Mexico’s Tobacco Growers Used as Lobbyists

On October, in chaotic Mexico City, a small army of protestors, sporting placards and shouting into bullhorns, worsened the usual traffic snarl around San Lazaro, the nation’s congressional office complex. Television news accounts showed screaming-mad tobacco farmers, some of whom had boarded buses and traveled 500 miles to warn federal legislators that new taxes on Winston cigarettes would put them out of business.
Inside, lawmakers were in a tug-of-war over a landmark excise tax law that eventually added about 50 cents to a pack of cigarettes and—anti-tobacco activists hoped—would make tobacco less attractive to consumers.
It was not the first time these farmers had traveled far to protest in Mexico. Like tobacco growers around the world, Mexican campesinos—farmers and farmworkers—for years have been deployed to send a message to the public and politicians: Jobs are at stake in the effort by public health advocates to eliminate tobacco ads and limit smoking.
As the global fight over smokers moves from the United States and other countries where tobacco consumption is on the decline, Big Tobacco has drawn a line around developing nations that account for an increasingly important share of their revenues.