But if you are under thirty and don't smoke (yet), then you are the pigeon to be trapped. Do you want to be caught in a lifelong addiction to a drug habit that will seriously affect your health and longevity? Unfortunately, you may not be able to avoid the snares that are constantly being set around you. If you are sufficiently alert, you can give yourself a extra ten or more years of healthy life, and have over RM50,000 to enjoy that you will have saved at the same time. If a person consciously turned down this offer, it might be a case of basic bodoh (stupid), but unfortunately it is usually an occasion for sadness more than anything else.

It is against the law to directly advertise cigarettes in Malaysia. Yet everywhere one sees the advertising of Dunhill, Salem, Marlboro, Winston, Benson & Hedges, Peter Styvesant, Mild Seven, and many others. The same colors, the same style, even the same cigarette pack, are depicted on billboards and TV nationwide.

It is easy to see that the themes are selected to attract a youthful audience. Sports events, motorcycle races, Formula One car races, and outdoor adventures of all kinds. The attempts to get you started as a nicotine addict are not restricted to paying for the time of TV productions. The productions themselves are produced by the cigarette makers and then offered to the TV stations. During the showing of the race or sports event, the logos of the cigarette makers are everywhere. The race cars are painted in the logos of the cigarette makers, and the camera on-board is mounted on the cigarette maker's car, so that when the camera is activated the viewer sees a scene complete with the cigarette colors and logo on the car, the driver, and all the surrounding fencing.

This is psy-war on a large scale. The sums are enormous. And the consequences are disastrous. The health risks of smoking include emphysema, lung cancer and lowered life expectancy. The medical costs attributed to the smoking population are incalculable. The United States courts have awarded in excess of 250 billion dollars to the states in compensation for the cost of treating patients who are smokers. Individual plaintiffs (or their surviving family) are now also beginning to win lawsuits, which has been a rarity because the lawyers hired by the tobacco companies have successfully obscured the issues in the past.

In Malaysia the cigarette business is thriving. The young people of Southeast Asia are becoming replacements for the shrinking American-European market. This is an ugly aspect of globalisation. The government often decries the malignant effects of unrestricted multi-national corporate activity. The Minister of Health has spoken of the dangers of smoking, and the Consumers Association of Penang has issued a call for a ban on the sale of cigarettes throughout Malaysia.

The ban on advertising is not working. The ban must be extended to sales also. If the government is sincere in its statements against the evils of globalisation, and its repeated assurances that the people's welfare is its primary focus, then here is the place to demonstrate that this concern is genuine. The TV advertising suggests that travel agencies are the sponsors, but there are no such travel agencies listed in the phone book [with the sole exception of Peter Styvesant, which has one office in KL and another in Penang].