EU – "Politically correct" consumer protection

A Guinness Records Award for the distribution of bribes, and secret political agreements, or just the usual brown-nosers?

Weapons of mass destruction - Anti-smoking advertising"Ammonia is the key to Marlboro's success … Marlboros contain up to twice as much of a cancer-causing chemical as foreign brands .. Philip Morris USA delivers falsehoods about its product … Philip Morris admits making cigarettes more addictive … Foreign Cigs Healthier"

These aren't provocations of the Black Block, they're headlines from some of the most respectable United States newspapers, like USA Today, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times.

Big Tobacco commits crimes in the United States, but, at least there, its crimes are punished and the information channels play a key role. That's not the way things go for Philip Morris in the European Union, where the mass media have never drawn attention to some important news, and the concept of Consumer Protection is virtually unknown.

Big Tobacco: "Wanted" – or "Sheriff"? It Depends on the Country

In the USA tons of horrifying, once top-secret documents have been made public that provide evidence on the crimes committed by the cigarette-manufacturing cartel.

Judge Gladys Kessler

Judge Gladys Kessler

On August 17, 2006, U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler issued a final opinion in the government's landmark lawsuit against the major tobacco companies stating that they have violated civil racketeering laws and defrauded the American people by lying for decades about the health risks of smoking and cigarette marketing to children.

Judge Kessler also found that the tobacco companies' wrongdoing is continuing today: "The defendants have not ceased engaging in unlawful activity … their continuing conduct misleads consumers."

In the USA, the Justice Department is also claiming $280 Billion of tobacco-company profits, saying that, for 50 years, the industry misled the public about the dangers of smoking.

In the USA, where citizens have been able to read how the Big Tobacco manufacturers have pushed cigarette-smoking addiction by using chemical cocktails, pursuing cigarette producers would seem to be the only "politically correct" thing to do.

Even Hollywood has expressed itself, with the movie "The Insider", which laid bare the deceptive production practices at Brown & Williamson Tobacco Company and exposed the company for what it really was. And the film won some Oscars.

But, while on the American side of the ocean the cigarette-manufacturing cartel is often featured on the front pages of newspapers with its past and present crimes, in the European Union, people seem to be more concerned about safeguarding the honor of these "prestigious" companies.

Are the privileges of Philip Morris a reward for the distribution of kickbacks worthy of a Guinness Record? Are there, perhaps, secret political agreements at the base of this special favourable treatment? But, if this is the case, how was Big Tobacco able to make all the European States, from the first to the last, agree with its strategies?

Moreover, European journalists (almost all of them), who prefer to avoid touching on certain issues, should be well aware of all these behind the scenes activities. Yet, no one seems to know anything, no one says anything. Why this silence?

A fool can easily be conditioned by the presence of a great power of world business, in front of which he loses his critical sense and manifests al the brown-nosing that there is in him. "Caution", "sense of responsibility", "realism", avoid "inappropriate extremist attitudes that do no one any good", Behave like " a well-balanced person with good sense"; this is what passes through the mind of the made-in-EU brown-noser when he comes up against Big Tobacco.

In Italy, where Philip Morris has just been given its latest colossal gift, the so-called minimum cigarette price (again introduced in total silence), newspapers, even the most extreme, would never publish a headline that was "seriously incautious", thus showing themselves to be "well-balanced with good sense". And not one of our many undaunted, fearless magistrates would ever dare to start up "inopportune" investigations.

The plot of the movie

In Italy, no movie director would deal with ammonia in Marlboros for fear of ending up under investigation himself for any number of diverse allegations, not knowing the balance of power behind the cigarette business.

The mysterious Italian and European situation could correspond to those Hollywood movies where the gangsters make agreements with their corrupt guards, carry on excellent business deals and everything goes on in a tranquil and orderly way. But perhaps Big Tobacco hasn't thought that in all these stories, at a certain point something happens…

Today Philip Morris, the Big Boss of the "Great Cigarette Game", enjoys the greatest respect and consideration among unaware Italian consumers, who know nothing about the product they're buying or the company that makes it. And, as is normal for a Big Boss, there are a lot of people ready to brown-nose him.

But sooner or later free information on the world of Big Tobacco will have to come out in Italy and in the European Union… and Yesmoke is planning some clamorous and provocative moves to accelerate this inevitable process. The movie is just beginning…

More info

  • November 2nd, 2006
  • This page is also available in: Italian

Leave a Comment

«

»