A trickle of cyanide, arsenic and radioactive isotopes: why the tobacco industry must be abolished

This is the story of an invention that took a hundred million lives in the 20th century and, if we continue as before, will take a billion lives in the 21st century. It is the story of “most lethal artifact in human history”which continues to kill eight million people a year. It is the story of a killer bigger than malaria and tuberculosis, car accidents and climate change, war and catastrophes, all combined.

I am referring, of course, to the cigarette. Or, rather: to the tobacco industry.

To get an idea of ​​the degree of devastation caused, let’s imagine that we see this news: “A jumbo jet crashes on the runway, there are no survivors”; half an hour later, we see the same news again: “Another Boeing 747 crashes, there are no survivors either”; and again 30 minutes later. Now suppose that the news continues to appear all day and all night, until more than 50 planes end up crashing in 24 hours. And then let’s imagine that it continues like this all year.

That is the number of deaths caused by the tobacco industry.

Of course, it is an incredibly lucrative business. To translate it into figures: a current cigarette machine produces 20,000 cigarettes per minute, that is, 10 million in an eight-hour shift. According to epidemiologists, there is one death for every million cigarettes, so we’re talking about 10 deaths per turn. Companies earn about a cent per cigarette, which means that every death caused by tobacco It is worth $10,000 to the industry.. That is, five million dollars for each Jumbo, every 30 minutes.

Wait a minute, you’ll say to yourself: this is nothing new, right? Isn’t the fight against the tobacco industry a thing of the nineties? But smoking is on the decline, right?

What more would we like? The sector’s global income continues to increase. The number of smokers is declining slightly in rich countries, but this is more than offset by the rise of vaping and the growing popularity of tobacco in low- and middle-income countries (where the industry operates almost without restrictions). Furthermore, companies like Philip Morris love to say that this tobacco thing is already tiring, so they can continue doing the same thing as always.

As a consequence, we suffer a kind of collective blindness. An insane thing—50 jumbo jets crashing every day—has become normalized.

A story of lies and deception

In reality, the cigarette is a fairly recent invention. Of course there has always been smoking, but the inhalable cigarette is a modern phenomenon. It is the result of development work and a research budget of tens of billions over decades. The composition of today’s cigarette is only two-thirds tobacco, to which hundreds of substances are added: humectants, effect enhancers, cough suppressants, flavorings, everything. Whatever it takes to make the product as addictive as possible.

To commercialize this invention, the tobacco industry launched one of the largest propaganda campaigns in human history. By 1960, almost half of the television programs in the United States were sponsored by tobacco companies. In the early 1990s, a study of young children found that Joe Camel’s name and face were as recognizable to them as Mickey Mouse’s name and face.

And let’s not forget everything the tobacco industry has done to cast doubt on whether cigarettes are lethal. In the early fifties there was already a scientific consensus that smoking causes cancer, so the sector decided to take action. The conspiracy began on December 14, 1953, with a meeting of the top managers of the main tobacco companies at the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan, New York. There it was decided to hire a company specialized in construction work. lobbyHill & Knowlton, to build a gigantic smoke screen.

For decades, the industry continued to say that “more research” was needed, when, in reality, its own researchers already knew more. The industry mantra was “our product is doubt,” just as fossil fuel energy companies spent years sowing doubt about the reality of climate change. Millions were invested in “tobacco research” that actually studied other things (what historians call “decoy research”).

The campaign was overwhelmingly successful. It wasn’t until the 1980s that most people began to realize that smoking is not just a slightly harmful thing, but one of the deadliest habits you can acquire. Two-thirds of all smokers die from tobacco. Even so, still in 1994, the seven CEOs of the main tobacco companies (“the seven dwarfs”) They declared under oath that nicotine is not addictive .

Meanwhile, the sector launched a series of “innovations” that, in theory, were going to make cigarettes “safer.” But the tricks—filters, ventilation, cigarettes Light—were a pure fraud. Philip Morris internal documents show that already in the 1950s the company considered that “selective filtration” was “impossible from a thermodynamic point of view.”. A cigarette filter is like drinking beer through a very thin straw: you may have to sip harder, but you end up ingesting the same thing.

The ventilation of cigarettes is al
so nonsense. According to measurements from some smoke machines, “vented” cigarettes with small holes in the filter may appear less toxic, but the industry knows that smokers pinch those holes closed. It’s like making some holes in a straw, covering them with your mouth and saying that this way you ingest less alcohol.

The latest scam from the tobacco industry is the electronic cigarette (vaping), which is said to be less harmful than regular cigarettes. However, several independent investigations have shown that many vapes contain more toxic and addictive nicotine than an entire pack of cigarettes, and that young people who vape are three times more likely to become smokers. In the last decade, tobacco use among adolescents has skyrocketed across Europe. A leading British health expert recently warned that if e-cigarette use continues to rise at this rate, almost all children will be vaping within five years.

“A free decision”

And finally, we have the greatest story of all: that smoking cigarettes is a freely made decision. In reality, most smokers start when they are minors and around 70% want to quit. Every year more than half trybut, because cigarettes are made to be so addictive, the attempt usually fails. A Canadian study has come to the conclusion that it takes an average of no less than 30 attempts to permanently break the addiction.

The tobacco industry knows very well that nicotine consumption rewires the brain and creates a pharmacological dependence as strong as addiction to heroin or cocaine. That is a fundamental difference between nicotine and alcohol, because among those who drink, only 3% are alcoholics, while, in the case of cigarettes, the percentage is between 80% and 90%. There are so few people who really like to smoke that tobacco companies have invented a nickname: “The enjoyers.” The sector’s internal documents also have names for young people: they are “apprentices”, “pre-smokers” or “replacement smokers”.

One day historians will study our era and find it incredible that the tobacco industry could continue to thrive for so long. That a product containing arsenic, cyanide and radioactive isotopes could be legally sold in supermarkets. That so many people continued to underestimate the danger for so long, because how many people know that smoking also causes hundreds of thousands of spontaneous abortions and ailments such as blindness, baldness, cataracts, early menopause and erectile dysfunction?

Future historians will be amazed at the number of chemists who did everything possible to make smoking as addictive as possible. You will be surprised by the number of commercial agents who did everything they could to make smoking as easy as possible. sexy possible. All the lawyers who went to great lengths to cover up the tobacco industry’s lies. “I have been studying these companies for decades,” writes eminent historian Robert N. Proctor, “and still, from time to time, I have to rub my eyes in astonishment at some fresh new revelation that exposes prevarications or ruses.”

This industry is all too eager to make us believe that the battle against Big Tobacco is over. That smoke-free spaces, warning labels, bans on advertising and high taxes have been enough to mitigate the problem. But it’s not true, far from it. There is still a long way to go.

The ban on ads has increased manufacturers’ profit margins. The industry knows that educating young people often makes smoking even more popular. And taxes on tobacco have been called “the second addiction”, not of the smoker, but of the Government, which makes so much money from smokers that it prefers not to make life too complicated for companies. (Last year, New Zealand repealed smoking ban to offset tax cuts).

Regardless, this deadly industry can and will end someday. For this to happen, several things must happen. First of all, we have to be outraged again. Without public outrage, there is no political pressure to hold these companies accountable for their actions. Secondly, many more people – activists and pressure groups, lawyers and doctors – need to join the fight against the tobacco industry. Thirdly, we must be very clear about our fundamental objective: to prohibit the manufacture and sale of cigarettes.

Yes, people have always smoked. Anyone should be free to plant tobacco in the garden for their own consumption. But no one should be allowed to poison other people on an industrial scale. Cigarettes are a fraudulent product that, like asbestos and lead in paint and gasoline, should not be manufactured or sold.

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