[Final part]

Smoking:

No social responsibility?

Manjari Peiris

Until recently the tobacco companies nearly always won which put a brake on progress. Legal action particularly in the USA in the recent past has done much to publicize the extent of misconduct by the tobacco companies. Substantial damages amounting to billions of dollars have been agreed. Most importantly it has forced the release into the open of millions of highly damaging secret industry documents.

Health damaged

In recent years legal action against the tobacco industry has chiefly been taken by or on behalf of people whose health has been damaged by tobacco. Typically this has meant a group of patients bringing a “class action” (where anyone with the same type of complaint can join) to seek personal compensation. Lawsuits have been brought by health care insurers, or by State and national governments, claiming compensation for the costs of treating smoking related diseases.

In a trial in Minnesota State, millions of previously secret industry documents were made public, revealing much about the industry’s unscrupulous conduct over a very long period; viz. i) knowingly selling a lethal product while claiming there was insufficient evidence of harm, ii) systematically attempting to confuse and obscure the scientific evidence of damage done by cigarette smoke including Environmental Tobacco smoke, iii) Denying nicotine is addictive when secret industry research over many years had confirmed the opposite, iv) chemically engineering cigarettes to increase the amount of nicotine absorbed by the smoker, making addiction speedier and more certain, v) using flavourings and other additives to make the flavour of cigarettes “sweeter” and less harsh, vi) making it easier for young people to take up smoking, vii) failing to disclose the precise nature and purpose of the 600 or so additives present in cigarettes, viii) failing to market “safer (less lethal) cigarettes” whether less hazardous to health because of reduced toxicity or “fire safe” cigarettes that extinguish themselves without causing fires, ix) designing advertisements and other indirect promotional strategies to attract children, x) covering the truth to consumers and xi) manipulating of children unethically.

Legal system

Tobacco companies have used the legal system to oppose the regulation of the constituents of tobacco. In principle, nicotine should be treated more rigorously than pharmaceuticals and regulated by governments in the interests of public safety, just as governments regulate food, alcohol, poison and certain industrial chemicals. The mere reason that there is a demand for a cigarette does not mean that it is essential or suitable for human consumption.

An industry which knows very well that their product brings in disease and premature death to the user can never be identified as a “Responsible Company”.

Their dishonest attempt of trying to be called “Socially Responsible People” while producing a deadly product means the length of their “duplicity”.