Home for the Holidays!

After missing out on not one, but two huge Ziegenhorn holiday dinners last year, we have learned our lesson. We are coming home for Christmas and New Year's and we are so excited! We are only disappointed that we have to miss Thanksgiving again, but we think that we might at least be able to get a proper Thanksgiving meal, more on that later if and when it happens. We arrive in Chicago on December 19 early in the morning (pray for good weather for us so we make it in one piece and on time) and leave in the evening on January 8 (so we can also celebrate my oldest sister's birthday with her on the 4th). It is hard to explain how much it will mean to us to spend the holiday season at home with our friends and family, it is something that I didn't think that I would miss so much until I was half a world away. We can't wait to see you all!

Got a light? On second thought…

I guess that I should not have been surprised when we moved to Bangalore to find not only plenty of smokers, but plenty of smokers lighting up American branded cigarettes like Marlboro, Camel and Winston. I guess the one thing that can be said for Big Tobacco is that they know how to market their product and find new consumer pools. As the number of American smokers has declined slowly but steadily over the last few decades Big Tobacco has shifted their focus to expanding overseas markets. And there is probably no better market for cigarettes than the Third World. When one considers the example of India, there is a huge population that can be exploited, and many in that population are absolutely ignorant as to the health risks of smoking. And just as in the United States, in India the majority of smokers are among those who can least afford it, both economically and physically. Unfortunately, the purchase of tobacco often depletes the family’s already meager finances, contributing to the major problem of malnutrition in the Third World. And buying cigarettes is SO easy in India. Don’t have enough cash to buy a whole pack? No problem, you can just buy single cigarettes from any shopkeeper.


But some Third World countries are fighting back. Thailand has been fighting with Big Tobacco since the early 1990s to stem the flow of imported cigarettes. Until 1990, Thai law prohibited the import of cigarettes claiming that chemicals and other additives contained in US cigarettes might make them more harmful than Thai cigarettes. The US brought a case against Thailand under GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) to the World Trade Organization (WTO) arguing that this infringed on free trade. The US won their suit and Big Tobacco was free import as many cigarettes as they could shove down Thailand’s throat. Since Thailand has been forced to accept imported cigarettes, the government has employed a different tactic in preventing smoking. In 2005 the Thai government began to require that each package of cigarettes include a health warning that covers at least 50% of both sides of the package. And this is no weak Surgeon’s General Warning saying that smoking is harmful to the health, it includes not only a verbal warning, but a pictorial one as well. And as the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. As Eric and I were looking around the duty free shops at the Bangkok airport before returning to Bangalore, these cigarette cartons caught our eye. It would have been impossible for them not to, the images are very graphic and I would think quite effective in preventing the purchase of the carton. We snapped a few pics to show you, and after reading up a bit about the different warning policies around the world, I learned that though America started the trend of labeling cigarette packages with health warnings, today our country has one of the smallest, least prominent warnings placed on its cigarette packages. Sadly, another example demonstrating that in our culture, corporate interests take precedence, even over public health.