What is the true cost of a cellphone?

Professor Tan Sri Dato' Dzulkifli Abdul Razak
My View - The Sun Daily
July 29, 2015

CELLPHONES were linked to a racially tainted fracas lately. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. There's more to this than meets the eye, or is it ear? Let me attempt to answer this seemingly simple question based on my experience handling tobacco issues while helming the National Poisons Centre. Let's look at it holistically, in other words, including the social cost too.

A pack of cigarettes used to have the same status as a cellphone today. It was novel, and a status symbol promoted by celebrities who vowed that smoking was the right thing to do with style.

Even doctors endorsed smoking. In one advertisement, all 20,679 of them spoke for a brand. Some still do. How could one go wrong with smoking then? Very few suspected the dangers of smoking. In fact, this was not a major issue. Warning labels were not required and there was little public health information against smoking. Cancer hardly made a dent, let alone the plethora of other related ailments, more so the indirect ones due to "second hand smoke".

All these are in contrast to what the tobacco industry knew up front as we found out decades later. Every tobacco company knew full well how dangerous and habit-forming its products were. All they did was to mask or suppress them; in particular, the deadly tar in cigarettes and addiction caused by nicotine so as not to alarm the public, the potential consumers or even the health authorities. If at all, they were sugar-coated as "smooth" or "less irritating" and generally regarded as "safe". Few would realise that in a stick of cigarette there are at least 10 innovations that help to make the habit of smoking "pleasant" as the addiction creeps in. Fewer still were aware, until recently, that there are more than 4,000 obnoxious chemicals, with at least 69 cancer-causing substances in that just one stick. It ranges from chemicals that are used as rat poison to those used to clean toilets. Consider the consequences of smoking 10 sticks a day!

As the marketing tactics got more deceptive it bordered on tobacco-sensationalisation, a strategy that saw the shift to other vulnerable segments of the population. Soon the teen-agers and later women were drawn in with messages of being macho and staying "slim". Concerts and entertainment shows became the main "induction" activities where such messages were repeatedly reinforced and the product subtly introduced.

Because tobacco was hyped as being (falsely) glamorous, many longed to join the club by experimenting on the fatal products during the induction sessions. Thanks to the sleek promotion materials that were creatively produced, widely distributed, and intensely targeted. In other words, nothing was spared to make smoking stay.

What was most telling was when the CEOs of the tobacco industry were cross-examined in court about their misdoings. They had no qualms denying that they knew cigarettes were addictive despite the many internal memos available publicly testifying otherwise.

What has this got to do with the cellphone you may ask? My gut feeling is that the storyline is the same. What used to be a pack of cigarettes in everyone's pocket so many years ago, is today's cellphone.

Addiction to the gadget is no longer a disputed fact especially in well-wired societies among youngsters, just like cigarettes. There are already emerging internet rehabilitation centres in many places.

Yet not much information is available to the consumers about the gruesome consequences – no warning like "excessive use can lead to addiction" – as what was legally enforced on tobacco products after the fact.

On the contrary, approved advertisements by telcos seem to advocate non-stop use of cellphones with cheaper rates and incentives, just like the early tobacco advertisements. Some even employ world famous athletes to demonstrate the speed of communication. Public knowledge about what constitutes a cellphone is as low as that of cigarettes 40 years ago.

So what is the true cost of a cellphone? It must be pretty high, if we care to learn from the tragic experience of tobacco users. As some have said, we are indeed imprisoned in cell, albeit a cellphone! But who really cares.