ABSTRACT
Smoking - a third world problem? In the previous chapter, we considered the impact of the multinational powdered milk industry on third world health. In this chapter, we consider a similar problem, but with respect to tobacco products rather than milk. The present author spent some time in North Vietnam during the war years and just after, and was constantly dismayed at the extent to which even young children had developed a firmly based cigarette dependency. The situation apparently (and unsurprisingly) was even worse in the South. The liberation of Vietnam from foreign military control, and its unification, had the potential suddenly to erase this kind of addiction. But postwar Vietnam's need to reach a modus vivendi with the powerful first world nations, and allow the incursion of multinationals, has only exacerbated the problem.
