Asian addiction to tobacco may surge by a third

CIGARETTE addiction in Asia will grow by up to a third by the year 2000, according to a new report doing the rounds of the tobacco industry.

It predicts Thailand will show the highest growth, ahead of China and South Korea.

Hong Kong is expected to have the slowest rate of increase because of restrictions on smoking and marketing of tobacco products, as well as anti-smoking campaigns.

The report, ''Tobacco Markets in Asia'', is published in Britain and claims the Asian cigarette market will grow 33 per cent by the turn of the century.

Costing GBP795 (about HK$9,000) per copy, the report - compiled by market research company Euromonitor - analyses tobacco markets in Bangladesh, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand.

''The tobacco industry won't apologise for this statistic. They're slavering at the thought of the Asian market,'' said Dr Judith Mackay, director of the Asian Consultancy on Tobacco Control. ''They have no qualms at all about the disease and death. Theyjust see it in dollar terms.'' She said Asia had become the prime target of tobacco firms. In an article in the September 1986 issue of the industry journal, World Tobacco, one tobacco executive was quoted as saying: ''You know what we want? We want Asia.'' This change of focus corresponded to a decline in smoking in the developed world in the mid-1980s as a result of public health fears.

But, according to Dr Mackay, while smoking is declining in the West at the rate of 1.1 per cent per annum, it is increasing in developing countries by 2.1 per cent.

''That means that for every smoker who quits in the United States, two teenagers start smoking in China,'' she said. ''It wouldn't hurt the tobacco companies too much if every British and American smoker stopped tomorrow if they could get into the Asian market.'' According to figures from the third Asia-Pacific Conference on Tobacco or Health in Japan last year, the worldwide tobacco-related death toll is predicted to rise to 10 million by the year 2025, with seven million of these deaths in developing countries.Two million of them will be in China alone.

Long-term figures present an even bleaker picture. According to the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, of all the children alive in China today, 50 million will eventually die from smoking.