A
most unhealthy alliance: Grand Prix and tobacco firms
by Simon Chapman
(This
is the pre-edit version of an article which appeared in the Sydney Morning
Herald on March 1, 2002)
Joseph
Stalin knew nothing about motor racing, but he knew a great deal about killing
millions of people. Stalin’s inside
knowledge allowed him to propose that a single death was a tragedy, but a
million deaths were a mere statistic. This weekend’s Grand Prix invites us all
to reflect on what his words might mean today.
Following the coronial inquest
into the death of Graham Beveredge, the race marshal killed by a wheel flung
from the disintegrated car driven by Jacques Villeneuve in last year’s race,
motor racing’s governing body FIA declared itself satisfied that safety conditions
for this year’s race were acceptable.
One death was deemed worthy of a full investigation involving some 24
witnesses and an international review team, front page reportage and endless
speculation about whether this year’s race would be safer for spectators and
officials. But what of the millions of deaths that will occur among smokers
around the world across the next 30 years who were exposed to a different sort
of motor racing hazard?
Grand Prix motor racing is the
third most watched mass event after the Olympic Games and the World Cup, with
the Financial Times estimating
that each race is broadcast to a potential viewing audience footprint of 350
million - of whom an average of 60 million people actually watch. The major
sponsors of motor racing over the last twenty years have been tobacco
companies. Each year they pump an estimated $US350m into the Grand Prix because
they know it works wonders for their bottom line. It keeps brand names in front
of a stratospheric number of people. It powerfully distracts from all that
regrettable stuff about smoking causing cancer. It helps build a global
constituency of craven politicians, all slavering to get and retain Grand Prix
events in their cities. And it above
all gives tobacco companies a stage to imply that they are exciting,
respectable and welcome to take their place in civilised company.
But as surely as mosquitoes spread
malaria, tobacco sponsorship is today’s leading vector for the spread of lung
cancer and other diseases caused by smoking. The WHO puts the figure at over 4
million who die each year from tobacco caused disease, increasingly in
less-developed nations. While the racing fraternity routinely participate in
road safety campaigns in recognition of their massive influence with the young who
are over-represented in road death statistics, promoting smoking seems to
trouble few of them.
For all the industry apologists
who snort “Who ever took up smoking after seeing the word ‘Marlboro’ painted on
a car, or a Lucky Strike billboard?” or “It’s only directed at adult smokers.
Tobacco companies don’t want kids to smoke”, one need only consider the
Japanese Yamaha Grand Prix motorcycle team which is sponsored by Playstation,
the child’s electronic game, as well as by Chesterfield, the “adult’s” cigarette.
Presumably some mysterious process lets children notice and absorb Playstation
advertising on a rider’s left sleeve but makes them oblivious to the tobacco
logos emblazoned across his chest. Tobacco advertising is the only form of
advertising where we see the sad spectacle of its defenders trying to claim
that it doesn’t work.
The decision to allow a handful of
elite sports exemptions from a national ban on tobacco sponsorship that was
introduced in 1995 was half-pregnant politics at its worst. The arguments that
sustained the decision to ban Benson and Hedges sponsorship of the cricket,
Winfield’s of the rugby league and Peter Jackson’s of local motor racing, of
course apply exactly to the Grand Prix, but with bells on.
Max Mosley, president of Formula
One's world governing body, announced last November at a joint news conference
in Geneva with Gro Harlem Brundtland, Director-General of the World Health
Organization that the Grand Prix would end all tobacco sponsoring at the end of
the 2006 season. Whenever tobacco sponsorship has been threatened, a sordid
cavalcade of fattened sports administrators and sound-bite fed sportsmen have
threatened the end of the world. As we all now know, Marlboro’s ignominious
exit from the Australian Open Tennis reduced that event to little more than a
suburban tennis match. Since Benson & Hedges left the cricket, the
Australian team has barely won a game.
Presumably, the five years grace for tobacco in the Grand Prix is born
of the same nonsense.
Five years grace is supposed to
make us all feel that justice has finally been done. Imagine if after last
year’s trackside death Grand Prix officials had retorted, “Well, safety
problems exist at the track, but let’s not go overboard - let’s get around to
fixing it in five years’ time.” The moral revulsion would be palpable. If
Mosley and the FIA know it is wrong to abet tobacco companies by providing them
one of the world’s largest stages to do their dirty work, it is wrong now,
wrong next race, and all next year. Not wrong five years from now.
Society expects those who have
done wrong to do five things: admit you did it; say you're sorry; try
to make good the damage done; promise never again; and do a penance or public
humiliation, symbolising that you accept you have done wrong. Is it
unimaginable that FIA officials together with the leading drivers who have done
more than any other individuals on earth to promote smoking, might think about
how they could do these things?
______________________________________________________________________
Simon Chapman is Professor of Public Health at the University of Sydney. He is a Board member and former Chairman of ASH Australia.
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