audience with King Sihanouk are greeted with a giant billboard planted across the street from his gold-roofed palace. It advertises Lucky Strikes. ? According to tobacco industry projections cited by the World Health Organization, the Asian cigarette market should grow by more than a third during the 1990s, with much of the money going to multinational tobacco giants eager for an alternative to the shrinking market in the United States. ? American cigarette sales are expected to decline by about 15% by the end of the decade, a reflection of the move t