Big Tobacco finally tells the truth in court-ordered ad campaign
It's amazing what a concerted Public Health dis-information campaign can achieve, but this must be the pinnacle
Smoking kills 1,200 people a day. The tobacco companies worked to make them as addictive as possible. There is no such thing as a safer cigarette.
Ads with these statements hit the major television networks and newspapers this weekend, but they are not being placed by the American Cancer Society or other health groups. They're being placed by major tobacco companies, under the orders of the federal courts.
"It's a pretty significant moment," the American Cancer Society's Cliff Douglas said. "This is the first time they have had to 'fess up and tell the whole truth."
The truth according to Tobacco Control. I had no idea the courts could force a business to openly lie about their product and their marketing. With any other business, this wouldn't happen, but with tobacco, anything goes apparently
"The ads will finally run after 11 years of appeals by the tobacco companies aimed at delaying and weakening them,"
U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler ruled in 2006 that they'd have to pay for and place the ads, but the companies kept tying things up with appeals.
"Employing the highest paid lawyers in America, the tobacco companies used every tool at their disposal to delay and complicate this litigation to avoid their day of reckoning,"
Fortunately, under the law, people are allowed to employ lawyers to challenge court decisions, particularly ones that are as brain dead as this one. To the Tobacco Control Industry, acting within the law to defend your rights is something evil if Big Tobacco do it
"They fought for 11 years to delay the truth."
There's little, if any, truth in these adverts. The only 'truth' is the truth according to the Tobacco Control industry, a group of tax sponging fascists whose 'truth' usually drops out of their arses
The tobacco companies won some significant gains. They won't have to admit to having deliberately lied and manipulated in their advertising and promotional campaigns.
Maybe you could not prove that they actually did lie? Just saying that they did, does not make it so
They won't have to include lurid images of what smoking does to people.
Like the images we have on our 'plain' packs? The ones that have nothing to do with smoking at all? The coal miners lung, the crack addicts teeth, the old ladys hand?
"Despite their claims to the contrary, the tobacco companies have not changed. Their continuing aversion to the truth is clear from how hard they fought the corrective statements, going so far as to seek removal of the phrase 'here is the truth,'" the health groups said in their joint statement.
As I've said, just because the muppets in the Tobacco Control Industry say something is true, doesn't make it so. Fighting the 'corrective' statements and removing untruths, does not make Big Tobacco an evil entity. On the contrary, Tobacco Control insisting the industry publish falsehoods about themselves, make them into bigger underhanded liars
Now, no serious scientist or doctor denies that smoking kills. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says cigarettes kill 480,000 Americans a year, and tobacco use costs $170 billion in direct medical costs and $156 billion in lost productivity.Seriously? One hundred and seventy billion in direct medical costs is a bonkers figure. Unless it goes back many years. Costs for lost productivity are always made up, as we're not cash cows
The court specified more than 50 newspapers to carry the weekly full page ads, from The New York Times and USA Today to La Voz de Houston and The Northern Kentucky Herald. It also requires the companies to place five ads a week for a year on the three major networks — NBC, ABC and CBS.
So the courts can also dictate what adverts private companies run? Could this get any worse?
These are some of the 'truths' the tobacco companies are being forced to advertise:
Altria, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, Lorillard, and Philip Morris USA intentionally designed cigarettes to make them more addictive.
Cigarette companies control the impact and delivery of nicotine in many ways, including designing filters and selecting cigarette paper to maximize the ingestion of nicotine, adding ammonia to make the cigarette taste less harsh, and controlling the physical and chemical make-up of the tobacco blend
Translation: Tobacco companies tried to make their product appealing to the end user
When you smoke, the nicotine actually changes the brain — that's why quitting is so hard.
Only in the same way that a nice cup of coffee does
Secondhand smoke kills over 38,000 Americans each year.
Secondhand smoke has killed nobody ever
Secondhand smoke causes lung cancer and coronary heart disease in adults who do not smoke.
No it doesn't
Children exposed to secondhand smoke are at an increased risk for sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)
No they are not. UK Tobacco Control was actually told by the SIDS society to stop saying that, as it's not true
There is no safe level of exposure to secondhand smoke.
Bunkum. Complete wibble
Douglas says it's not clear what the impact of the ads will be.
Mega LOLZ I would imagine
"I think it's going to anger some people," he said. "I think people get angry and they don't want to give their hard earned bucks to Big Tobacco."
No doubt it will anger some people, but not in the way you imagine, I would think. I for one am angry that the courts in a free and democratic country can force purveyors of a legal product and suppliers of advertising platforms to replicate this utter nonsense
The companies are now using "the same playbook" to promote e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products, which they are marketing as less harmful alternatives to cigarettes, Douglas said.
Oh look, it can get worse. E-cigs and Heat not Burn products ARE a less harmful alternative to tobacco, yet because the Tobacco Industry says so, that's apparently them using 'the same paybook'. All that tells me, is that they must have been telling the truth all along, if they're telling it about the new products and that is 'no change' in the eyes of Tobacco Control
"They recruit some great minds globally in media communications, science, law, medicine," he said.
As does any company with a product to sell
For instance, he said, Philip Morris is promoting a new, heated cigarette that doesn't burn. "That is not an e-cigarette. But Philip Morris would be delighted for the general public to be very confused about all of these things and buy everything the company sells," Douglas said
Erm. That's a lie. I have direct knowledge of Phillip Morris promoting the heated cig (Can't talk about it - classified) and they are spending a great deal of money on educating the smoking public about what Heat not Burn is and what it does. There's no attempt to confuse people, at least outside of the worm riddled minds of the Tobacco Control Industry
The groups are hoping the Food and Drug Administration will use what powers it has to restrict the marketing of new products in the future
Now why would anti-tobacco groups want to restrict marketing of safer products? Could it be that they also need a never ending stream of smokers in order to keep 'saving' them and keep the tax dollars rolling in?
"The tobacco companies are trying to convince people that they have changed, that they are trying to create harm-reduced products and some are saying things about seeing a world where people no longer smoke combustible tobacco," Koval said.
Even when it's what you would imagine would be seen as a step in the right direction, if the Tobacco Industry are doing it, Tobacco Control don't like it. It's not about the product and it was never about health, it's about bashing the industry and stuffing trousers
"If they really wanted a world where people no longer used combustible tobacco, they could do that tomorrow. They could stop selling their deadly products."
But there's still a market for tobacco. Some people like to smoke. If the industry stopped selling tobacco tomorrow, we would certainly not live in a world where people did not use combustible tobacco, we would live in a world where smokers grew their own or bought it from others who did so
Smokers would still smoke, albeit a product of lesser quality and ever more questionable safety
I would like the Tobacco Control Industry to be forced to air their lies in public. If only I was rich, so I could go to court and make that happen. Their lies are far more transparent and easier to prove than the rubbish that is going to be spouted in these adverts
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