[Mb-civic] Big Tobacco's toll

Wed Aug 10 21:43:08 PDT 2005

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005
/08/10/big_tobaccos_toll/

Boston.com 	The Boston Globe
DERRICK Z. JACKSON
Big Tobacco's toll

By Derrick Z. Jackson, Globe Columnist  |  August 10, 2005

IN 1996, Peter Jennings led off an ABC News special by saying, 
''Tonight we're going to show you how the tobacco companies continue 
to prosper despite the damage these things do and despite the 
increased pressure the companies are under from lawsuits and 
proposed government regulation. This is a very, very smart industry 
that has been turning adversity into opportunity for the last 30 years."

Last year Jennings anchored another special about Big Tobacco. After 
a public health professor led off by saying, ''Congress, which is 
essentially bought by the tobacco industry, isn't willing to act to save 
literally tens of millions of American lives," Jennings added, ''This is 
also a program about the failure of the country's public health leaders. 
They squandered an opportunity to save millions of lives."

Jennings lost his own life this week from lung cancer from smoking. 
His struggle in some ways mirrors the nation's entanglement with 
cigarettes. Jennings smoked for about 30 years beginning in the 1950s 
at age 13. He quit for 20 years, then resumed smoking after the 
terrorist attacks of 9/11. The nation began warning Americans about 
the dangers of smoking in the 1960s. In the four decades since, 
smoking rates in the United States and the public places where 
smoking is allowed have declined dramatically.

But the industry is alive and well, littering the planet with illness and 
death. Despite the drop in the last half century, 22 percent of US high 
school students smoke. The Centers for Disease Control predicts that 
6.4 million of US children alive today will die of a smoking-related 
disease. Globally, the World Health Organization predicts that deaths 
due to smoking will grow from a current 5 million people a year to 10 
million a year by 2020. About 650 million people alive today will die 
from smoking.

Jennings noted that he resumed smoking because ''I was weak." He 
said he would try to resume his duties on ''good days." The good days 
never came. He prematurely relinquished his anchor spot in a nation 
where 5.5 million years of potential life and $92 billion of productivity 
are lost every year to smoking and where smoking-related health costs 
amount to $75.5 billion, according to the CDC.

Cigarettes remain strong precisely because tobacco CEOs 
shamelessly prey on the weak while landmark tobacco settlements in 
several states that were supposed to funnel money into prevention 
have been gutted by budget woes. Last month, Altria, the parent 
company of Philip Morris USA, proudly announced that operating 
income from cigarettes increased 4 percent to $1.3 billion for the 
second quarter of this year. The international division of Philip Morris 
zoomed 38 percent to $2 billion for the quarter. Referring to sales of 
Marlboro in Japan, Dinny Devitre, Altria's senior vice president and 
chief financial officer, said, ''consumer pull is strong."

Similarly, Lorillard CEO Marty Orlowsky boasted an 11 percent 
increase in cigarette profits for the first half of this year over last year. 
Lorillard makes Newports, the nation's top-selling menthol cigarette. 
Newport rose to an all-time share of the domestic market. ''Lorillard 
outperformed the industry in terms of its shipment performance," 
Orlowsky said.

Over at Reynolds American, which acquired Brown & Williamson last 
year to merge the nation's second- and third-largest tobacco 
companies, CFO Dianne Neal reported a 66 percent increase in 
second-quarter profits from $151 million in the same period last year to 
$251 million this time around. ''We have achieved all of our critical 
one-year milestones and importantly, we are moving ahead with 
confidence in our vision and our road map," she said.

British American Tobacco, maker of Lucky Strike and Kent and which 
has a 42 percent stake in Reynolds, boasted a 37 percent increase in 
quarterly profits. BAT chairman Jan du Pleiss called the profits ''an 
excellent set of results . . . we have achieved organic growth."

The ''critical milestones" and ''road map" for Camel and Kool cigarettes 
are critical-care units and tombstones for everyone else. Global 
organic growth for du Pleiss is a funeral organ at your local church. 
Consumer pull is strong all right, pulling Jennings off the airwaves and 
millions of people away from their loved ones forever. While prevention 
funds are drying up, campaign contributions by cigarette makers 
continue to mount, to nearly $55 million since 1990.

Jennings tried to show us that Big Tobacco was a very smart industry 
in a nation that squanders many opportunities to regulate it. His death 
should lead to our own road map to Capitol Hill, to force Congress to 
act to save millions of lives.

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