My students sometimes say of me that no horse is too dead for me to stop beating it, but when it comes to the tobacco industry there seems to be no way to stop its zombie like undead behavior. These folks are businesspeople, of course, and they are just carrying out their fiduciary responsibility to turn a profit for the shareholders. But they lead a double life. One as the respectable business person. The other as a cruel, vicious and cold blooded murderer. The US has led the world in anti-tobacco measures and now Europe is catching up. But it's a big world and the tobacco giants have just moved on to easier targets in the developing countries of Asia and Africa. The scene of the battle is shifting along with the change in focus:
Bolstered by a 2005 global treaty, sponsored by the World Health Organization - the Framework Convention for Tobacco Control - more than 100 nations have created new laws to ban public smoking, ban tobacco advertising, particularly those targeting youths, and ban partnerships between tobacco companies and government. This weekend, at a meeting in Durban, South Africa, countries took that treaty a step further by agreeing that tobacco lobbyists must be prevented from interfering with healthcare policy."This was a big step," says Kathy Mulvey, international policy director for Corporate Accountability International, based in Boston. "The anchor principle of this meeting was that there is a fundamental conflict between tobacco industry interests and public health interests. These guidelines will help advocates and public officials begin to slam the door on tobacco industry tactics, and focus on implementing the treaty's lifesaving measures." (Scott Baldauf, Christian Science Monitor)
It's a big job. Tobacco use in Africa has been increasing at over 4% a year, meaning that it more than doubles every 15 years. Many governments are weak and officials susceptible to corruption. But as the Christian Science Monitor article observes, the companies are meeting surprising resistance. The word has gotten around that they don't call them coffin nails for nothing. Signing the treaty is also a commitment to forcing cigarette manufacturers to but graphic pictures of cancer on the packages. Whether that commitment will be fulfilled remains to be seen, but it sure will in some cases. Also included is a commitment to making it illegal for government officials to invest in tobacco companies, something even the US doesn't have.
I want to say it again. These respectable business people are cold blooded killers. They should be locked up. They kill more people than terrorists could ever hope to kill and they do it knowingly, purposefully and for no end that anyone would accept as acceptable, no matter how twisted their ideology. They make Osama bin Laden or Henry Kissinger look like choir boys.
Instead they get big salaries and nice houses. What a world.
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the business behavior of tobacco companies may be despicable enough to warrant jail time, and their products surely do kill countless thousands each year, but i'm still a bit worried about some of the steps you're lauding here, and about the possible extension of this attitude to tobacco. i'm worried it might lead to tobacco prohibitionism in the long run, and we all know how well prohibitionism works as a drug control measure --- better to hand the stuff out for free on the street corners, in most cases!
that said, i'm a bit confused over why nicotine addicts usually choose smoked tobacco as their delivery method of choice. smelly, has a danger of fire, and the inhaled particulates surely must be as hazardous as the nicotine itself if not more so --- if one can't kick the nicotine habit, why not use patches or gum? how come tobacco companies haven't latched onto that as a marketing strategy?
(hey, if smoked tobacco was phased out for means less offensive to my nose with no other change in consumption, i'd count that a great step forward, myself.)
I completely agree with Revere on this one, every tobacco company executive is a merchant of death, as bad as any terrorist, as bad as the arms merchants who promote a war so they can sell armaments to both sides. Worse than the counterfeiters who sell fake drugs. At least those victims get a placebo effect.
I think that when tobacco industry executives die, that their obituaries should call them what they were, merchants of death that preyed on their victims.
The reason tobacco is smoked is to give a very high rate of change of nicotine in the blood. Many drugs work better when smoked, not all of them can be. Cocaine hydrochloride has too low a vapor pressure, but if you make it into the free base, then it has a high enough vapor pressure to be smoked.
Nomen Nescio: Smoked tobacco gives a high spike of nicotine straight to the reward centers of the brain. Gum and patches give a much lower, longer-lasting buzz instead, which doesn't set off the reward circuitry quite so well. Thus, nicotine addicts stick with the form of the drug that works.
Plus, it does have some mildly positive social effects.
(Speaking as one of the aforementioned nicotine addicts.)
Just as drug prohibition will take time to wipe out so will the need of a generation that has smoked cigarettes take time to wipe it out.
I grew up when smoking cigarettes was hip and popular, some of these programmed images take time to dissolve. And I want to say not by hard fisted tactics.
Philip Morris International is listed as one of The 10 Worst Corporations of 2008
http://www.multinationalmonitor.org/mm2008/112008/weissman.html
NOV/DEC 2008
VOL 29 No. 3
The old Philip Morris no longer exists. In March, the company formally divided itself into two separate entities: Philip Morris USA, which remains a part of the parent company Altria, and Philip Morris International.
Philip Morris USA sells Marlboro and other cigarettes in the United States. Philip Morris International tramples over the rest of the world.
The world is just starting to come to grips with a Philip Morris International even more predatory in pushing its toxic products worldwide.
The new Philip Morris International is unconstrained by public opinion in the United States - the home country and largest market of the old, unified Philip Morris - and will no longer fear lawsuits in the United States.
As a result, Thomas Russo of the investment fund Gardner Russo & Gardner told Bloomberg, the company "won't have to worry about getting pre-approval from the U.S. for things that are perfectly acceptable in foreign markets." Russo's firm owns 5.7 million shares of Altria and now Philip Morris International.
A commentator for The Motley Fool investment advice service wrote, "The Marlboro Man is finally free to roam the globe unfettered by the legal and marketing shackles of the U.S. domestic market."
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Hit on the link above if you want to read the entire article.
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4% growth corresponds to a doubling time
of about 17.3 years.
Red: That's why I said "over 4%:" The easy way is to divide the percent into the number 69
(the natural log of 2 x 100).
You say that like it implies some sort of contradiction. Murder is very, very profitable.
The end is "profit", and it is the very foundation of an ideology called "capitalism". Perhaps you've heard of it?
Good grief, we've smashed nations, launched wars, and funded legions of murderers and torturers to protect the profits of well-connected businesses. Why should tobacco be any different?
What is most serious with tobacco is not the harm it may cause to the smoking individual, but its potential for harm to a very large number of future generations. This is because tobacco smoke is a potent cocktail of several different chemical mutagens. It is mainly because of this genotoxic effect that tobacco smoke is carcinogenic, and there is no reason to believe that germ cells either in men or women are selectively shielded against all the chemical mutagens found in tobacco smoke. However, while medical scientists and probably many other biologists are well aware of the connection between changes in the DNA molecules and cancer, it is far from obvious that a majority of people who are medical laymen are aware of this - and it is something that is very rarely mentioned, if at all, in anti-smoking propaganda (at least when considering what is told to the general public and in schools here in Norway).
While the argument can be raised that those who start smoking have a major responsibility themselves for what they do with their own health (they should not blame only the tobacco industry), this argument can not be used for harm against those children who still are not born when their mothers or fathers, or the grandparents of the grandparents of their grandparents, do something that will cause damage to the genome of future generations. It should therefore be regarded as a most serious ethical question, when we are too liberal with the consumption of chemical mutagens whether in form of tobacco, too much alcohol, mutagenic pesticides or food additives, mutagenic drugs (e.g. paracetamol) and other mutagenic environmental pollutants. But this ethical issue is even more serious for poor countries where much of the population suffers from such forms of malnutrition (e.g. vitamin B12 deficiency, folate deficiency, zinc deficiency or niacin deficiency) that may interfere with DNA repair. Tobacco smoking may thus be even more harmful to the genome of future generations in Africa than it is to the genome of future generations in Europe and North America - which means that marketing tobacco should also be considered an even more serious crime there than it is here.
We need law regulations, all over the world, specifically for the protection of the genome of future generations. Damaging the health of large numbers of future human generations should be legally defined as a form of crime even more serious than murder or rape. And the legal responsibility should be regarded as the same, regardless in what country the victims are located (which means the legal responsibility e.g. for an American business company would be the same under American law, regardless of whether the victims are living in the United States or in Africa).
There are situations where there could be very legitimate reasons for still allowing the use of chemical mutagens, e.g. for treatment of serious diseases such as cancer. A law of this kind must therefore give room for exceptions when there are very good reasons for doing so. There should be no compromise, however, as regards the duty for openness and correct information to the general public and to the users about this form of damage, e.g. when selling mutagenic drugs. Keeping back information about genotoxicity should by itself be considered a serious crime, even when the product concerned is so valuable, e.g. for treatment of serious and potentially life-threatening diseases, that it must still be considered completely legitimate to continue to sell it and use it.
Olav: There is a tobacco available that does not have any chemical additives, just pure tobacco. And tobacco is not evil in itself, balance in all things. You know, free will and responsibility to oneself and those around them.
And we sure the hell don't need more laws for anything. We're over burdened by the "moral" police as it is.
For the most part I refuse to believe that the majority of people are stupid and don't have a conscience that leads them to do right. On the other hand I do believe is that people are lazy and stressed out. While the tobacco may cause harm it sure the heck relieves high stress levels.
Tobacco exceptionalism excuses other industries and agents.
Smoking is already the scapegoat for many other lung carcinogens, including silica, probably diesel particulate and possibly PM2.5.
SENATOR REVEALS PHILIP MORRIS CO-AUTHORED FDA TOBACCO BILL
http://www.prwatch.org/node/8393
Click the link for full text with links to documents.
Excerpt follows:
Senator Mike Enzi, ranking member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP), confirmed May 21 that cigarette maker Philip Morris co-authored the bill currently under consideration in Congress, for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to regulate tobacco products.
Enzi was rebuffed in efforts to amend the bill to move regulatory authority over tobacco to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) ....
The FDA tobacco bill has been criticized by the American Association of Public Health Physicians (pdf) and FDA Commissioner Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach, as tying the FDA's hands while misleading consumers and cementing Philip Morris' market share.
Philip Morris began its "Regulatory Strategy Project" -- a long-term, behind-the-scenes project to enact "regulations" friendly to the company -- in 1999, after the Supreme Court struck down a government-initiated effort to regulate tobacco. Philip Morris' crafting the bill behind closed doors with the National Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids was also described by Roll Call, back in October 2004.
SOURCE: TradingMarkets.com, May 21, 2009
New documents still being added to this database:
http://www.pmdocs.com/pmpublic.asp
Example of what they knew and when they knew it: http://www.pmdocs.com/PDF/1000743912_3913_0.PDF