The Marlboro Man(万宝路香烟制造商) has found greener fields in Asia(亚洲). The cigarette-selling cowboy(牛仔) may be hated back home in the United States by doctors who want to put him out of business, but half a world away, in Asia, he is doing well. Marlboro cigarettes have never been more common in Asia, home to 60 percent of the world's people. For the world's cigarette makers, Asia is the future.
Everywhere here the air is thick with cigarette smoke. At lunch in Seoul(汉城), Korea(韩国), crowds of well-dressed young women sit in a fast-food restaurant to enjoy a last cigarette before returning to work. In Hong Kong, shoppers pack into the Salem Attitudes Boutique (撒冷流行服装小商店), buying clothes with the name of Salem cigarettes. In Cambodia(柬埔寨), visitors leaving a visit with King Sihanouk(西哈努克亲王) are greeted with a huge picture right across the street that shows Lucky Strike(幸运牌) cigarettes.
The Asian cigarette market (市场) should grow by more than a third during the 1990s, with much of the money going to a few of the biggest tobacco companies.
The sale of American cigarettes should go down by about 15 percent by the end of the year 2000. In Asia and throughout the Third World, markets are so huge and so promising that they make the once-important American market seem small. Besides Asia, cigarette use is also expected to grow in Africa (非洲), Latin America (拉美), Eastern Europe (东欧) and in the nations of the former Soviet Union (前苏联).
With about 1.3 billion (十亿) people and the world's fastest-growing economy, China is a huge market for the big tobacco companies. The number of cigarettes smoked in China has increased by 7 percent each of the last ten years. There are 300 million smokers in China, more people than in the whole of the United States, and they buy 1.6 trillion (万亿) cigarettes a year.
Doctors say the health effects of increased use of tobacco in Asia are going to be terrible. One doctor believes that because of increased smoking in Asia, over the next 20 years, the number of people that die from smoking will go up from about 3 million a year to 10 million a year, a fifth of them in China. He says that 50 million Chinese children alive today may, at some time in the future, die from diseases caused by cigarette smoking. "If you look at the number of deaths, the tobacco problem in Asia is going to be much bigger than many other diseases, yet it's being totally ignored," said Judith Mackay, a British physician who is helping the Chinese government to develop an anti-smoking program.
The fast growth of the Asian tobacco market is a result of the growing economies of large Asian nations -- suddenly, tens of millions of Asians have the money to buy cigarettes, while before they didn't have money for cigarettes. Also, the societies of many Asian countries are changing. Before, women were not allowed to smoke. Now, however, smoking is seen as a part of being modern.
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The Future of Cigarette Makers
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