Smokers Anonymous
Smoking tobacco has been a habit for centuries. Natives gave it to Columbus
when he arrived, and he liked it so much he brought it back with him to
the Old World. Soon the Kings and Queens of Europe found it hard to resist and
harder to stop smoking.
The production of tobacco was able to help America
finance itself to win the revolutionary war. Later on tobacco became heavily
taxed in order to help the civil war, however the government had other plans
for the tax money. Everybody loved cigarettes, which became so universally popular
the government rationed them to soldiers going off to war. Cigarettes have
been used as a form of currency for soldiers in war, prisoners, and in many
countries, such as Germany during post World War, where one smoke was worth about
50 cents. In America, during post World War 2, 80% of American men were smoking
tobacco products. For the tobacco companies business was good.
As
far back as 100 years ago smoking had been considered bad for your health and
even outlawed in a few states. The American Medical Association was trying to
prove smoking was linked to lung cancer. The tobacco industry replied to this with
the payment of millions and millions of dollars to the American Medical Association
as a "gift"; there may have been a note saying something like "this is
from smokers, there's more where this came from". The American Medical Association
began advertising tobacco products claiming that "smoking is good for you."
Today TV has banned all commercials which promote the sales of cigarettes. The
irony is that the very first televised commercial was a cigarette commercial.
Cigarettes were also the first product to use a promotion scheme by including
cards of actresses and baseball players. This boosted sales until the government
stepped in.
The cost of cigarettes is on the rise, and the locations
to smoke are on the slope. What was once good for your health, and socially
common is now considered evil, and bad for your health, the warnings are everywhere,
including on the packs. Now, I know what you're thinking, the government
is trying to stop us from smoking and killing ourselves, they're going save us
and make it all better...wrong. If the government wanted to help us they would
ban the sale of tobacco, if they didn't want you to smoke they wouldn't sell them
to you. But why? The answer is simple...Money.
After a few simple
tests and studies, the government was able to create a lot of statistics about
the negative effect of cigarettes. At this point feeling betrayed, the government
took the tobacco companies to court, and they "threw the book at them", "what's
the sentence?" The four major companies have to pay $206 billion dollars
over the next 25 years payable to states. This $206 billion total does not include
the newest settlement of 34.4 billion going to Florida, Mississippi, and Texas,
states which have targeted the seller, not the product. Oh and this total
doesn’t include the millions in legal fees and expenses. This began in 1998, and
wasn't the first, there have been 2 former propositions both in 1997, one for
368 billion the other for 516 billion, both deals failed to get congressional
support. You see this way everyone wins, the government is still getting it's 13.5
billion and tobacco companies are still making a huge profit making millions.
Advertising cigarettes is pretty much banned, so they no longer pay billions
for ads or commercials, just smoking a cigarette is advertisement enough, plus
customers are addicted.
Oddly enough in Canada, Shoppers Drug Mart,
one of the largest drugstores in the country, and Canada Trust are owed by Canada's
largest tobacco company, Imasco. The largest tobacco company in America,
Philip Morris, is also proud owner of other businesses, such as Miller Brewing,
Kraft foods, as well as Post cereals and Oscar Meyer, targeting customers I'm
guessing are college students, smokers or non. All these non-tobacco products produce
less then half the annual revenue.
There are no plans for removing
cigarettes from the market. Being a smoker myself, I'm quite confident cigarettes
will be sold for at least one more generation, but how long after that?
When it's no longer profitable I imagine. The only thing I fear is, what will
they be replacing cigarettes with? Will it be as addictive or as deadly as cigarettes?
Smokers Anonymous
Crazy Dave - September 1, 2003
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