"In his own studies of smoking, Stebbins has shown how the tobacco industry has turned to markets in the developing worl to make up for loss in sales first in the United States and subsequently in parts of the European market. Governments in developing nations often do not have the ability to limit tobacco marketing and, usually in need of financial help, they are open to introducing taxable commodities to their citizens. As a result of extensive advertising in developing nations, Stebbins notes that worldwide tobacco consumption has increased at the rate of 1 percent per a year, and countries such as Brazil, India, and Kenya exhibit the greatest increases (1990)."
This is from Bryan Page's "Comprehending Drug Use." It's a textbook but it's accurate, well-cited, and well-written.
This is an area where I see the free market causing great harm. How can a population contend with greedy, money-rich corporations who wage huge psychological and legal campaigns? It's very one-sided. In the US, science and the people's own best interest are seldom enough. The government must have some balance of power to regulate corporations that are otherwise happy to abuse their fellow humans and distort culture and consciousness to systematically disempower whole populations.
It's an awful cycle. It's possible that a system built on nurturance and development, one that empowered people with a wide array of tools including compassion and self-realization, would produce corporate leaders who could themselves balance multiple constructive ends. Imagine if the mega-corps who routinely disenfranchise poor communities and third world countries not only sought money and power, growth and impact, but also felt internally compelled to be accountable, admit mistakes, build constructive non-manipulative and non-bullying relationships, empower others when possible, and respect others when not possible even when taking care of oneself, etc.
I'm a big fan of free-will and independence and no human having more authority than another, but I also see a huge importance in nurturing and developing children to bear those responsibilities constructively, for example free from low self esteem and arrogance, and rich with curiousity, support networks, courage and inventiveneess. Unfortunately, nurturing, developing and supporting others are tasks that are largely seen as "feminine" and therefore economically unimportant (stay at home parents are free labor, and teachers, nannies, etc earn very little money, and research in those areas is similarly seen as lesser science to math and engineering). These professions are often shunned by those needing to defend their "masculinity", and in fact nurturance and emotional support is often required of women and people of color as free labor (the classic "mother" and "grandmother" and "POC friend" role). So it's a strange world we live in, where corporations are seen as people under the law, and are of course directed by people in charge, and yet we keep the bar very low for how mature and capable these people-corporations are.
I can safely agree with you on these points, and it's probably the biggest argumentative weapon feminism has: many of the big problems that need to be dealt with require a "retreat" to a more innocent and child-like state of curiosity about our value systems.
The world is finite, if you are pushed out of enough places, it's game over. All the poor and developing countries together sill don't have as much buying power as the developed countries. If you take the developing countries out, what's left isn't much of a market anymore.
This is from Bryan Page's "Comprehending Drug Use." It's a textbook but it's accurate, well-cited, and well-written.