Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2017/12/15/derek-yach.html
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Still the scummiest and most evil industry out there.
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Well hey, I’m a “public health leader!”
Big Tobacco are orders of magnitude beyond vile and are deserving of the most severe form of smiting from the god/goddess of your choice.
Having said that, I will take that $1B off their hands if no one else is willing to.
p.s. Don’t smoke, kids.
Wasn’t part of the settlements with Big Tobacco back in the day to create things exactly like this to provide grant money for various public health / anti-smoking initiatives? Unless I’m mistaken, they’re obliged to do this.
I am very confused as to the out rage here.
Is there $1billion in funding for “public health researchers” for anti-smoking programs available?
Was it really sent to to “344 public health researchers”?
Were these “344 public health researchers” actually public health researchers?
If the answer is “Yes, yes, and yes” then I am having a hard time seeing the problem here.
So confused. Philip Morris? World Health Org?
WHO’s on first?
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I’m also reasonably sure that they’re legally required to do this. Along with the rest of the American tobacco industry as a result of many, many, many lawsuits.
And that it wasn’t secret at all.
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Sounds incredible; LIKE HE’S SABOTAGING HIS OWN INDUSTRY! MAYBE HE ALSO TURNS INTO SUPERMAN AT THE END? OR THE INCREDIBLE HULK!? I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how this fairy tale ends.
My heart is just sick. I mean it, that’s how it ends with tobacco.
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I’d say pretty much the whole military-industrial complex, not to mention the private prison industry, or corporate lobbyists and ALEC, have them beat.
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The arms industry comes in a close second, but I still stand by my ranking. Not only has the tobacco industry knowingly killed tens if not hundreds of millions in both peace and wartime, not only does it affect non-users of its product, not only have they constantly lied about their product, but they set the denialist and FUD template for every other toxic industry and political movement since the 1940s: fossil fuel extractors, firearms manufacturers, and American conservatives and (as @Kimmo noted) their lobbyists all continue to use the same scummy tactics pioneered by Edward Bernays on behalf of the cancer-stick industry, and we still suffer for it.
The military-industrial complex and (per @Sven_Aitnenton) pimps are refreshingly honest about their evil-doing in comparison.
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Maybe it’s like the alcohol lobby’s ‘donation to public health’ - used to combat the spread of legal weed. Can’t have Americans drunk AND stoned, they’d be causing fires with their smokes.
Open and read. Operative term is “burn-based”:
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Right, I am aware they have a lot of things to do as part of the settlement. If this is part of that, then, again, what are we upset about it? I really don’t understand.
For them it’s just a re-allocation of marketing resources. Support for burn-based smoking outside the industrialised West, while domestically they’ll shift to promoting their addictive products to other delivery platforms.
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