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Español Yesmoke – The «Anti-Big Tobacco» Cigarette – Full Speed Ahead
Today there is a cigarette factory in Italy that is working at top speed, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It is hiring new workers, buying new machinery and planning new production plants. Yesmoke is growing slowly in Italy, where Philip Morris, British American Tobacco and Japan Tobacco dictate the rules of the market, but orders arriving from all over the world that have already saturated the plant’s capacity, demonstrate the unlimited possibilities of the «anti-Big Tobacco» cigarette.
As soon as Yesmoke cigarettes came onto the market, growth began that has been almost exponential, an inexhaustible goldmine. But the world is big and Yesmoke is still little, so the Turin Company has already been forced to turn down orders. First Holland, then the Balkans, Iraq and North Africa. In the past months the airport duty-free shops in South Korea and Northern Europe have made requests. There is even a lot of interest in the USA where, in spite of the conflict with Philip Morris and the court sentences in favor of Big Tobacco, Yesmokes can be imported and sold freely by American companies.
Yesmoke 0.8 for the Asian market
It seems that North Korea wants to make the «anti-Big Tobacco» cigarette the main import brand for its lovers of “foreign cigarettes”. The Koreans are not wrong: Yesmoke is a premium brand just like Marlboros, Camels, and Winstons; its cigarettes are manufactured with the most advanced machinery and the tobacco they contain is more expensive than that of the tobacco giants. Moreover, the price is four times lower than Marlboros.
Even from Dubai, the world center for the production and sale of cigarettes, orders have come for Yesmokes “Made in Italy”. Without counting requests for third parties production, where Yesmoke could supply the top brand quality product, “made in Italy”. These inquiries have arrived in great numbers from various countries and Yesmoke has had to refuse all of them; they alone would be enough to fill the factory’s production capacity.
Having the reputation as a high quality brand and having a history of its long war against the parasites of the cigarette manufacturers’ cartel has brought its fruits, and today Yesmokes are known all over the world.
But why can Yesmokes be sold in North Korea, but not in their home country?
The “Caso Italia”, the Italian Case, the “Hunting Reserve” of Big Tobacco
Italy, the “Belpaese” has the only market where it is the tobacco giants, Philip Morris, BAT and Japan Tobacco that dictate the rules and set up limits to free competition. For example, the recent “minimum tax” created by Gianfranco Fini’s crony Alberto Giorgetti, undersecretary in the finance ministry, intended to stop Yesmoke by preventing the free determination of prices.
Alberto Giorgetti, undersecretary in the Finance Ministry, a «Finiano» DOC, author of the - «Tassa minima» - minimum tax - that gave Italy’s tobacco market away to Philip Morris, BAT and JTI.
The “minimum tax”, proposed by this career pseudo-fascist bodyguard of the multinationals and approved by a line-up of incompetent bureaucrats, was invented to elude the sentence of the European Court of Justice that abolished the old minimum price. It is not by chance that Transparency International, which monitors the “spread of shady practices among those who hold public positions and political offices”. has placed Italy in the next to the last place in Europe; only Greece came out worse.
Until 2004, 99% of the cigarettes smoked in Italy were manufactured in Italy; the Italian Tobacco Agency - Ente Tabacchi Italiano - even produced Marlboros for Philip Morris before it was sold in 2004 to British American Tobacco. Today, thanks to our politicians, 99% of the cigarettes and all their distribution, a sector worth 14 and a half billion euro a year in tax revenues, is the property of a cartel of foreign owners who have transferred all the production outside the country, including Italy’s “Nazionali” and “MS” brands.
Why are new factories being opened in Europe while they are being closed in Italy? A policy that followed European Community directives, that would apply the European Court sentence and lead to liberalization of the market, could bring profitable production back to Italy. In this case, thanks to Yesmoke and the arrival of new investors, there would be other companies other than the three multinationals to share the business.
«Anti-BigTobacco» murals in Yesmoke’s Settimo Torinese factory
If the minimum tax were abolished, the consequent freedom to determine cigarette prices and to set up a capillary sales network, would inevitably allow Yesmoke to acquire a more consistent share of the market. But Yesmoke today has a problem: with its Settimo Torinese factory already running at full speed, if the market were liberalized, the plant would not be able to satisfy all the demand. It would have to either sacrifice its exports or renounce its sales in Italy.
Lecce, the Lost Opportunity
Yesmoke’s destiny is to increase its production with new machinery and new plants in order to be able to keep up with the growing demand - today for export and tomorrow also for the Italian market.
Paolo Perrone, the young «Berlusconiano» mayor of Lecce, who rejected Yesmoke’s offer and chose to dismantle British American Tobacco’s cigarette manufacturing plant.
In the meantime in Lecce, a large cigarette production plant that once belonged to the ETI is being dismantled; the plant used to produce 10 billion cigarettes a year. It was closed this year by BAT.
A technologically advanced plant like the one in Lecce, that produced MSs and supplied products of top quality to international standards, takes years to plan and build, calling on highly specialized professional skills that are not easy to fine and cannot be invented. Every business would like to have a “turnkey” manufacturing plant like this one. Today Lecce could be working with Yesmoke; it could have become the center of the rebirth of Italy’s cigarette production. Only one production, in fact, for third parties would have been enough to keep the factory working three shifts a day. But no, it had to be dismantled!
If the mayor of Lecce, the “Berlusconiano” Paulo Perrone had wanted to consider Yesmoke’s proposal, cigarette production, an almost century old tradition in the Salento area, would still be thriving in the area, and 500 or more workers would not be looking for new jobs, taking retraining courses and resorting to temporary jobs in call centers, all at the expense of the collectivity.
Unfortunately the multinationals have won: it is their policy to purchase everything and then eliminate it in order to monopolize and control the market. British American Tobacco was only interested in dismantling the plant so that no one else could manufacture there. And that is what it did, with the backing of our politicians.
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