By Elaine Magliaro
One might assume that American tobacco companies were hurting because the “smoking rate in the United States has dropped from 43 percent in 1965 to 18 percent today…” The drastic drop is due “to strict laws outlawing cigarette ads.” Despite the low rate of smoking here, the tobacco industry’s profits are reportedly “higher than ever.” And why is that? Because tobacco companies have greatly increased their revenues abroad.
On Sunday, John Oliver did a segment on Last Week Tonight about what the big tobacco companies are doing outside of the United States. One of their tactics is suing countries that “have attempted to create public health laws in order to stem the tide of citizens who become addicted to the their cancer-causing products.” Those countries include Australia, Uruguay, and a number of developing nations.
Tom Boggioni (Raw Story):
Oliver pointed that the soaring profits are due to tobacco companies aggressive marketing of their products in overseas markets where they have learned to bully governments in the international court system.
Daniel Kreps (Rolling Stone):
Oliver’s takedown also focuses on the extreme lengths companies like Philip Morris International are going to place their products in the hands of the youth, including a Marlboro-sponsored kiosk outside an Indonesian school where teens can purchase a single cigarette for a dime.
Kreps said that countries “have responded to Big Tobacco’s unorthodox marketing with laws that allow government to place grotesque images of smoker’s lung and blackened teeth on cigarette packaging…” He added that “those measures have resulted in threats of billion-dollar lawsuits from the tobacco giants in international court.”
Philip Morris International (PMI) is waging one such battle with Togo, one of the ten poorest nations in the world. PMI, “a company with annual earnings of $80 billion, is threatening a nation with a GDP of $4.3 billion over their plans to add the harsh imagery to cigarette boxes, since much of the population is illiterate and therefore can’t read the warning labels.”
Boggioni noted that lawyers for tobacco companies “are using trade agreement laws banning government appropriation of company assets to get around laws that would replace tobacco brand names with public health warnings against smoking, stating it would lower the value of their trade marks.”
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Tobacco (HBO)
SOURCE
John Oliver compares lawsuit-happy tobacco companies to ‘open sores on Satan’s d*ck’ (Raw Story)
Watch John Oliver’s Epic Takedown of the Tobacco Industry (Rolling Stone)
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Flowers For Socrates 
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Where’s bron, when the tobacco industry needs his defense?
“Free”!?!?!? Market!
Smoking causes a good many problems, you would have to be a complete fool to smoke cigarettes. Almost all aortic aneurysms are directly related to smoking. At least so says the 2 sonogram techs I talked with during a scan to see if I had a heart [contrary to perception, it is there].
I still think it is up to the individual. If we ever have socialized medicine, I would outlaw smoking, drinking, drugs and reduce sugar and flour products and I would lower salt content of canned and frozen foods. I would also enforce a minimum 4 hour per week fitness program. If I am going to have to pay for your fat, drunken, fetid ass, it better god damn well be healthy so we don’t spend limited resources on type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
put the marlboro out in the beer and take that fucking hotdog out of your mouth and drop the boston cream in the trash. Get your ass outside and walk around the block a few times.
You know what, socialized medicine just might be a good thing. Then we could deny care to people who dont want to change their lifestyles.
Fuck libertarians, socialism is the way to go. Power to the people, sort of.
You guys have done it, I think you are right, socialism is the way to go. We only need 800 sq. feet per 2 people and we all only need 1500 calories/day. Anything else is just a waste of precious resources. I see the light now. We dont need jet skies and power boats, we dont need 4 wheelers and we certainly dont need guns.
It is all so clear now, wow!
thanks for sticking with me through the deprogramming.
“You know what, socialized medicine just might be a good thing. Then we could deny care to people who dont want to change their lifestyles.”
I think you’ve got that not quite right, B. Right now, if you are a smoker you are already being discriminated against by private insurers in the form of higher premiums and more denial of claims. In a socialized system, the care would be provided and the cost distributed across the risk pool but the government would then have the leverage to force tobacco companies out of our markets or make the product so expensive with taxes that it would discourage use and those taxes would go to offset health care.
With enough tobacco and Coca-Cola in their systems we have softened up foreign populations for our greatest export … democracy at gunpoint. The CIA, our State Department’s standing army, leads the way.
The CIA, our State Department’s standing army, leads the way.
Amen to that. Warren for president! Kucinich as Sec. State, Sanders for head of CIA.
bron,
Congratulations!
I see you finally found your meds.
Keep it up!
Gene:
“but the government would then have the leverage to force tobacco companies out of our markets or make the product so expensive with taxes that it would discourage use and those taxes would go to offset health care.”
you say potato I say patatoh. We both agree that using government to change behavior is in the best interest of all.
Oliver’s takedown also focuses on the extreme lengths companies like Philip Morris International are going to place their products in the hands of the youth, including a Marlboro-sponsored kiosk outside an Indonesian school where teens can purchase a single cigarette for a dime.
==================================
We could send the NYPD to Indonesia to er “choke” their losie sales.
I want to get some JEFF! t-shirts and change them to JEB!
A Tobacco Giant Is Not Happy With This John Oliver Segment
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/john-oliver-phillip-morris-responds
Tobacco Giants Battle New Ads Painting Them As Liars
AP | By PETE YOST
Posted: 02/22/2015
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/22/tobacco-corrective-ads_n_6730504.html
Excerpt:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Never underestimate the staying power of big tobacco.
In 2006, U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler ordered the nation’s largest cigarette makers to publicly admit that they had lied for decades about the dangers of smoking.
The basis for the punishment: Testimony from 162 witnesses, a nine-month bench trial and thousands of findings by the judge that defendants engaged in what the largest public health organizations in the country have called a massive campaign of fraud.
Bloodied but unbeaten, the tobacco companies have plunged into another courtroom battle in an effort to stave off the humiliation of having to underwrite an ad campaign in which they brand themselves as liars. Oral arguments are scheduled for Monday before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
The ads would appear in newspapers, on TV, websites and cigarette pack inserts. The ads, called “corrective statements,” stem from a civil case the government brought in 1999 under RICO, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.