Philip Morris International Commences New Plans to Spread Death and Disease

[raccoon]

Published on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 by CommonDreams.org

Philip Morris International Commences New Plans to Spread Death and Disease

by Robert Weissman

Philip Morris International today starts business as an independent company, no longer affiliated with Philip Morris USA or the parent company, Altria. Philip Morris USA will sell Marlboro and other cigarettes in the United States. Philip Morris International will trample over the rest of the world.

Public health advocates have worried and speculated over the past year about what this move may mean, but Philip Morris International has now removed all doubts.

The world is about to meet a Philip Morris International that will be even more predatory in pushing its toxic products worldwide.

The new Philip Morris International will be 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.


In February, the World Health Organization issued a new report on the global tobacco epidemic. WHO estimates the Big Tobacco-fueled epidemic now kills more than 5 million people every year.


The company has announced plans to inflict on the world an array of new products, packages and marketing efforts. These are designed to undermine smoke-free workplace rules, defeat tobacco taxes, segment markets with specially flavored products, offer flavored cigarettes sure to appeal to youth, and overcome marketing restrictions.


http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/04/01/8012/

[Taverner]

1. Meh - smoking is a choice

No one is forcing smokers to smoke

The information is out there - the consumer is fully informed of the dangers and can make a choice

[Deep13]

3. Consumers are not fully informed everywhere.

And here they are only marginally informed.

[Taverner]

10. What are you talking about?

How is a warning label promising certain death only "marginally informing" a customer

And to top it there's tons of PSA's on at all hours telling kids not to smoke

[Deep13]

17. Do they have them in China?

I'm not going to reargue a public health policy that was settled in the 1970s.

[jojo54]

4. I agree with you, but I have to make a comment.

I started smoking during the Vietnam war and these tobacco companies sure as shit, never gave the slightest hint that it was dangerous. Nor did I give the notion one thought, so I guess I'm just as guilty.

But in the long run, smoking becomes an addiction. I know full well - I've tried quitting 4 times already, and haven't been successful. I'm not going to stop trying though.

[Deep13]

6. You're not just as guilty.

These companies are professionals. They have institutional memory and psych. experts on the payroll to figure out how to taylor marketing strategies (which goes beyound mere advertising) to break down those cautionary mental barriers and put new smokers who are usually minors on the hook. They provide cancer sticks to soldiers because they know soldiers are only thinking about surviving the next day or month and not diseases they will get when they are fifty.

[Sal Minella]

8. Keep trying -- I got off a three-pack-a-day addiction after 30 years.

Every time you find another quitting method that DOESN'T work, you're ahead of the game......the patch worked for me.

I can't even stand the stink of burning tobacco any more.

[Taverner]

11. Awesome - keep trying!

I smoked from age 14-18, and then from 21-27. The only things that ever worked for me were the patch and the gum. Use both if you have to. But that's just me...

I understand the companies are shit - and their history is mired in deceit and lies.

But honestly, at this point if you start smoking in America - it's pure caveat emptor.

From what I heard, cig companies practically gave smokes away to soldiers so they'd get hooked when they came back home. True?

[Sal Minella]

5. And if smoking is a choice made by young people after seeing countless movies with attractive young

actors smoking as though cigarettes are a perfectly normal part of a young life -- is that an informed choice?

I have been angry for years about smoking portrayed as an attractive or normal habit in films marketed for young-adult audiences. Check out some of the Columbia-Tristar films if you doubt me -- Spitfire Grill, The Winslow Boy, and The Luzhin Defense.

[northzax]

12. please, people never smoke in movies anymore

those are more arthouse films than directed at teenagers. should realistic movies not portray people realistically? people smoke, especially young people (I work in a bar, I know a lot of smokers, including myself) you coudn't make a movie about me without including smoking, right? and I have not yet (Although I know I will) suffered obvious physical problems from my minor smoking habit. make a movie of me in my 20's, and you won't see the emphysema that will probably kill me if I don't quit. sure, make a movie of me in my 50s or 60's, and it's a different story.

[Taverner]

13. So?

Trainspotting made heroin look pretty damn fun - doesn't mean I went out and tried it that day.

Look - smokes have a warning right on the pack. If someone smokes because a character in a movie does, doesn't read the warning label, and ignores all the countless PSA's telling them why they shouldn't smoke - then if they start smoking it's their own fault.

I smoked for years. I quit. It was hard. I don't want to do that again.

But every time I lit a smoke, or chose not to - it was a choice. No one stuck a cigarette in my mouth and said inhale.

[raccoon]

7. What if they're kids? And a lot of people, especially in Third World countries,

even if they're adults, may not be informed.

I remember reading that in foreign countries, tobacco companies do things they'd never get away with here--such as giving "samples" to teenagers.

[Taverner]

14. Smoking laws and warning differ from country to country

IN other countries, it is a different story. Some countries have harsher anti-smoking campagins than others. Germany, for example, well exceeds our efforts in discouraging smoking. Singapore puts pictures of diseased lungs on every pack, obscuring the brand name even.

However, in places like Cambodia and African Countries - there is no real Ministry of Health to go around discouraging it.

Smoking is a waning number year after year. Phillip Morris would be smart to get out of the Tobacco business like their buddy RJ Reynolds (who has considered dropping their tobacco products altogether several times) and move into anything else.

Personally, I go out of my way to buy Kraft foods to "reward" the "good" side of the tobacco company.

[Deep13]

2. Aw-right! Personal freedom to die a painful, lingering death is on the march!

Everyone has the right to choose for himself or herself whether or not s/he will contract a horrible disease that will make him/her a social pariah, be a victim to a powerful addiction, a financial burden on family and society, emotional distress for his/her loved ones and a slow, horrible decrepitude that prevents one from wiping his/her own ass. Yep, the sweet, mentholated smell of freedom!

:sarcasm:

[Taverner]

15. So should we ban cars then?

After all, they are far more dangerous than cigs, statistically speaking.

[Deep13]

16. You are 100% dead wrong in your factual assumptions.

The CDC reports that at roughly 400,000 (changes year to year) tobacco is about 10 times as dangerous as auto crashes.

I disagree with your assement that personal freedom (of minors to become addicts in this case) trumps public health. That is a difference on value judgments.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=903489

[doodadem]

9. I used to work for Philip Morris

Years ago, I was a "member of management", in manufacturing quality assurance--an inspector. I worked third shift, and the factory was shut down for xmas, but we management types still had to be there for "training". I vividly remember sitting there in the middle of the night, being told we could go home if we wrote letters to our congressmen saying that cigarettes were not dangerous, did not cause cancer, should not be further regulated, yada yada. All of us took the materials provided, and wrote our letters to get out of there for the holidays. The company mailed them all for us..........

[dixiegrrrrl]

18. What made me quit 10 years ago WAS Phillip Morris

When Dickie Scruggs successfully sued them way back when, he got them to admit that they had been artificially increasing the nicotine levels in their tobacco, and smokers had no idea of it.
I heard about that, whilst working up the nerve to quit, and got seriously mad enuff to quit.
Anger is a good motivator for me.

Many folks under age of say..40? 50?
are prolly not aware that cigarette smoking was advertised on tv by men in white coats looking like scientists or doctors, people smoked as part of the advertisements.
The majority of people in the 1940's and 1950's smoked, so we all grew up around it in our homes and on the streets and in movies ( you could actually smoke cigarettes IN the movie theater at one time ) and we had no clue about the dangers.
Cigarette companies were praised for being "patriotic" in WW II by giving away cigs to guys in the military.
for 20-30 years smoking was considered "normal".

All the big conglomerates are looking at other countries like vampires seeking new blood.

[MISSDem]

19. Why are cigarettes the whipping boy? There are many

other things that we ingest that are just as bad, ie, fried foods, meat, processed food, especially sweets, soft drinks, ice cream, potator chips, alcohol and on and on. Not to mention driving too fast and not wearing a seat belt. I get so tired of hearing it.

[Sal Minella]

20. Cigarettes are the whipping boy because they are the only product being marketed to young people

that causes disease and death when used EXACTLY as the manufacturer intended.

Foodstuffs are not even remotely in the same class.

[MISSDem]

21. Then why are there so many obese young people? And , unless I

am mistaken, the #1 killer is heart disease and it is causedmainly by improper diet not to mention diabetes. Puleeze.

[Sal Minella]

22. Since you are determined to avoid admitting that food is essential to life and cigarettes are

inimical to life, so be it.

[alarimer]

23. Tobacco companies are truly evil

The very worst corporations on the planet. They deliberately made cigarettes more addictive with additives and they have advertised to kids in order to keep their revenue streams intact. And they sell a product that is designed to KILL. I hope tobacco executives die of lung cancer.