Helping the world quit

Philadelphia Inquirer: Lung cancer is a big and growing export all over the world. Every year, tobacco companies ship out millions of cases. Now two giants of philanthropy are doing something to fight back. Applause and emulation are well deserved.

Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg are giving a total of $500 million to stop the growth of smoking in poorer countries around the world.

As smoking declines in the United States and other industrialized nations, tobacco companies have struck it rich in poorer, less developed countries. Call it exploitation: feeding off people with few diversions and just enough pocket money for some smokes. Lung-cancer deaths are edging up all over the developing world. Its share of new lung cancer cases worldwide was 31 percent in 1980; it is now 58 percent.

Vise-grip

Here’s the vise-grip: In these countries, there is little research on lung cancer rates, weak educational efforts, poor health care. The World Health Organization estimates that only $20 million total goes to such efforts in poor and middle-tier countries.

That’s where Bloomberg ($375 million) and Gates ($125 million) are putting their money. It will fund mPower, an international effort combining the Bloomberg Initiative to Reduce Tobacco Use; the WHO; and other organizations. Their aim: antismoking education efforts; quit-smoking programs; and lobbying to press governments to ban public smoking, raise tobacco taxes, and punish sales to children. It’s a tough battle, since many countries get lots of revenue from tobacco taxes.