Nothing better defines the operating strategy of cigarette manufacturers in Brazil than a simple word: crime. Flushed out by the anti-tobacco wave that swamped developed countries, the manufacturers looked down under for a loophole capable of saving their skins. This is the Southern Hemisphere countries, whose laws (and lawmakers) have long been obsolete. And they have come balls to the wall. In a blatant display of misleading advertisement, they focus publicity efforts on action-sports - particularly in Brazil, where the law is strangely limited to forbidding connections between smoking and Olympic sports. So, overnight, mountain climbers, skateboarders, surfers and other athletes became tobacco's standard-bearers.

This is not about senseless morality or messing with other people's business. Granted: smoking is an individual choice. But one can't refrain from yelling on realizing that the tycoons of smoking think we're stupid enough to believe that cigarettes, the cause for so much disease, have anything to do with the good things in life.

RAFTING In rafting competitions athletes may have to go down-river for up to two days, which demands excellent physical shape. As a result of the difficulty to take in O2, smokers require more effort from their respiratory muscles (diaphragm and ribcage), which results in accelerated fatigue. In other words, the lugs tire more quickly and athletes are afflicted by the so-called "short-breath." 25 year-old Christian Koenenkamp has been into rafting for two years. A smoker since he was sixteen, Christian quit smoking a few months after joining the sport: "I felt the difference as soon as I quit. Now, when I'm in my boat, I can tell smokers from non-smokers by the way they paddle."

In Brazil, from 1985 to 1994, the tobacco industry's investment in publicity increased by 74.3%, according to Ministry of Health data. The result: while international figures reveal that the consumption of cigarettes decreases by about 1.5% a year in developed countries, in developing nations such as Brazil the number of smokers increases at almost the same rate. The migration of expenditures to the poor cousins south of the Equator is no favor: the fact of the matter is that the sale of cigarettes in really serious countries becomes increasingly difficult, particularly in the US. The reason is simple: there are no breaks for smokers there. While the Brazilian Law only effectively forbids smoking inside aircraft, the only place where a tote is allowed in the US is outdoors, within private automobiles or at home. Pity the man who lights up at a restaurant, movie theater, lobby, elevator or store: in most American states, this misdemeanor results in fines. Televised cigarette adverts - broadcast from 9 PM to 6 AM in Brazil - have been banned from the American silver-screen for over 20 years, which eventually - as of last year - made sponsorship of sports events (which are usually broadcast on TV) illegal. A few adverts can be found here and there on magazines, but they never connect smoking and sports.

 

MOUNTAIN BIKE When mountain biker start smoking, their performance drops by at least 20%. They get out of breath more easily, which inhibits occurrence of the "explosion" factor. Athletes lose the ability to accelerate suddenly uphill, for example, or to increase the pace by carrying the bike on their backs, a common practice in the sport.

Most American's dislike of cigarettes led, in the past month, to a hard-to-swallow agreement with manufacturers, which the Brazilian government might well use as a model. To end the series of lawsuits demanding coverage of the medical expenses of tobacco victims, manufacturers Philip Morris, Lorillard & Brown, PJ Reynolds, and Williamson will have to pay U$ 206 billion during the coming 25 years.

It was also agreed that advertisement on outdoor placards, public transportation vehicles and clothing items such as caps and T-shirts would end. The use of cartoon characters in adverts was also barred - this is the end of Joe Camel, whose image, according to a survey, is as famous among children as Mickey Mouse's. The evil side of the good-natured camel began to surface in January past, when a state representative publicized two internal memos by Reynolds that brought attention to the need to increase penetration of the Camel brand among young smokers between ages 14 and 24.

Much in the same way as a whole generation of women was led to smoke by advertisements displaying gorgeous ladies with cigarette in hand, for some time tobacco companies' marketing areas have been circumventing the Brazilian law that forbids tobacco adverts aimed at young audiences. This is not by accident: no one begins to smoke in their old age. Conversely, 90% of smokers are initiated before they are 21. It is therefore natural - and perverse - for marketers to pull action-sports (or, as the marketers who lend themselves to become passive accessories to the act call them, "extreme sports") from their proverbial sleeves. Thus, in addition to publicity items such as the no-limits series, that advertises the Hollywood brand, the tobacco industry also began to sponsor sports championships and adventure events. It even set up entire teams, such as the Marlboro Adventure Team, funded by Phillip Morris to take place in rafting, mountain climbing, rappelling and off-road competitions, in august of the current year. "I don't have the financial means to refuse things that are my dreams", says 31 year-old non-smoking triathlete and Marlboro Team member Sérgio Zolino de Sá in his defense. "If I had the power to change the world, I wouldn't advertise anything poisonous."

SKATE Smoking before skateboarding amounts to the same as exercising in very polluted places. While the skateboarder warms up, there is unnecessary consumption of energy to maintain oxygenation. His/her organism struggles against hipoxia (low O2 levels), which affects reflexes, which can in turn result lack of concentration, loss of coordination and even passing out. This, in an activity in which athletes often attain high speeds or altitudes without a soft landing surface, can be fatal. This statement is not by TRIP: "I wouldn't advise anyone to smoke, it only damages performance. In competitions I smoke between one turn and another to calm down and in the end, no calm results. It was a lot more fatiguing to win the championship in '97 than in '95", confesses 21 year-old "Digo" Menezes, twice São Paulo skateboarding champion, a smoker since age 16.

All right: on can't blame the athletes, but why not blow the whistle on the sponsors of Marlboro Adventure Team. Sought by Trip, they preferred not to make a statement. One event organizer, however, accepted to argue, off the record: "Under no circumstances does Marlboro wish to be associated with sports. The activities are just adventures. And they can't be aligned with sports, as they aren't aerobic activities. Even rafting, which some claim to be aerobic, is an activity that doesn't necessarily require physical fitness. It is a simples adventures, much as Camel Trophy". Horseshit, to say the least. Or does anyone actually believe that serious rafting or even off-road driving, is a task for those whose bodies aren't shipshape? "I strongly disagree with the notion that one doesn't have to breathe well to drive a 4X4 vehicle. If you're unfit you won't last even five laps ", disdains 19 year-old Marcelo Bettarello, a non-smoking Marlboro Team member who competes in car and motorbike rallies. "It's not as simple as just climbing into the car and driving. If you're tired, if the arms tire, you'll end up making a mistake."

To clarify this and many other issues, TRIP invited executives at Philip Morris and Souza Cruz, who control 90% of cigarette sales in Brazil, to take part in a debate that would face their marketers with anti-smoking professionals such as oncologist Drauzio Varella (see interview in this story). The meeting didn't take place because manufacturers and advertisement agencies decided not to make their points public (provided, of course, they have any points to make at all). No matter. Despite the fact that their adverts insist in relating active life-styles with a lit cigarette, the fact of the matter is simple: same as one can't fish and cut bait at the same time, smoking and sports don't match. To the contrary, sports demand clean lungs, resilience and strength. What cigarettes do is to affect the airways, decrease lung capacity, and increase the blood pressure, the heartbeat, and the amount of blood the heart pumps. And, unfortunately, this is not all: the World Health Organization (WHO) indicates over 60 thousand papers published and reproduced in several countries that prove the causal relationship between smoking and serious diseases such as lung cancer (90% of cases), lung emphysema (80%), myocardial infart (25%), chronic bronchitis and strokes (40%). All smokers have to do to feel short of breath and tachycardiac is to climb a few staircases. Now picture a smoke cloud meandering through an athlete's body and consider the performance to be displayed in any physical activity he or she may attempt, including rafting and off-road driving. No way. So much so that no cigarettes appear on the more exciting scenes of the adverts themselves.

 

SANDBOARD AND SNOW SPORTS Though not aerobic by definition, skiers', snowboarders' and sandboarders' performance is also affected by smoking. In a snowboarding competition, for example, in which the decision takes place downhill and any mistake translates into immediate disqualification - not to mention accidents - what counts is the athlete's fitness and the effect caused by altitude, in addition to psychological pressure. When dropping from a mountain of snow, a smoker's performance will drop, as his/her muscles have less oxygen available and, as a consequence, have their ability to "explode" impaired. Not to mention the effects great altitudes have on the body, which are enhanced for smokers.

It is not too difficult to become addicted to tobacco. Nicotine causes such severe dependence that only a few minutes are needed for the "Jones" to set in, making addicts smoke one. Two, even three packs a day. In most cases, one cigarette a day for six weeks leads to a 20-year addiction. Quitting, however, is a different story. Out of every 100 individuals who try to quit, around ninety will be lighting up again before a year has passed. At first it is actually easy, but after the third month more than 60% will have given up. On the sixth month, 75% will be back to smoking. The lords of tobacco know: if a person is not addicted as a teenager, chances are he or she will not become a smoker. For this reason, in addition to publicity pieces connected to sports, their marketers spend fortunes sponsoring concerts and musical festivals attracting young audiences, such as Free Jazz and Hollywood Rock. Their purpose, evidently, is not to support culture, but to establish a powerful link between smoking and pleasure. This is the first step for tobacco companies to secure 2.7 million new smokers a year, the minimum required to offset the deaths caused by the addiction and maintain their astronomical profits - Souza Cruz alone, the market leader in Brazil, reported net profits of R$ 308 million in 1997, 40% over 1996.

Unlike the US and Europe - where the European Union has established a ban on cigarette advertisement enforceable by 2006 - encouragement to smoke flows freely in Brazil. It is no use to print Ministry of Health warnings on cigarette packs while allowing publicity that is carefully orchestrated to capture youths. Aside from this, all efforts will be fruitless if the law that prohibits sale of tobacco to minors isn't enforced. To prove how easy it is to break the law, two psychiatry professors at Universidade Federal de São Paulo, Ronaldo Laranjeira and Jair Mari, made an experiment with their 8 and 12 year-old daughters. The girls visited 70 bars and bakeries in the State Capital and successfully purchased cigarettes in every single one.

 

SURF Aside from the shortness of breath, smoking surfers are exposed to two greater evils: less stamina as a result of poor muscle oxygenation and, worse, the risk of drowning - when submerged, smokers take longer to feel the absence of oxygen. This is because they are used to functioning with less O2 in the bloodstream, which enables them to stand longer periods without breathing. But what may seem like an advantage can be fatal in reality: the body takes longer to "sound the alarm", that is, when they feel the urge to breathe it can be too late. They run the risk of passing out underwater and staying there. "I feel that smoking is hindering me. Some days I stay out at sea for up to two hours, but with increasing difficulty. I know that if I didn't smoke, I could stay much longer in the water ", says 31 year-old Josil Mandacaru, a surfer since he was 8 and a smoker of half a pack of Marlboros a day since he was 15.

The US isn't saintly, either, but at least they have attitude. From April to September of the current year, during the Smoke Out '98 campaign, 30 youths from 14 to 16 visited 8,200 of the 15 thousand points of sale for cigarettes in New York. Traders who sold packs without asking for the minors' ID's were caught red-handed and fined immediately by Department of Health agents. The result is that cigarette sales to children and teenagers dropped by 34% in the city. More: past month, mayor Rudolph Giuliani proposed a law raising the fine from US$ 300 to US$ 1000 for first-time offenders, and from US$ 500 to US$ 2000 for repeat offenders, who will also lose their licenses to sell cigarettes. Unlike Brazil, things in the US are going well in this front. Perhaps because American government officials have done their homework and know they're in the red: while they receive around US$ 47 billion a year in taxes from the tobacco industry, they spend another US$ 68 billion in treatment of smoking-related diseases. Cigarettes are not just expensive. They can you cost an arm and a leg - both economically and literally.