OnPoint: Sock-Puppeting Big Tobacco to Chew on ACT
240 Responses
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izogi, in reply to
Corporations want one thing: profits. Tobacco corporations make their profits from one thing: selling a product that kills people and puts a huge burden on our health system.
Well yeah, but they shouldn’t have to. It puzzles me that over maybe 60+ years of opportunity, tobacco companies don’t seem to have made any serious effort to change their long term focus away from addicting people to cancerous products. You’d think any smart business leader might have started a shift decades ago.
Even major oil corporations have been slowly re-branding themselves to more generalised “energy” businesses instead of oil drilling businesses, leaving doors open to bring in new expertise and get into alternative kinds of energy as it’s prudent for them to do so, because that’s what they might need to be if and when excessive use of oil is no longer acceptable. (I’m not meaning to paint the oil industry as angels though.) Meanwhile the tobacco industry’s seemingly stayed narrow-minded the entire time and fenced itself into a corner, trying every kind of dirty gutter-sourced trick imaginable to avoid change and keep addicting and killing people for profit. I might have had sympathy if there hadn’t already been so much time to change as science totally undermined the business ethics, but now I just think the idiot executives of these companies deserve much worse things than I’ll ever write here.
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Lucy Stewart, in reply to
Even major oil corporations have been slowly re-branding themselves to more generalised “energy” businesses instead of oil drilling businesses, leaving doors open to bring in new expertise and get into alternative kinds of energy as it’s prudent for them to do so, because that’s what they might need be if and when excessive use of oil is no longer acceptable.
Sloooooooowly is the word for it. On American Sunday morning TV - which is when all the major free-to-air political interview shows are - 90% of the ads are about how wonderful and amazing and clean coal and natural gas and oil shale are and how many jobs rely on them and did I mention JOBS JOBS JOBS. The majority of their public campaigning isn't going into proving they can change, it's going into proving they don't really need to.
You're absolutely right about how much worse Big Tobacco's reaction has been, of course, but I just wouldn't extend the fossil fuel people that much credit. They'll cling grimly on to current profit models until they have no other choice.
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Max Rose, in reply to
(i.e. isn't this a confluence of interests rather than sock puppetry?).
Which is a point that Noam Chomsky made in Manufacturing Consent: somethig along the lines of "you don't need a conspiracy theory of backroom deals when right-wing politicans and corporates all want the same thing anyway."
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Lucy Stewart, in reply to
Which is a point that Noam Chomsky made in Manufacturing Consent: somethig along the lines of “you don’t need a conspiracy theory of backroom deals when right-wing politicans and corporates all want the same thing anyway.”
Kind of like that saying about malice and incompetence, only this would be, uh...malice and habit?
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Max Rose, in reply to
only this would be, uh...malice and habit?
Self-interest and ideology. Big Tobacco wants to make money; individual ACT politicians don't necessarily stand to make personal profits from Big Tobacco, but their ideology supports big profits for big companies.
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izogi, in reply to
They'll cling grimly on to current profit models until they have no other choice.
True as you've said, and I definitely don't want to be an apologist for oil corps. I'm just amazed that the tobacco industry didn't try to broaden its own view of the industry it was in a long time ago and adapt to other things. Maybe it's a consequence of the time when everyone started realising just how bad tobacco was, and the typical management reaction of that time became so entrenched that it's never changed.
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BenWilson, in reply to
tobacco companies don’t seem to have made any serious effort to change their long term focus away from addicting people to cancerous products. You’d think any smart business leader might have started a shift decades ago.
When smart is synonymous with making lots of profit, I can't think why they'd change their business model. An addictive product is the perfect product. It does kill, but it's over such a long time it hardly matters to the bottom line. So long as it's through the customer's working life...
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Stephen Judd, in reply to
Reckon. The tobacco companies have simply moved their focus to picking up new smokers in jurisdictions with looser regulatory regimes and where they can influence politicians more overtly – Indonesia comes to mind.
Just looking at readily available data for BAT and Philip Morris, they’ve seen year on year profit increases every year for the last five years. They don’t have a lot of incentive to stop whatever they’re doing, I’d say.
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tobacco are locked in to their product as well. it's hard to bring a new addictive product to market through those pesky andertons on the track so they're stuck with trying to keep their current product legal for as long as the gravy train keeps rolling..
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Simon Grigg, in reply to
The tobacco companies have simply moved their focus to picking up new smokers in jurisdictions with looser regulatory regimes and where they can influence politicians more overtly – Indonesia comes to mind.
It would be hard to pick up more smokers in Indonesia - close to 80% of all males smoke and the environment is so lax that companies advertise in schools. One of the big tobacco companies sponsored the last World Cup's TV broadcasts - their ads claimed that smoking makes you healthy.
Loose is hardly the word. These companies put millions of dollars (= billions of rupiahs) into legislator's pockets every year.
Which is increasingly unlike the rest of Asia. Here in Thailand the smoking laws make New Zealand's seem disinterested by comparison. Puffing in parks, on walkways, any bar or restaurant and in markets is forbidden with wardens prowling.
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izogi, in reply to
tobacco are locked in to their product as well.
It really isn’t, though, except that now it is because they’ve been stupid morons. If a few people in the tobacco industry had, 50 years ago, realised that the industry wasn’t going to last in the western world and taken a step back and decided they were really in the industry of helping people relax or relieve stress or whatever (hell, just make something up), and tobacco was only one of many supposed ways to do that, the same companies would have much more flexibility now instead of just having their backs pinned against a wall the whole time, with a threat of their only income stream being pulled out from underneath them..
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Matthew Poole, in reply to
Here in Thailand the smoking laws make New Zealand’s seem disinterested by comparison. Puffing in parks, on walkways, any bar or restaurant and in markets is forbidden with wardens prowling.
Shuddup. You're making me jealous!
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Tobacco related illness. Gods but I hate that expression. Of course everyone dies of tobacco related illnesses: strokes and heart attacks and a lot of cancers are related to tobacco use, and that's what most people die of anyway, smokers and non-smokers alike.
Those same things are also related to alcohol use, not enough vegetables, lack of basic aerobic fitness and strength, and time. But beer adds are cool and so is bloggers pining over an old pub, and you couldn't possibly put any regulations on cheap vitamin-free fast food, or make people walk anywhere, or stop time. OK, the last one's fairly well intractable.
Know what's dangerous? Skydiving. Mountain climbing. Flying light aircraft. Adventure tourism. Walking down stairs. Wet floors. Ice. Not cigarettes, which are less dangerous than things still promoted locally as health tonics, like red wine.
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Joe Wylie, in reply to
. . . less dangerous than things still promoted locally as health tonics, like red wine.
Uh-oh.
"A cheeky little cab sav with a hint of kiwifruit. No idea of the year, as there's nothing on the label but a picture of a diseased liver." -
BenWilson, in reply to
Don't get between an addict and his poison! :-)
While I think banning smoking indoors is good, I still think the 'orrible stuff should be legal.
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Sacha, in reply to
I still think the 'orrible stuff should be legal.
Why? It's the only product that when used exactly as intended kills half of its users.
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Danielle, in reply to
Because I don't want my retired mother visiting gang houses to pick up cigarettes?
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Sacha, in reply to
But it's OK for someone else's mother to be forced to do that for a similar product with far fewer harmful effects and recorded deaths?
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No, it fucking isn't OK. I'm a decriminalisation advocate for ALL substances. So I'd love it if no one's mother had to do that, actually.
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Just putting it out there, my (limited) understanding is that land that grows the more pungent variety of tobacco can also grow good hop varieties. And we're suffering a world-wide shortage of hops.
Make beer not cigarettes!
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bmk,
Tobacco companies don’t need to change their business plans. Because if tobacco were ever made illegal or people were simply to stop smoking (both of which I think are highly unlikely) by that time Marijuana should be legal and they will be ready and in place to produce, market and distribute that product.
And they get so much hate that they should get some thanks, too. I sometimes enjoy a smoke. Without these ‘evil’ companies I wouldn’t have this pleasure. I don’t want to grow a tobacco plant just so I can have the occasional social smoke whilst drinking.
It’s funny people are allowed to praise the product of an alchohol company but there seems to be some prohibition on saying ‘thank you Philip Morris for producing such a wonderful smoke’.
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Simon Grigg, in reply to
by that time Marijuana should be legal and they will be ready and in place to produce, market and distribute that product.
It's semi legal in big parts of the world now, and this hasn't happened and seems unlikely to. Mostly, given their cloudy duplicitous histories, they would likely have trouble getting a green light I'd argue.
I quite like the way ganga has been been slowly de-criminalised via the back doors - it's largely prevented players like this getting a foot in.
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BenWilson, in reply to
I have been known to enjoy the odd cigar. I'm just being selfish. But seriously, it's one of the easiest plants to grow. Banning would just set up another war on drugs, for a substance which already has a colossal number of addicts. You're going to make criminals out of a billion people. I think that's crazy.
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bmk, in reply to
I am guessing this is because it is as you say semi-legal. If it were fully legal then the companies could mass-produce it and market/distribute it. I mean if I were a cannabis smoker I would prefer to be able to buy a package of pre-rolled joint of consistent quantity and quality from a dairy than having to go to some tinny house or dealer.
People could (and would) still grow their own. But some people would prefer just to be able to buy it with their milk. I mean home-brewing beer isn't particularly difficult either but most people still prefer to buy it.
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bmk, in reply to
Banning would just set up another war on drugs, for a substance which already has a colossal number of addicts. You’re going to make criminals out of a billion people. I think that’s crazy.
I completely agree. The world is finally waking up to the futility of marijuana being illegal and yet people talking about making tobacco illegal - it is (as you say) just crazy.
On a deeper note, the very idea of an illegal plant just seems a bit funny. I always find this interesting with Christians who think God created this world complete with plants that shouldn't be allowed to be grown.
And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.
Genesis 1:29
So when Christians say that cannabis (or tobacco or opium poppies for that matter) should not be grown are they saying God made a mistake?
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