The biggest killers in the world. Who are they?

The World Health Organization estimates that as many as 1.3 billion people are smokers worldwide. Forty percent of them live in China and India. More people than ever are dying of smoking-related causes, and for the first time, smoking deaths in developing countries equal those seen in the industrialized world. There were nearly 5 million smoking deaths in the year 2000, with the majority --- roughly one third --- due to heart disease and stroke. Currently, it is estimated that as many as 5.4 million deaths a year are caused by tobacco. By the year 2010, more people will die as a result of lung cancer than from any other disease. It is further estimated that 6.5 million people in 2015 and 8.3 million humans in 2030, with the biggest rise in low-and middle-income countries, will also die as a result of smoking. Every 6.5 seconds a current or former smoker dies somewhere in the world as a direct result of smoking. Over 443,000 Americans (over 18 percent of all deaths) die because of smoking each year. Secondhand smoke kills about 50,000 of them. 1.2 million people in China die because of smoking each year. That's 2,000 people a day. Around 100 million people died because of tobacco use in the 20th century. It is estimated that tobacco use will kill 1 billion people in the 21st century if current smoking trends continue.

Who are these killers that bring about death to so many millions of people? The answer is so obvious. They are the people who grow tobacco, manufacture tobacco products like cigarettes and those who sell these products to the public. They all play a part in the deaths of so many people world wide.

Dr. J. Michael Moore is one of the top agronomists in the tobacco industry. Since 1989 he has been a professor and ‘extension’ agronomist for tobacco in the crop and soil sciences department of the University of Georgia. He has been the point man for Georgia tobacco growers and agriculture agents ever since. Dr. W.K. (Bill) Collins returned to North Carolina after earning his doctorate, spending three years as an agronomist with R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. Collins is credited as a pioneer in using on-farm testing as tools to teach ‘extension’ agents, growers and agribusiness people about improvements in tobacco production. These are just two persons of many people who assist in the production of tobacco in the United States.

There are 700 tobacco farm families in Canada who are currently facing economic devastation as a result of government policies on tobacco and tobacco control. These policies have increased both the amount of contraband cigarettes sold and the use of cheap, imported tobacco used in Canada and have plunged farmers into debt and greatly contributed to the immediate threat facing their family farms and surrounding communities.

What is my response to their financial dilemma? Tough. Live with it. Change your priorities and grow something else on your farms. Thousands of farmers worldwide are doing it. The government should give fair and equitable compensation for tobacco farm families wishing to exit the tobacco growing industry and plant something else in their fields.

The largest tobacco company in the world by volume is China National Tobacco Co. Following extensive merger activity in the 1990s and 2000s, international markets are dominated by five firms: Philip Morris International, British American Tobacco (represented in the U.S. market by a 42% stake in Reynolds American, Inc.), Japan Tobacco, Altria, and Imperial Tobacco.

Louis C. Camilleri, chairman and CEO of Philip Morris International Inc. gave an address at a conference on the 18th of November 2008 that was sponsored by Morgan Stanley. In his speech, he said, “Let me begin with the strong results we achieved through September in our first year as an independent publicly-traded company. Cigarette volume was up 2.4%, helped by acquisitions in Mexico and Pakistan. Organic cigarette volume through the end of the third quarter increased by 1.1%. This is our best volume performance in recent years and was fully in line with the targets we
shared with you in March.”

This statement was made by a man who already knew of the millions of deaths world wide caused by lung cancer which for the most part is caused by smoking cigarettes.

He went on to say in his speech, “Our 2007 acquisitions in Mexico and Pakistan contributed $54 million to our income growth, while going forward, we will enjoy the positive impact of our
Rothmans acquisition in Canada.”

This statement was made by a man who obviously knows about the agony of slowly dying of suffocation as a direct result of cancer caused by cigarette smoking.

In his speech, he also said, “Our shipments this year have increased by 8.0% and our market share in the third quarter reached 27.0%, a gain of 0.4 points compared to the same period last year. We are having an excellent year in Indonesia. Adjusted for the timing of shipments related to Ramadan, our volume through September is up 10% with a strong performance, led by Marlboro, which has benefited from the launch of Marlboro kretek, and A Mild, the leader in the machine-made lighter tasting kretek segment. We are strengthening our position behind our international brands, Bond Street, Next and Red & White, which are growing inkey markets, as well as by further developing local heritage brands such as Diana in Italy and Delicados in Mexico.”

This statement was made by a man who knows that children are smoking his products.

He also said, “One of PMI’s (Philip Morris International) key strengths is our balance sheet and our ability to generate consistent, predictable and growing discretionary cash flows. Our resolve to return cash to our shareholders remains as strong as ever. We generate tremendous cash flows and have a very strong balance sheet. I believe therefore that we are exceptionally well-placed to continue to reward our shareholders over the longer term.”

That is what it is all about. MONEY. Corporate responsibility to human beings has no place at all in the tobacco industry when the bottom line is what perpetuates growth of that industry of death.

Documents show that the tobacco industry has long harbored antipathy towards public health authorities due to efforts to reduce tobacco-related disease. Philip Morris Corporate Affairs employee John Dollisson demonstrated the intensity of this corporate attitude in a 1988 corporate speech when he described public health advocates as “snipers” in a “guerilla war” who have “laid minefields” for the tobacco industry. In the speech, Dollisson referred to public health advocates as "Meusli-eating, (popular breakfast cereal based on uncooked rolled oats, fruit and nuts) stool-watching joggers who know what is best for all of us." In a 1988 internal speech, Susan Stuntz (Director of Issues Management at the Tobacco Institute) referred to public health authorities as “…the Captain Kangaroos out there.” In 1991, R.J. Reynolds executive Herbert Osmon demonstrated the industry’s attitude towards public health proponents when he said, “The goal of public health authorities was to scare smokers into quitting…The public health authorities will eventually be able to dance on our graves, because we won’t be able to resist the pressures if we are not united.”

Can it really be said that these people care about the health of their fellow Americans?

The tobacco industry fights consistently attempts to regulate tobacco use because such laws cut into their profits. In 1993 Philip Morris stated internally that the ‘financial impact of smoking bans will be tremendous. Three to five fewer cigarettes per day per smoker will reduce annual manufacturer profits a billion dollars plus per year.’ Minutes of a Philip Morris internal strategy meeting point out that ‘...Smoking bans are the biggest challenge we have ever faced. Quit rate goes from 5% to 21% when smokers work in nonsmoking environments.’

Smoking bans are now law in many countries. The bans are simply that one cannot smoke where people congregate, such as bars, restaurants, public buildings, trains, buses, subways, etc.

There is no doubt in my mind that the bans have caused financial havoc to owners of bars and restaurants and many have had to close down permanently because of the loss of business. One of my favorite restaurants closed down because they couldn’t afford to put in a room where smokers could smoke while eating. Some countries even ban smoking on outside train platforms. The reason for the bans is that second hand smoke is almost as deadly as first hand smoke. Perhaps if a non smoker goes into a restaurant once a week, he won’t be affected but those who work eight hours a day in a smoke filled restaurant will invariably suffer the most.

Governments are benefiting from the sale of tobacco. The taxes that are derived from the sale of tobacco products runs into millions of dollars every year. In Canada, both the federal and provincial governments tax tobacco products and the taxes are extremely high. They claim that they raised the taxes as an incentive to curtail the sales of tobacco products but even if the sales are down, they still make many millions of dollars as a result of the increase in taxation of the tobacco products.

Many store-based clinics are located in pharmacy and large retail chain stores and very often these facilities also sell tobacco products. Because the use of tobacco products leads to health problems, many believe the sale of these products in a facility that provides health care is counterproductive. Several years ago, Canada made a law that forbids the sale of tobacco products in any pharmacy. The Americans have been rather slow in this direction. It was only in June 2008 that the American medical Association voted to support efforts to ban the sale of tobacco products and/or byproducts in retail outlets housing store-based health clinics. AMA Board Member, William Dolan said, “It's ridiculous for stores that house health clinics to sell tobacco products. To keep the objective of getting and keeping patients healthy, the sale of tobacco products must be banned from any health care facility.”

What can be done to end this plague that is creeping around the world and into the lungs of so many people? Here is what I propose.

By the year, 2010, the governments should be assisting tobacco farmers to get out of the tobacco business and assist them into planting food products, such as grain, wheat, oats etc. in their fields as an alternative.

In the year, 2015, the governments should prohibit the sale of raw tobacco from tobacco farms to tobacco manufacturing firms. Anyone caught doing it should be fined $100,000 for first offence and for the second offence; they should get a $200,000 fine plus one year in jail. Anyone in the tobacco manufacturing industry who accepts raw tobacco for the manufacture of tobacco products should get the same penalty, be it a receiver or the CEO who gave his or her approval.

In the year, 2020, all tobacco products should be prohibited from being sold to anyone.

Will this come about? Eventually but not in the years that I have proposed. Why? For a political party that leads a government to make the proposals I have suggested, it would be an act of political suicide. Once a government brought in such legislation, the opposite parties would jump up and down in glee knowing that if they condemn such legislation, millions of voters who are addicted to nicotine would support them if the opposition brought in a motion of non confidence and forced the government to fall. The opposition would know in their own minds that such legislation is really good for the health and well being of the public but despite that, their own desire for power would supersede whatever they really thought was in the best interests of the citizens of that country. Even a dictator with near absolute powers couldn’t bring in a law that would eventually end cigarette smoking without risking a revolution.

I think that the change will have to come about very slowly. It may be that the citizens of the world will have to wait until the middle of this century before smoking cigarettes will become as dead as the dodo bird. Meanwhile, billions of people will die from lung cancer and be just as dead as the dodo bird. It’s a sad commentary of our times when you consider that children not even born yet, are going to die from lung cancer brought about by smoking cigarettes because the tobacco industry is more interested in making money than concerning themselves about the future of the unborn.

When the CEOs of the tobacco manufacturing companies are lying on their death beds, will they be thinking of the harm that they have brought upon millions of their fellow human beings and those that will follow us? No. They will be thinking of the millions of dollars they personally made by manufacturing death and no doubt their final thoughts will have similar theme as the others of their ilk, “Life was great!”