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Last Updated: Sep 19th, 2007 - 11:49:11 |
Big Tobacco's Green Smokescreen
Sep 19, 2007, 11:43
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2006 was a banner year for the environmental movement. Primed by An Inconvenient Truth's trip to the Oscars, nearly every magazine on the rack devoted a cover to 'the new green era.' Industries far and wide, unaccustomed to the prospect of self-regulation, scrambled to put their green credentials on display: airlines like Delta and Quantas now offer carbon-offsets to customers; car companies are releasing wave upon wave of hybrid and ethanol-friendly vehicles; even Wal-Mart is hawking organic produce. A pervasive focus on environmental responsibility is proving to be quite a force to be reckoned with. Yet its biggest beneficiary may not be the conscientious consumer, but a far unlikelier entity: big tobacco. A traditional boogeyman of American Industry, tobacco companies have been under constant fire for the better part of the past three decades. And with justification. Prompted by a 1957 Readers Digest article that trumpeted the correlation between cigarettes and lung cancer, the tobacco industry undertook a vast and sweeping public disinformation campaign. A number of private 'research' entities -- including the now-infamous Tobacco Institute Research Council and The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition -- were created with the express purpose of generating biased science to refute evidence of cigarettes' health risks. Even as the United States Surgeon General began issuing reports decrying the vast dangers of smoking, companies like Philip Morris and P. Lorrilard were preparing a well-financed, well-connected counter-attack on health organizations, government regulators and public discourse. The ensuing anti-smoking wars of the 1980s and 90s have been well documented and remain a dark chapter in the history of American corporate malfeasance. When Wayne McLaren -- one of several Marlboro cowboys to contract lung cancer -- created a series of TV commercials portraying his rugged, Stetson-adorned persona next to his hospital-bed reality, Philip Morris denied that he had ever appeared in their ad-campaigns. When airlines began to ban smoking on airplanes, tobacco companies created the National Smokers Alliance -- a fake grassroots organization comprising smokers who claimed smoking bans in public places directly infringed on their basic American freedoms. The offenses, too numerous to list here, effectively postponed a consensus on cigarettes for years. Faced with a groundswell of public hostility and legal actions from individual states looking to recoup smoking-related Medicare costs, the four largest tobacco companies eventually agreed to the largest civil settlement ($246 billion dollars) in United States history. Brokered in 1998, during the Clinton-era Justice Department's anti-smoking crusade, the Master Settlement Agreement effectively dictated the terms by which modern cigarette companies can legally operate: regulating language, advertising, labeling, and establishing a tobacco-funded trust for anti-smoking commercials and quitting initiatives. The war on Big Tobacco has subsequently wound down. A 2005 Justice Department decision scaled back financing requests for the national stop-smoking campaign, from $130 billion to $10 billion. A $145 million dollar class-action lawsuit judgment was thrown out of court in 2006. The remaining question-mark, a lawsuit charging that the use of 'low-tar,' 'light,' and 'natural' labels were misleading, resulted in a language ban but failed to mete out the anticipated multi-million-dollar settlements. Although there is pending legislation that would bring tobacco under the regulation of the FDA, it is unclear what the effects of such a bill would be (one clue might be that Philip Morris played an active role in writing the legislation). Meanwhile, the crosshairs of citizen outrage have found new targets: those contributing to global environmental crisis. Companies ranging from ExxonMobil to Poland Spring are currently under growing assault for their global environmental footprints and practices. More than simply a Public Relations problem, environmental issues now pose pan-industry threats of boycotts, lawsuits and legislation. And while many a municipal smoking ban has recently been ebstated and the innovative Truth ad-campaign is still in full-effect, the fact is that green has all but eclipsed cigarettes as the new alarmist hot-button. Under this cover, Big Tobacco is breaking new ground. Philip Morris, which has instituted a moratorium on its own print-advertising, is currently investing hundreds of millions of dollars into PREPs -- Potentially Reduced Exposure Products -- the industry term for less carcinogenic cigarettes. While such products may take years to come to fruition, the Altria Group (Philip Morris' parent) is planning to spin off its international arm in the interim, allowing it to blanket the globe unhindered by U.S. regulations. R.J. Reynolds, the now-undisputed champion of cigarette advertising, is aggressively pushing new products: flavored cigarette lines, cigarette packs designed by artists, and the recently maligned No. 9 cigarettes for women. And despite U.S. cigarette sales hitting a 55-year-low in 2006, the country still counts nearly 45.4 million smokers, not to mention that the international cigarette market is growing in double-digit percents annually. Less an industry in crisis, today's Big Tobacco is an industry in transition. In a time when global calamities come in all variety of shapes and sizes, it is only natural for individuals to prioritize their concerns. Obviously rising sea levels and international terrorism pose much larger long-term threats than the specter of Big Tobacco. But cigarettes' precipitous decline from national health epidemic to back-burner worry can serve as an important lesson for impassioned activists and average citizens alike: the competition for America's conscience is an all-or-nothing game. As national discourse shifts to new and pressing issues, it is necessary to remind ourselves that the simple disappearance of a problem from the front page does not mean that it has been truly solved.
© Copyright 2006 by CigarettesOn.Com
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