Who's Sabotaging Colombians' Health?

'In less than 20 years, half of Bogotá's residents will be fat.' (El Tiempo)

The media reports that obesity in Colombia is growing to North American proportions.

Use of both legal and illegal drugs is rising among Bogotá youth.

And a recent survey of students found that use of both illegal drugs, like cocaine and marijuana, and a legal one: marijuana, is rising sharply among youth.

But both vices and drugs - legal ones, at least - have powerful lobbies to protect their right to poison their customers. Intense lobbying recently defeated legislation in Colombia's Congress which would have required companies to label foods high in sodium, saturate fats or sugars. (As if it would make any difference, judging by the rise in consumption of cigarettes, whose boxes carry big warnings.)

Perhaps televisions, cellphones and video games should carry warning labels, as well, because of the way they promote a sedentary lifestyle and waste our time.

Young women market Camel cigarettes near high schools and universities.

A young woman smoking.

What's the solution? Make these harmful products expensive, inconvenient to get and uncool. That won't be easy. But a good first step would be to actually enforce the law prohibiting the sale of loose cigarettes - which goes on on every streecorner and corner shop.

Cigarettes and candies for sale by a street vendor.

Who's sabotaging Colombians' health? Everybody, including themselves.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

What! Me Market Smoking to Kids?

Camel cigarette girls on the prowl today for young victims in La Candelaria.

I was cycling across the Plaza del Periodista this afternoon when we came upon this phenomenon: Four attractive young women dressed identically carrying marketing displays. But these weren't the cell phone or cable TV hawkers one often sees, but cigarette pushers offering Camel smokes.

Colombia signed the World Health Organization's global treaty on tobacco, which is supposed to end marketing to youth; and Camel manufacturer RJ Reynolds' own website boasts about its code supposedly safeguarding against marketing to people who are under 21, or utilizing models who are younger than 25.

So, why are these young women, whose very appearance associates smoking with youth, healthfulness, sex appeal and social success doing offering cigarettes, with their accompanying scourges of addiction, lung disease and heart attacks, in a neighborhood full of high school and university students?

Of course, the tobacco companies will swear that their marketing doesn't try to hook anybody, but only to make smokers switch brands. Who believes that?

Camel cigarette packs in a display case (which is NOT advertising)
beside candies on a Bogotá sidewalk.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The Split Mind on Smoking

'You could lose your baby by smoking.'

Colombia is renewing its graphic cigarette warnings, which is a good thing, and likely not to the liking of the smoking industry.

'The smoke you produce is fatal for everybody.'

'Are you willing to die this way?'

The existing warnings are also pretty dramatic, but replacing them's a good thing so that the public doesn't become jaded.

Today's warnings: 'Smoking causes impotence, addiction, cardiovascular sicknesses, etc.'

But why doesn't Colombia (or Bogotá) do the other thing which would reduce smoking - particularly by kids: Crack down on loosie sales? Such sales are illegal, but the law is a dead letter.

A man lights a loosie boiught from a street vendor.

The street vendors sell cigarettes alongside chips, candies and other kids' treats.

Cartoon cigarette lighters, obviously designed to appeal to kids.

Cigarette companies are prohibited from advertising - but they do so, anyway, by calling their ads 'display cases.'

The lighted case on the street vendor's stand shows off cigarettes.

Not very subtle: The huge case shows off Camel cigarettes, notorious for marketing to youth, which have just come to Colombia. So, celebrate!

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Aren't 41 Years of Killing Enough?

A Colombian institution is about to disappear - and good riddance!

Mustang cancer sticks are becoming Rothmans.

Mustang cigarettes, which have been sickening and killing low-income Colombians for more than four decades, are finally going away. But don't celebrate yet: Mustang is to be replaced by BAT's Rothmans brand.

Vice published a nostalgic article about the Mustang brand's 'Colombianness' - even tho Mustangs are manufactured in Chile, and naming a cigarette after a North American horse doesn't exactly scream 'Colombia.'

Young men smoking. Today's young addicts
are customers until smoking kills them.

BAT claims the name change comes because its customers 'demand a more globalized brand.' In fact, the low-income Colombians who tend to smoke Mustangs don't care about much except price. And BAT is apparently making the switch in order to save money by having to print fewer types of boxes. Addicts, they figure, will be loyal customers.

Selling cigarettes
alongside candies.

Colombia seems like a desireable market for Big Tobacco. According to official statistics, tobacco consumption is slowly declining - but that's hard to say, since many cigarettes are smuggled into Colombia (often, apparently, with tobacco companies' collaboration. Reportedly, most of Colombia's smuggled cigarettes come from Paraguayan factories owned by that nation's president). Colombia does require dramatic visual warnings on cigarette packs, but other anti-smoking policies have been pointless: A 2011 law prohibiting the sale of loose cigarettes is so widely ignored that you can buy 'loosies' on nearly every corner in central Bogotá, making it cheap and easy for kids to become addicted, and guaranteeing tobacco companies a future market. The sale of single cigarettes also means that many smokers never see those graphic health warnings.

It's easy for kids to buy smokes from street vendors.

And the prohibition on advertising cigarettes is made a joke by cigarette 'displays' in many stores featuring huge packs. A 2016 ruling requiring cigarette packs to be hidden in stores has not been enforced.

Meanwhile, some 25,000 Colombians die every year from smoking-related illnesses, according to the government, and innumerable more lose quality of life from tobacco's diseases.

A man lights up a loosie just purchased from a street vendor. 

Brass cigarettes, one of many cheap smuggled brands.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

A Set-Up´for Cigarette Smuggling?

Cigarettes for sale on a Bogotá street alongside chips and candy.

Ship Colombian tobacco leaves to Chile to make them into cigarettes to ship back to Colombia?

Executives of British American Tobacco (BAT), which is closing its Bogotá cigarette factory, could probably give very convincing-sounding reasons why it makes economic sense to ship Colombian tobacco leaves to the other end of the continent, roll them up in paper tubes, and then ship them back to Colombia for sale.

Maybe labor is cheaper or more efficient in Chile. Maybe the weather is better there. Maybe Chile's famous cigarette-making tradition means that Chilean-made smokes are higher quality.

But, despite the corporation's arguments, the new arrangement sounds suspicious.

It was not many years ago that, according to investigative journalists and Colombian provincial governments, BAT and its U.S. rival Philip Morris conspired with violent, outlaw organizations to get their cigarettes smuggled into Colombia. Smuggled cigarettes are cheaper, since they don't pay taxes, and are particularly accessible to kids who are just getting hooked on the habit. In addition, the smuggled cigarettes were allegedly used to launder narcotrafficking money.

The companies settled the lawsuit and later purchased Colombia cigarette makers. The big tobacco companies said that they were now combating contraband - which made sense, since it hurt their domestic Colombian cigarette-making business.

Contraband has continued, however, and perhaps even increased again, so that today it is estimated at 15 - 20% of the market. Recently, according to El Tiempo, contraband cigarettes made by the Paraguayan firm Tabacalera del Este - which is owned by Paraguayan president Horacio Cartes - have flooded into Colombia. At least one Colombian department, Bolivar, has filed suit against the Paraguayan company, alleging that it is promoting cigarette smuggling and facilitating money laundering by narcotraffickers.

Those cheap, smuggled smokes hit BAT's market particularly hard, because it makes the low-cost brand Mustang.

Will BAT's Chilean-made, Colombian-leaf smokes enter Colombia legally or via contraband?

It will be worth Colombian officials' time - and their tax revenue - to find out.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Tobacco's Tricks

Young people smoke on La Plaza del Chorro in La Candelaria.

 If this post looks familiar, don't blame me. Blame the authorities for a situation which doesn't change - or gets worse.

A cigarette 'display case', about a meter wide
in a La Candelaria Internet cafe/phoning place frequented
by young people. 

Today is world 'No-Tobacco Day', altho that's a real misnomer in Colombia.

Colombia has supposedly implemented World Health Organization anti-smoking policies. The failing, as usual, is enforcement.

The law prohibits the selling of cigarettes by the stick, known as loosies. But stores and street vendors continuing selling loosies openly and with no apparent fear of punishment. All the police need to do is hire some kid to try to buy loosies. Whereever he or she succeeds, take away the seller's cigarettes. On the second offense, close their business for a day. The loosie sellers are obvious, anyway, since they keep their cigarette boxes wide open.

Packs from contraband cigarettes. Notice that they
don't carry the Colombian health warnings.

Colombia's anti-tobacco law also prohibited tobacco advertising. But, 'where there's a law, there's a way around it,' goes the Colombian saying. The law apparently permits cigarette 'display cases.' Well, a 'display case' might be a meter wide and boast about 'Mentholated Mustangs with a capsule.'

A street vendor's box offering candies and cigarettes
by the stick. Why else would the boxes be opened?

To its credit, Colombia did require graphic warnings on cigarette boxes, and those have been enforced on smokes sold legally here. However, contraband cigarettes - which make half of those sold in some coastal regions - don't carry the required warnings. The flood of contraband smokes has received news coverage, particularly because many are manufactured by Tabacalero del Este, a Paraguayan company owned by Paraguayan President Horacio Cartes.

A young woman lights up a loosie on the Plaza del Chorro.
Notice the police in the background.

Most of the news coverage has concentrated on the huge loss of tax income because of these smuggled cigarettes - which, in addition, are allegedly used to launder drug money - but they also have big health impacts by making super-cheap smokes available, especially for kids. (For many years, multinationals Philip Morris and British American Tobacco similarly promoted tobacco smuggling into Colombia.)

In fact, according to El Tiempo, more than 27% of Colombian young people smoke, compared to only 17% of Colombian adults.

The results of all this aren't minor. El Tiempo reports that a every five seconds a Colombia dies from smoking - more than 26,000 people per year. This means a huge cost for the country's health care system and lots of lost economic productivity.

A vendor's cart on La Plaza del Chorro. The cigarette boxes have been opened, but reclosed, perhaps because there are cops nearby - or because it's no-tobacco day.

A man walks away from the cart smoking a just-purchased loosie cigarette.

Boys stand smoking outside the internet cafe with the Mustang ad. 

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

What - Me Advertise?

Not advertising? A young boy mans a sidewalk sales stand offering candies and cigarettes, which are featured in a slick display ad.

Why did this street vendor open these cigarette cartons?
How else could she sell smokes by the stick?

The Marlboro Men are dying off, many killed by the cigarettes they marketed; Michael Schumacher's days of being a tobacco billboard are over; and even Colombia has banned tobacco advertising and the practice of selling cigarettes by the stick - which makes it easy for kids to start smoking.

So, with today's headlines reporting that the world's cancer deaths will double - and many of those from tobacco in developing nations like Colombia - why doesn't Colombia bother to enforce its own tobacco control laws?

Yesterday's El Tiempo:
 'World cancer cases to double in 20 years.'

Colombia's tobacco control law prohibited tobacco advertising - but included a loophole large enough to drive a display ad thru. The law excepted displays for cigarettes and for the tobacco merchants, the line between display and advertisement is evidently an easy one to cross over.

The law also prohibited the sale of cigarettes 'by the stick,' or as 'loosies.' That part has simply been ignored, by both street vendors and the police. For proof, just take a look at any street vendor, whose open cigarette boxes are next to candies - convenient for teenagers who have only a few hundred pesos in their pockets.

What, me advertise?

Police could easily combat this practice with sting operations - have kids try to buy cigarettes, and confisticate the cigarettes from any vendor who sells to them. But the police just don't bother.

Today, someone observed to me, borrowing from Noam Chomsky, that tobacco kills far more people and is far more addictive than is cocaine. But, while the US finances coca leaf erradication in Colombia, it has, at least in the past, helped the tobacco industry. For that matter, many Colombian cigarettes are made and marketed by U.S. companies.

A vendor advertises cigarettes and sells loosies near the entrance to the Universidad del Rosario, in La Candelaria.

A street vendor in central Bogotá sells cigarettes by the stick. 

Sensual smoking in Shakira's latest video. The singer has a foundation for poor kids, but perhaps their health isn't so important. 

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

When is a Narcotrafficker Not a Narcotrafficker?



Horacio Cortes celebrates.

The man is flooding Colombia and other nations with an illegal, addictive drug. He's been accused by the Brazilian government and investigated by the United States government for trafficking. In a rational world, you'd expect him to be behind bars. Instead, Horacio Cartes will soon take office as president of Paraguay.

As president, Cortes, who's also one of Paraguay's richest men, will undoubtedly be accorded all the honors due to the leader of a friendly nation whenever he visits Colombia or other countries. He's already met with the president of Spain and the head of the European Commission.



A street vendor's stand in San Victorino, which sells
cigarettes alongside candies.  The 'Gold Seal' cigarettes
must be smuggled in and cost a third the price
of legal cigarettes.  



If Cortes' deadly, addictive product - cigarettes manufactured in a plant in Eastern Paraguay and then smuggled into Brazil and around the world - just happened to be on the other side of the legal wall, then he'd be likely to be on the run like Pablo Escobar (who was elected to Congress himself), rather than soon running his country.

A man on San Victorino Plaza lights up a single 'loosie' cigarette,
which he's just purchased illegaly. 

More than two billion of Cortes' cheap Ibiza, Marine y Rumba brand cigarrettes smuggled into Colombia make up 14 percent of Colombia's cigarette market, according to El Tiempo.

Colombian media reports have focused on the massive smuggling's economic impacts, particularly the lost taxes and lost jobs in Colombian manufacturing and farming.

That's all true. But much more importantly, cheap smuggled cigarettes encourage more smoking and lure kids to start smoking - and become lifelong addicts. A vendor in the San Victorino market area was selling cigarettes by the stick (which is itself illegal) including the Gold Seal brand (which is not made by Cortes) which cost only 100 pesos per stick, one third or one fourth the price of legal cigarettes.

The vendor, whose young daughter was standing nearby, assured me that she "almost never" sells cigarettes to children, but that some other vendors do. The police, she said, don't bother to enforce either the anti-loosie or the prohibition on selling to children.

It's also ironic that Coltabaco and Protabaco, which split Colombia's tobacco market between them, have led the complaints about the smuggling. They are owned, respectively, by tobacco giants Philip Morris International and British American Tobacco. But, Just a few years ago, those same tobacco giants cooperated with cigarette smugglers to flood Colombia with cheap smokes, according to journalist investigations and internal company documents. (They even worked with the same Mansur family on the island of Aruba, who now allegedly smuggle in the Paraguayan smokes.)

The multinationals' tune has since changed, because they now own Colombian tobacco companies and smuggling competes with their own businesses. They continue to argue that tobacco taxes encourage smuggling. But it's a bit hard to take them seriously when they were making the same argument a few years ago while facilitating the smuggling themselves.

Colombia's organization of departments sued the big international tobacco companies over the smuggling, but ended up settling for a paltry sum and some promised policy changes. Now, according to El Tiempo, the governors are considering suing Cortes's company. But don't hold your breath.

When Cortes assumes the presidency we can expect any lingering obstacles to cigarette trafficking to evaporate.

When Cortes visits Colombia, will he be treated like a honored guest or a smuggler poisoning Colombia's children?

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

When Cigarette Ads are not Ads

Cigarette advertising is not advertising...

To the long list of laws which are worth little more than the paper they're written on we can add the tobacco control law passed in 2009.

...when the cigarette company says it isn't.

I thot of this when I noticed the proliferation of these cigarette advertising displays in many stores. I guess that the cigarette makers have forgotten that the law prohibits all advertising. After the law went into effect last year, cigarette ads did come down in many stores - but the tobacco companies found a way to put them back up, by pretending that all they are are cigarette display cases. The people supposed to enforce the health laws apparently operate under the same delusion.

The owner of one of these stores told me that the law prohibited them from displaying the actual cigarette boxes they're selling in view of customers, which presumably is to keep them out of sight of young people. I pointed out that this law hasn't been enforced at all against the street vendors, who also continue selling loose smokes, which is also prohibited, including to children.

"The law is only applied to us," the storeowner said, "the ones who pay taxes." He's correct.

A street vendor sells loose cigarettes, illegaly,
on Plaza San Victorino

This isn't to say that the law's not a good thing. Tobacco advertising has been eliminated from the radio, and, I presume, from television (I don't have one, so can't say for sure). And the prohibition against indoor smoking is mostly respected, at least in Bogotá. The new health warnings on packs are also graphic and dramatic. (However, these new ads-which-are-not-ads do not carry health warnings, since they're not ads.)

But smoking remains epidemic, particularly among young people, who easily buy tobacco, which kills some 22,000 Colombians every year. Tragically, that death rate, which far exceeds the number killed in the country's armed conflict, is likely to increase.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Fantasy Laws Won't Fight Tobacco

Lighting up an outlawed loosie in La Candelaria.

Today was Tobacco-Free Day - a real misnomer if you observed the puffing on Bogotá's streets. According to the Ministry of Health, some 20,000 Colombians are either killed or sickened by tobacco every year. That's far more than die from the country's armed conflict, which still dominates the news - and budgets.

A vendor sells a loose cigarette on La Plaza del Chorro. 

The health ministry is proposing increasing the cost of cigarettes by raising taxes, which are some of the lowest in the region. Raising the cost of cigarettes is one of the most effective strategies for discouraging people, especially young people, from smoking. But such a strategy will be pointless if the tobacco companies evade taxes by facilitating the smuggling of cigarettes, as they have notoriously done in the past. Colombia's provinces even sued international tobacco companies for collaborating with criminals to smuggle cigarettes into Colombia to avoid taxes - thus getting more people hooked on cheap smokes and even enriching the nation's terrorist organizations, since those incoming smokes were often traded for exported cocaine.

I watched this street vendor, across the street of
a high school, selling loose cigarettes to passer-by. 

Any new ideas need to distinguish between theory and Colombian reality. Take the law against the sale of loose cigarettes, which went into effect in Bogotá in July. Ending loosie sales is key to preventing kids from starting a life-long smoking habit. That's because young people often don't have the guts or the disposable income to buy a whole pack, but do have the few hundred pesos to buy a loose 'stick.'

The problem has been the total lack of enforcement. I took the photos on this page of street vendors in La Candelaria - a neighborhood full of high schools and universities - selling loose cigarettes.

Vendors, who don't earn much, will keep selling cigarettes by the stick as long as they can because they earn a lot more this way than they do selling a sealed pack. And, as I've often witnessed, many vendors lack compunction about selling to kids.

Why are these cigarette boxes, for sale on the street downhill from a high school, already opened?

How could they enforce the anti-loosie law? The best way would be sting operations. Have kids try to buy loosies. If a vendor sells cigarettes 'by the stick' then confisticate his or her cigarettes. If they get caught again, then seize their cart for a few days. It sounds harsh, but it would save lives.

On the other hand, passing laws which aren't enforced will help nobody but the legal printers.

An anti-smoking art exhibition the Biblioteca Luis Angel Arango (BLAA) in La Candelaria.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours