There is not much that capitalist corporations will not do to expand their profits to the fullest. One of the best examples is tobacco company Phillip-Morris.
 Smoking is known to cause lung cancer |
In the Unites States, it took a broad-based movement against big tobacco’s targeting of children to bring down all the billboards and other ads for Joe Camel in 1997. After Joe’s collapse, the Marlboro Man fell as well, as did most ads for cigarettes in general. This, of course, was after a long and bitterly fought battle with the giants of the industry.
On Nov. 20, at a meeting in Uruguay of the World Health Organization, 171 countries agreed on new guidelines for the sale and use of tobacco products ranging from taxation to education.
The meeting came after Phillip-Morris sued Uruguay and Brazil this year in response to regulations on tobacco products. The law in Uruguay mandated, among other things, that the warning labels on cigarettes take up at least 80 percent of the package and that each individual brand of cigarettes be restricted to one design so that consumers are not led to believe that one kind of cigarette is “healthier” than another.
Dr. Douglas Bettcher, head of WHO’s Tobacco Free Initiative, said, “They’re using litigation to threaten low- and middle-income countries.” Although advertising for tobacco products has all but ceased in the U.S., across the world tobacco companies are searching out new recruits. Bettcher says that this is to make up for the loss in sales here in the U.S. because tobacco users are either dying or quitting.
Phillip-Morris spokesman Peter Nixon said that the lawsuit was filed because the regulations were “excessive” and that the company has the right to protect its trademark and commercial property rights. He agreed that tobacco products are harmful and that the company supports “reasonable” regulations.
But in Indonesia, the fifth-largest cigarette market, and other countries, cigarette ads run on TV and before movies; companies appeal to children through concerts and sports events, cartoon characters adorn packages and stores sell to children.
Globally, cigarette sales are up 2 percent. The response to this by many countries is regulation of the products and a recent meeting of countries to discuss how to keep their people from being poisoned by cigarettes.
Phillip-Morris has no right to dictate how a government may regulate products within its own territory. People over profits!
