By Staff
Peddling cigs,
Is such a hash;
China’s where,
I’ll make my stash.
And you thought smoking was dead. Well, guess again. The United Nations predicts that over the rest of this century — another 90 years — tobacco could kill a billion people. War, pestilence and even global warming will have a hard time matching that. Of course, this estimate could be a bit alarmist. After all, the weed only knocked off 100 million of us in the last century. A mere pittance.
Now it’s true that such a mind-boggling death rate might not be an entirely bad thing. Our poor planet is seriously overpopulated. The demise of so many smokers would thus reduce global warming, water shortages, and the loss of endangered species. Unfortunately, that cheery side effect would only partially help balance off all the tobacco-induced coughing, suffering and death.
Luckily, the biggest chunk of smokers is now in China. As we all know, there are too many of them anyway. Even their government thinks so. That’s why they implemented their one-child rule. But for Beijing, simply taking a hands-off attitude toward smoking is much easier than any more social engineering. Let the tobacco companies be the bad guys on population control. As it is, some 60 percent of Chinese men smoke, a great boon to the local funeral industry as well as to Phillip Morris, though the country ends up with an awful lot of widows.
Other developing countries are coming along well too. Indian men puff at a rate of 33 percent and Indonesian men lead all at 66 percent. Women, as often happens, are smarter. Only 4 percent of both Chinese and Indian women puff.
Uncharacteristically, this is one dangerous threat where the United States is ahead of the pack, so to speak. Only 20 percent of us smoke, and that’s falling. This amazing success has come from enormous public education, outright bans in public places, public scorn of the addicted, and a real crusade aimed at youth. Much of the funding is supplied by those surprisingly successful class-action lawsuits against the companies. Part of these monetary awards has been plowed back into prevention.
Many states though, Connecticut foremost among them, have chiseled into the share of company payments used for such programs. Our governors and lawmakers have often snatched the windfall in place of regular revenue, setting a higher priority on reducing taxes than on reducing deaths.
The next logical step, long overdue, is to empower the Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco as the death-dealing drug that it is. The companies have spent billions over the years on lobbying and “research” to fend off that dreaded action. Just his year the Liggett Group was discovered to have quietly slipped big bucks into a major Cornell study.
But in other lands the Marlboro Man still rides with gusto. Cigarette ads are legal in most of the world and still serve to get young folks hooked just as they once did here, before the industry’s roof fell in. In overpopulated nations scraping for revenue, this corporate freedom is not all bad. By imposing a tax on cigarettes, governments can generate cash flow while at the same time exercising subtle population control by letting smoking stay legal.
All of which is wonderful for the companies. As they continue to absorb life-threatening blows here in the United States, and as Europe gradually closes in on them, Asia is their pot of gold. Education levels there remain low, anti-smoking campaigns are tiny, addiction treatment is nonexistent and advertising is free-range. Lack of conscience is the only requirement for financial success, and that’s abundant.