COMMENTATOR (COMM): Previously on Life...
SUHEL SETH: If you offer a market like a sitting duck to a multinational corporation, it's going to bleed the market!
DR SHARAD VAIDYA: It's difficult to impress upon the mind the relation of tobacco and disease in a younger person.
DAVID WERNER: Most of the world's people don't even know what to protest yet and so our big challenge is helping people realise what are the worldwide forces which are affecting their health and wellbeing today.
COMM: A pop concert for teenagers on a popular Cambodian TV station - it's sponsored by a multi-national tobacco giant. Developing countries like Cambodia face the brunt of the aggressive marketing techniques of big cigarette companies. But they face a challenge from an unusual quarter. Religion, in the form of Buddhism, is fighting back. The people of Cambodia are only just emerging from years of war and repression. With this new-found period of peace, there's a resurgence of traditional arts and culture once thought of as lost forever. Religion, which had previously been suppressed, has re-emerged. They practice an early form of Buddhism known as Theravada - it's less complex than Northern Buddhism. Cambodians also happen to rank among the heaviest smokers in the world - smoking is even prevalent in the Buddhist monasteries. While most industrialised countries have moved to control cigarette advertising, the lure of cash from tobacco means developing countries such as Cambodia fail to apply such controls. CHEA SAVOEUN, Minister of Cults & Religion (TRANSLATION): Cambodia is being seen as a new country. In the Khmer Rouge period there was nothing - no currency, no habitation, no transport. Now our Cambodia is developing, therefore everything - every business, every import - is new. The foreign companies want to introduce the famous products from their country, such as Alain Delon cigarettes, into our country. Everything is new - two decades ago there was nothing! It's not only French cigarettes that are being advertised - cigarettes from many other countries including America are also in Cambodia.
COMM: In the late 1980s the US government forced Japan, Taiwan and South Korea to open their markets to American tobacco companies - and smoking rates soared. Today, the multinationals have access to almost every market - including formerly isolated Cambodia - and smoking has become a globalisation issue. But while cigarettes may travel the world health messages do not. Half of all smokers may eventually be killed by their cigarettes. World Health Organisation figures show that by the year 2030, there will be ten million tobacco-related deaths every year. Most of these will occur in developing countries, an epidemic of heart & lung disease and cancer that will kill more people than HIV/AIDS, TB, malaria and childhood diseases combined.
DR KAING SOR. Pneumo-Cytology Department Preabat Norodom Sihanouk Hospital (TRANSLATION): This patient has been a very heavy smoker - smoking two packs a day from an early age. He's got chronic bronchitis, and TB - the centre of his lung is damaged and so is the upper lung. He's generally exhausted and as you can see has lost a lot of weight. This next patient has been smoking a pack a day since he was 14. He's been coughing up blood, so now he's stopped smoking. How old are you?
PATIENT (TRANSLATION): I'm 32.
DR KAING SOR (TRANSLATION): Did you know of the dangers of smoking?
PATIENT (TRANSLATION): Yes I did but I couldn't give up.
DR KAING SOR (TRANSLATION): What did you smoke?
PATIENT (TRANSLATION): ARA - before that I smoked 555 and before that I used to smoke various local brands like The Good Earth.
DR KAING SOR (TRANSLATION): What we're seeing at the hospital is an increase in diseases like chronic bronchitis and other chronic infections, and the main cause is smoking. Because cigarettes weaken the lungs they make you much more susceptible to many diseases including TB.
COMM: Another doctor campaigning against soaring rates of tobacco-related illnesses is Dr Yel Daravuth. But his focus is no longer just on treating the sick: he feels he can help more Cambodians by stopping them getting sick in the first place.
DR YEL DARAVUTH, Adventist Development & Relief Agency (ADRA): Smoking is an enormous problem that needs to be tackled on many fronts. Without the laws they have in Europe for example, our people are the target of some fierce advertising campaigns by big cigarette companies - it's something you no longer see in the more developed countries.
COMM: Daravuth's organisation ADRA, the Adventist Development and Relief Agency, works with key groups of people to get across its anti-smoking message. Here, it's student teachers who'll go out into the community as role models for quitting smoking.
DR YEL DARAVUTH (TRANSLATION): As well as these throat and lung cancers, blood doesn't flow properly in the veins of smokers. As you can see here, the arteries around the heart get completely blocked up.
COMM: As part of their training, the student teachers are given intensive health education on the dangers of tobacco use. This is the first generation of young Cambodians for 30 years to live at a time of peace. They can focus on health and wellbeing, instead of conflict.
This is Cambodia's rice bowl. The flood plain of the Mekong basin is one of the most naturally fertile places on earth. It gave rise to the mighty Khmer Empire. More recently, years of military conflict laid the country to waste. Millions were killed or displaced. In April 1975, the Khmer Rouge seized power. They marched the entire population of the cities into the country to work as slave labour in the fields. Between two and three million people were killed. In this climate, with life or death depending on a mere whim, even something as mundane as smoking took on special significance.
FORMER 'SLAVE LABOURER' (TRANSLATION): The only chance you had of taking a rest if you were a slave labourer was the cigarette break. Only smokers got that - and that's why I'm alive today.
COMM: Hardest hit were intellectuals and the professional classes, including doctors and health workers. Most of the monks were slaughtered. But the Buddhist connection was not broken. And today ADRA is tapping into Buddhism's strong traditions to boost its anti-smoking campaign. For the past two years it's been working with Buddhist monks to persuade them to quit smoking. While some of these young men will remain monks for life, most will return to their communities once they've completed their education.
BUDDHIST MONK TEACHER: 'I know some children in my class' why do we use 'some' here? Because 'some' is - we use in the affirmative. OK so listen, the second sentence is affirmative or interrogative?
CLASS: Affirmative!
BUDDHIST MONK TEACHER: Affirmative. Thank you very much. Give a clap!
COMM: Until recently, most of these monks were smokers. There are 55,000 monks based in and around the pagodas. Getting them to quit smoking is a potentially powerful tool in Dr. Daravuth's fight against tobacco. The 'quit smoking' programme for monks started here, at the Samrong Andet Pagoda, just outside Phnom Penh. It's an important local centre of Buddhist teaching which preaches a path of freedom. Soeun Than is its chief monk.
CHIEF MONK SOEUN THAN (TRANSLATION): The Buddha says what you do should be of benefit to yourself and others so you should be good to yourself, but what you do should be good for others too. There were no cigarettes around during the Buddha's lifetime. But he did say you should avoid addictive or harmful substances. When you smoke, you not only hurt yourself you're also hurting other people. So, avoid it! It's from the best discipline of the Buddha that you should avoid this. Furthermore, all these TV adverts say you should want things in order to be happy, they make people desire all kinds of things. In terms of the Buddha's teachings, this is not good - it makes them commit bad things, desire to have things.
COMM: In the classroom at the Samrong Andet Pagoda, trainee monks are introduced to the dangers of smoking.
TEACHER: The most important thing is to decide - make the decision for yourself: I am going to stop smoking!
COMM: ADRA has adapted an Australian anti-smoking course, Seven Steps to Freedom, into a programme called Khmer Quit Now for Cambodia. These monks, all smokers, are just starting the course.
1st MONK (TRANSLATION): Taking up smoking is something you don't necessarily choose to do as an individual, you're pressured into doing it by people around you. Society tries to show you it's good to smoke - if you take up smoking you'll supposedly gain all kinds of qualities - so I went along with it and started to smoke. I knew I'd become addicted to nicotine and have continued smoking until now.
2nd MONK (CHILD) (TRANSLATION): As my friend just said, when all your friends smoke and tell you it's good to smoke it's hard not to join in too. First you smoke one cigarette and then another, then before you know where you are - you're hooked!
3RD MONK (TRANSLATION): It's traditional here to use tobacco. Tobacco's been in Cambodia for a long time. But it's only now that we're learning how poisonous cigarettes are. When you see others smoking you can't help thinking - I should try this too! Then once you've started, you share cigarettes with those around you. You become part of the same scene with your friends. That makes you feel really positive about smoking.
COMM: Three big players dominate Cambodia with their global tobacco brands: BAT, British American Tobacco with its 555 brand, Philip Morris with Marlboro, and Japan tobacco with Mild Seven. But BAT is by far and away the market leader in Cambodia. It only began trading here in 1996 but, thanks to an aggressive marketing strategy, it's already gained 40% of the smokers' market with its locally made ARA brand. But BAT denies ARA targets young Cambodians.
DAVID WILSON, Asia Pacific South, British American Tobacco: We have a very conscious policy as a corporation of not advertising our products to young people - full stop. We have a conscious policy, as a corporation, in marketing out product to adults.
COMM: But despite these claims cigarette companies do depend for their future business on young people taking up smoking - like the audience at this sponsored pop concert. WHO statistics indicate that 100,000 children around the world take up smoking everyday - that's a potential 36 million new, life-long customers every year.
DAVID WILSON: Our consumers smoke because - it's something they like to do. It gives pleasure to many, many people around the world each day who choose to smoke. I think the real issue here is that our adult consumers, in the knowledge - take decisions in the knowledge that smoking may or may not have consequences for their health. But they choose to do so in any event.
CHIEF MONK SOEUN THAN (TRANSLATION): The Buddha teaches us to be free of all earthly ties. How can you be free if you are addicted to smoking? We should do things that are good for ourselves. And these things should also be good for others. Smoking harms us and those around us.
DAVID WILSON: Advertising is a legitimate form of communication to adult consumers and we certainly argue that anywhere in the world we should have certain fundamental, basic means of communicating to adult consumers about our brands. And being able to invite consumers who are smokers currently to try one of our brands.
CHIEF MONK SOEUN THAN (TRANSLATION): Advertisements tell lies - they're not honest. Cigarettes should be advertised as being dangerous, just like HIV. The most important thing is to have the determination from the mind and heart to resist and be disciplined. Smoking not only kills us but it kills others too. So in the next life it leads to a lower condition.
COMM: Cigarette companies use a variety of techniques to market their products. This is a common sight in restaurants and nightspots across Cambodia - cigarette girls who offer smokers free sample of different brands to encourage sales. Tobacco companies are reluctant to allow this kind of marketing to be filmed. But Life went ahead anyway, without official permission. Of all the tobacco companies Life contacted, BAT was the only one to agree to take part in this film. In today's global market, BAT wants to be seen as a responsible corporate citizen. It invited our film crew to visit some of their operations outside the capital Phnom Penh. To get to the tobacco farms, we travelled up the Mekong river. On the shore, a group of BAT's tobacco farmers were waiting to take us the rest of the way. Cambodia is one of the poorest countries in the world, with a per capita income of just US$250 per year. BAT claims it's helping develop the rural economy by improving the farmers' productivity. It has about 750 farmers supplying locally grown leaf. We arrived too late in the year to film tobacco in the fields.
FARMER (TRANSLATION): Since BAT came here we have been only growing tobacco and the crop's been doing very well. COMM: The land is naturally fertile because it is flooded every year by the Mekong.
FARMER (TRANSLATION): We used to grow a mixture of vegetables, and tobacco - but my crop wasn't so good. But when BAT came here they also helped with technical advice so now we're doing much better.
COMM: Tobacco needs to be dried or 'cured' by burning wood. Here, too, BAT has helped with simple, more fuel-efficient, curing barns. To cure tobacco you need to burn about four times its weight in wood. With all these improvements, the Cambodian leaf has been brought up to international standards. To help replace the wood that's burned, BAT has also established a tree nursery. The saplings are provided free of charge to anyone who wants to grow them.
2ND FARMER: This year we're planting a million seedlings, and growing a million trees - which is around five times more than is needed for the curing of tobacco.
COMM: But of course it'll take years for the sapling to grow into trees. And even that won't replace ecosystems lost to tobacco growing. After leaving the BAT farmers we continued our journey and headed towards the border with Vietnam, crossing the Mekong River again. We couldn't help noticing the number of vehicles carrying cigarettes. On the road, growing number of vehicles approaching the Vietnamese border, carrying goods - among them huge numbers of cigarette cartons. Cambodia's cigarette taxes are the lowest in the region. Next door Vietnam, with a population almost eight times as big (80 million) operates a state monopoly on tobacco. As even Cambodian customs officials admit, four-fifths of the cigarettes Cambodia imports are openly smuggled into neighbouring countries. It's a clear sign, investigators claim, of massive official corruption.
Back in Phnom Penh, the palaces of the beneficiaries -the new 'upper caste' of Cambodian politicians and army officers - look directly over the shanty towns of the poor. Cambodians pay little in the way of taxes. For the government, tobacco may well be one of the best ways of collecting them - but at what price?
DR LIM THAI PHEANG, National Centre for Health Promotion (TRANSLATION): We have a choice: either we have health or we have tobacco. The government may get money from the sale of cigarettes today, but the cost tomorrow, in terms of health will be far greater. We do our best to campaign against smoking but our efforts just don't match the cigarette companies who can spend far more on advertising than we can on public education.
COMM: So, with no state funds to promote the message, it's up to the monks.
TEACHER (TRANSLATION): So, all of you who've attended this course, stand up and tell us one by one about what you have chosen to do. Speak up! Talk of the time you smoked and how you've now stopped.
1st MONK (TRANSLATION): I salute everyone as well as the teachers. I am not a real smoker - I only smoked for three or four months. I gave up completely after attending the course, which clearly explained that smoking damages health.
2nd MONK (CHILD): My name is Rus Sariem. I only smoked for one month. Smoking doesn't do anything to me at all now.
CHEA SAVOEUN, Minister of Cults & Religion (TRANSLATION): In Cambodia we could teach the children once a week. We ask a monk to go down to the school, you see we are organising thing like this. Surely when the monks go there they will teach morality, they will teach about health, about the environment.
3RD MONK (TRANSLATION): I have attended the stopping smoking course I have learned the cigarette contains a lot of poisons and nicotine itself contains 4,000 toxins. Please - all believers of all generations - please give up smoking. And other countries who are helping Cambodia to develop are also importing cigarettes, this is wrong they're giving the people illness and disease. Any cigarette maker trying to help the people should understand that the cigarettes don't help people at all, they only give them disease and that's it.
END
SUHEL SETH: If you offer a market like a sitting duck to a multinational corporation, it's going to bleed the market!
DR SHARAD VAIDYA: It's difficult to impress upon the mind the relation of tobacco and disease in a younger person.
DAVID WERNER: Most of the world's people don't even know what to protest yet and so our big challenge is helping people realise what are the worldwide forces which are affecting their health and wellbeing today.
COMM: A pop concert for teenagers on a popular Cambodian TV station - it's sponsored by a multi-national tobacco giant. Developing countries like Cambodia face the brunt of the aggressive marketing techniques of big cigarette companies. But they face a challenge from an unusual quarter. Religion, in the form of Buddhism, is fighting back. The people of Cambodia are only just emerging from years of war and repression. With this new-found period of peace, there's a resurgence of traditional arts and culture once thought of as lost forever. Religion, which had previously been suppressed, has re-emerged. They practice an early form of Buddhism known as Theravada - it's less complex than Northern Buddhism. Cambodians also happen to rank among the heaviest smokers in the world - smoking is even prevalent in the Buddhist monasteries. While most industrialised countries have moved to control cigarette advertising, the lure of cash from tobacco means developing countries such as Cambodia fail to apply such controls. CHEA SAVOEUN, Minister of Cults & Religion (TRANSLATION): Cambodia is being seen as a new country. In the Khmer Rouge period there was nothing - no currency, no habitation, no transport. Now our Cambodia is developing, therefore everything - every business, every import - is new. The foreign companies want to introduce the famous products from their country, such as Alain Delon cigarettes, into our country. Everything is new - two decades ago there was nothing! It's not only French cigarettes that are being advertised - cigarettes from many other countries including America are also in Cambodia.
COMM: In the late 1980s the US government forced Japan, Taiwan and South Korea to open their markets to American tobacco companies - and smoking rates soared. Today, the multinationals have access to almost every market - including formerly isolated Cambodia - and smoking has become a globalisation issue. But while cigarettes may travel the world health messages do not. Half of all smokers may eventually be killed by their cigarettes. World Health Organisation figures show that by the year 2030, there will be ten million tobacco-related deaths every year. Most of these will occur in developing countries, an epidemic of heart & lung disease and cancer that will kill more people than HIV/AIDS, TB, malaria and childhood diseases combined.
DR KAING SOR. Pneumo-Cytology Department Preabat Norodom Sihanouk Hospital (TRANSLATION): This patient has been a very heavy smoker - smoking two packs a day from an early age. He's got chronic bronchitis, and TB - the centre of his lung is damaged and so is the upper lung. He's generally exhausted and as you can see has lost a lot of weight. This next patient has been smoking a pack a day since he was 14. He's been coughing up blood, so now he's stopped smoking. How old are you?
PATIENT (TRANSLATION): I'm 32.
DR KAING SOR (TRANSLATION): Did you know of the dangers of smoking?
PATIENT (TRANSLATION): Yes I did but I couldn't give up.
DR KAING SOR (TRANSLATION): What did you smoke?
PATIENT (TRANSLATION): ARA - before that I smoked 555 and before that I used to smoke various local brands like The Good Earth.
DR KAING SOR (TRANSLATION): What we're seeing at the hospital is an increase in diseases like chronic bronchitis and other chronic infections, and the main cause is smoking. Because cigarettes weaken the lungs they make you much more susceptible to many diseases including TB.
COMM: Another doctor campaigning against soaring rates of tobacco-related illnesses is Dr Yel Daravuth. But his focus is no longer just on treating the sick: he feels he can help more Cambodians by stopping them getting sick in the first place.
DR YEL DARAVUTH, Adventist Development & Relief Agency (ADRA): Smoking is an enormous problem that needs to be tackled on many fronts. Without the laws they have in Europe for example, our people are the target of some fierce advertising campaigns by big cigarette companies - it's something you no longer see in the more developed countries.
COMM: Daravuth's organisation ADRA, the Adventist Development and Relief Agency, works with key groups of people to get across its anti-smoking message. Here, it's student teachers who'll go out into the community as role models for quitting smoking.
DR YEL DARAVUTH (TRANSLATION): As well as these throat and lung cancers, blood doesn't flow properly in the veins of smokers. As you can see here, the arteries around the heart get completely blocked up.
COMM: As part of their training, the student teachers are given intensive health education on the dangers of tobacco use. This is the first generation of young Cambodians for 30 years to live at a time of peace. They can focus on health and wellbeing, instead of conflict.
This is Cambodia's rice bowl. The flood plain of the Mekong basin is one of the most naturally fertile places on earth. It gave rise to the mighty Khmer Empire. More recently, years of military conflict laid the country to waste. Millions were killed or displaced. In April 1975, the Khmer Rouge seized power. They marched the entire population of the cities into the country to work as slave labour in the fields. Between two and three million people were killed. In this climate, with life or death depending on a mere whim, even something as mundane as smoking took on special significance.
FORMER 'SLAVE LABOURER' (TRANSLATION): The only chance you had of taking a rest if you were a slave labourer was the cigarette break. Only smokers got that - and that's why I'm alive today.
COMM: Hardest hit were intellectuals and the professional classes, including doctors and health workers. Most of the monks were slaughtered. But the Buddhist connection was not broken. And today ADRA is tapping into Buddhism's strong traditions to boost its anti-smoking campaign. For the past two years it's been working with Buddhist monks to persuade them to quit smoking. While some of these young men will remain monks for life, most will return to their communities once they've completed their education.
BUDDHIST MONK TEACHER: 'I know some children in my class' why do we use 'some' here? Because 'some' is - we use in the affirmative. OK so listen, the second sentence is affirmative or interrogative?
CLASS: Affirmative!
BUDDHIST MONK TEACHER: Affirmative. Thank you very much. Give a clap!
COMM: Until recently, most of these monks were smokers. There are 55,000 monks based in and around the pagodas. Getting them to quit smoking is a potentially powerful tool in Dr. Daravuth's fight against tobacco. The 'quit smoking' programme for monks started here, at the Samrong Andet Pagoda, just outside Phnom Penh. It's an important local centre of Buddhist teaching which preaches a path of freedom. Soeun Than is its chief monk.
CHIEF MONK SOEUN THAN (TRANSLATION): The Buddha says what you do should be of benefit to yourself and others so you should be good to yourself, but what you do should be good for others too. There were no cigarettes around during the Buddha's lifetime. But he did say you should avoid addictive or harmful substances. When you smoke, you not only hurt yourself you're also hurting other people. So, avoid it! It's from the best discipline of the Buddha that you should avoid this. Furthermore, all these TV adverts say you should want things in order to be happy, they make people desire all kinds of things. In terms of the Buddha's teachings, this is not good - it makes them commit bad things, desire to have things.
COMM: In the classroom at the Samrong Andet Pagoda, trainee monks are introduced to the dangers of smoking.
TEACHER: The most important thing is to decide - make the decision for yourself: I am going to stop smoking!
COMM: ADRA has adapted an Australian anti-smoking course, Seven Steps to Freedom, into a programme called Khmer Quit Now for Cambodia. These monks, all smokers, are just starting the course.
1st MONK (TRANSLATION): Taking up smoking is something you don't necessarily choose to do as an individual, you're pressured into doing it by people around you. Society tries to show you it's good to smoke - if you take up smoking you'll supposedly gain all kinds of qualities - so I went along with it and started to smoke. I knew I'd become addicted to nicotine and have continued smoking until now.
2nd MONK (CHILD) (TRANSLATION): As my friend just said, when all your friends smoke and tell you it's good to smoke it's hard not to join in too. First you smoke one cigarette and then another, then before you know where you are - you're hooked!
3RD MONK (TRANSLATION): It's traditional here to use tobacco. Tobacco's been in Cambodia for a long time. But it's only now that we're learning how poisonous cigarettes are. When you see others smoking you can't help thinking - I should try this too! Then once you've started, you share cigarettes with those around you. You become part of the same scene with your friends. That makes you feel really positive about smoking.
COMM: Three big players dominate Cambodia with their global tobacco brands: BAT, British American Tobacco with its 555 brand, Philip Morris with Marlboro, and Japan tobacco with Mild Seven. But BAT is by far and away the market leader in Cambodia. It only began trading here in 1996 but, thanks to an aggressive marketing strategy, it's already gained 40% of the smokers' market with its locally made ARA brand. But BAT denies ARA targets young Cambodians.
DAVID WILSON, Asia Pacific South, British American Tobacco: We have a very conscious policy as a corporation of not advertising our products to young people - full stop. We have a conscious policy, as a corporation, in marketing out product to adults.
COMM: But despite these claims cigarette companies do depend for their future business on young people taking up smoking - like the audience at this sponsored pop concert. WHO statistics indicate that 100,000 children around the world take up smoking everyday - that's a potential 36 million new, life-long customers every year.
DAVID WILSON: Our consumers smoke because - it's something they like to do. It gives pleasure to many, many people around the world each day who choose to smoke. I think the real issue here is that our adult consumers, in the knowledge - take decisions in the knowledge that smoking may or may not have consequences for their health. But they choose to do so in any event.
CHIEF MONK SOEUN THAN (TRANSLATION): The Buddha teaches us to be free of all earthly ties. How can you be free if you are addicted to smoking? We should do things that are good for ourselves. And these things should also be good for others. Smoking harms us and those around us.
DAVID WILSON: Advertising is a legitimate form of communication to adult consumers and we certainly argue that anywhere in the world we should have certain fundamental, basic means of communicating to adult consumers about our brands. And being able to invite consumers who are smokers currently to try one of our brands.
CHIEF MONK SOEUN THAN (TRANSLATION): Advertisements tell lies - they're not honest. Cigarettes should be advertised as being dangerous, just like HIV. The most important thing is to have the determination from the mind and heart to resist and be disciplined. Smoking not only kills us but it kills others too. So in the next life it leads to a lower condition.
COMM: Cigarette companies use a variety of techniques to market their products. This is a common sight in restaurants and nightspots across Cambodia - cigarette girls who offer smokers free sample of different brands to encourage sales. Tobacco companies are reluctant to allow this kind of marketing to be filmed. But Life went ahead anyway, without official permission. Of all the tobacco companies Life contacted, BAT was the only one to agree to take part in this film. In today's global market, BAT wants to be seen as a responsible corporate citizen. It invited our film crew to visit some of their operations outside the capital Phnom Penh. To get to the tobacco farms, we travelled up the Mekong river. On the shore, a group of BAT's tobacco farmers were waiting to take us the rest of the way. Cambodia is one of the poorest countries in the world, with a per capita income of just US$250 per year. BAT claims it's helping develop the rural economy by improving the farmers' productivity. It has about 750 farmers supplying locally grown leaf. We arrived too late in the year to film tobacco in the fields.
FARMER (TRANSLATION): Since BAT came here we have been only growing tobacco and the crop's been doing very well. COMM: The land is naturally fertile because it is flooded every year by the Mekong.
FARMER (TRANSLATION): We used to grow a mixture of vegetables, and tobacco - but my crop wasn't so good. But when BAT came here they also helped with technical advice so now we're doing much better.
COMM: Tobacco needs to be dried or 'cured' by burning wood. Here, too, BAT has helped with simple, more fuel-efficient, curing barns. To cure tobacco you need to burn about four times its weight in wood. With all these improvements, the Cambodian leaf has been brought up to international standards. To help replace the wood that's burned, BAT has also established a tree nursery. The saplings are provided free of charge to anyone who wants to grow them.
2ND FARMER: This year we're planting a million seedlings, and growing a million trees - which is around five times more than is needed for the curing of tobacco.
COMM: But of course it'll take years for the sapling to grow into trees. And even that won't replace ecosystems lost to tobacco growing. After leaving the BAT farmers we continued our journey and headed towards the border with Vietnam, crossing the Mekong River again. We couldn't help noticing the number of vehicles carrying cigarettes. On the road, growing number of vehicles approaching the Vietnamese border, carrying goods - among them huge numbers of cigarette cartons. Cambodia's cigarette taxes are the lowest in the region. Next door Vietnam, with a population almost eight times as big (80 million) operates a state monopoly on tobacco. As even Cambodian customs officials admit, four-fifths of the cigarettes Cambodia imports are openly smuggled into neighbouring countries. It's a clear sign, investigators claim, of massive official corruption.
Back in Phnom Penh, the palaces of the beneficiaries -the new 'upper caste' of Cambodian politicians and army officers - look directly over the shanty towns of the poor. Cambodians pay little in the way of taxes. For the government, tobacco may well be one of the best ways of collecting them - but at what price?
DR LIM THAI PHEANG, National Centre for Health Promotion (TRANSLATION): We have a choice: either we have health or we have tobacco. The government may get money from the sale of cigarettes today, but the cost tomorrow, in terms of health will be far greater. We do our best to campaign against smoking but our efforts just don't match the cigarette companies who can spend far more on advertising than we can on public education.
COMM: So, with no state funds to promote the message, it's up to the monks.
TEACHER (TRANSLATION): So, all of you who've attended this course, stand up and tell us one by one about what you have chosen to do. Speak up! Talk of the time you smoked and how you've now stopped.
1st MONK (TRANSLATION): I salute everyone as well as the teachers. I am not a real smoker - I only smoked for three or four months. I gave up completely after attending the course, which clearly explained that smoking damages health.
2nd MONK (CHILD): My name is Rus Sariem. I only smoked for one month. Smoking doesn't do anything to me at all now.
CHEA SAVOEUN, Minister of Cults & Religion (TRANSLATION): In Cambodia we could teach the children once a week. We ask a monk to go down to the school, you see we are organising thing like this. Surely when the monks go there they will teach morality, they will teach about health, about the environment.
3RD MONK (TRANSLATION): I have attended the stopping smoking course I have learned the cigarette contains a lot of poisons and nicotine itself contains 4,000 toxins. Please - all believers of all generations - please give up smoking. And other countries who are helping Cambodia to develop are also importing cigarettes, this is wrong they're giving the people illness and disease. Any cigarette maker trying to help the people should understand that the cigarettes don't help people at all, they only give them disease and that's it.
END