If Republican senators from
tobacco-growing southern states believe in social responsibility, they would
fully explore the TransPacific (TPP) trade agreement’s potential impact on
countries around the world — including provisions that influence the ability of
American tobacco corporations to flood the globe with cheap, cancer-causing
cigarettes — suggests the author of a book on the history, social costs and
global politics of the tobacco industry.
"One of the great paradoxes of
tobacco," said Peter Benson, PhD, associate professor of anthropology in
Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, "is that while
the U.S. government and public health community became increasingly aware of
the harms of tobacco, the trade wing of the American government has been busy
fighting for the expansion of new markets in the developing world, where they
want people to purchase American-made cigarette products, like Marlboros."
Benson, the author of Tobacco Capitalism: Growers, Migrant
Workers, and the Changing Face of a Global Industry (Princeton University Press, 2012),
has conducted years of research on the industry, including months working
alongside farmers and migrant workers in the tobacco fields of North Carolina.
His book explores the shifting role of U.S.
tobacco growers in an industry grown increasingly global over the last half
century.
In recent decades, he notes, American
tobacco companies have sent U.S. tobacco farms into crisis by aggressively
switching to cheaper foreign tobacco sources, while coaching U.S. growers to
blame the state, public health and minorities for the financial hardship and
vilification often felt by the growers.
In a recent podcast, Benson discusses the industry’s history of using
international trade agreements and corporate responsibility campaigns to
subvert anti-tobacco health initiatives and continue marketing tobacco in
developing countries where demand is still growing.
"The American Chamber of Commerce has
been advocating on behalf of tobacco companies for the TPP because what the TPP
would allow — just like the historical pattern would predict — is the influx of
Marlboro cigarettes into countries in Southeast Asia, lower tariffs, lower
taxes on American-made cigarettes, etc.,” Benson said. “So tobacco companies
really stand to gain a lot from TPP and the further globalization of tobacco
products hinges on the continued American support for free trade agreements
like the TPP."
Given these concerns, world health
officials lobbied hard to “carve-out” an exclusion for tobacco products in the
TPP agreement announced this week, a caveat that prevents American tobacco
companies from using the agreement to file lawsuits blocking anti-smoking
public health initiatives within the 12 participating countries.
Several Republican congressmen, including
Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), are raising concerns about
the tobacco carve-out and threatening to prevent its approval in Congress.
While they contend the tobacco carve-out sets a bad precedent for limits on
other U.S. agricultural products, some suspect the real concern is a possible
loss of votes in southern states with a strong tobacco-industry influence.
"Everyone knows that smoking is
dangerous and at a time when corporations, including tobacco companies, push
how socially responsible and transparent they are, pushing a dangerous product
in developing countries seem hypocritical at best,” Benson said.
Benson’s research explores how tobacco
corporations have adopted social responsibility platforms to improve their
public image and shift liability for smoking-related health risks on to
parents, families and communities. To smoke or not, they argue, should be a
choice left to informed adults.
“Philip Morris spends a lot of time talking
about parental responsibility, because if parents are responsible for talking
to their kids about smoking, it lets Phillip Morris and government regulators
off the hook.
"If your kid starts smoking, it’s
really you’re fault, right?”
It's astonishing, Benson said, that the
tobacco industry is allowed to continue profiting from the global marketing of
a product clearly shown to cause health problems and mortalities. America’s
mediocre response to tobacco and this notion that smoking is an adult choice
has helped the tobacco industry to stay in the game and be strengthened, he
argues.
“We’re talking about an industry that for a
century has been negligent and corrupt and has been litigated against and been
found to be criminal and wrongful and deceitful, but it’s still around and it’s
very profitable and being globalized in a way that’s maybe more harmful than
ever,” he said.
“It’s astonishing to me that this is how
it’s played out, because other chemicals, like lead, are not around anymore.
Asbestos is not around anymore. Asbestos is not an informed adult choice.
Getting lead in your paint or your gasoline is not an adult choice, so I wonder
why it is that tobacco remains an adult choice.”
-NewsWise
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