Tobacco growing, manufacturing, distribution, and use, all contribute to global warming through the emission of greenhouse gases. In fact, the tobacco product life cycle releases an estimated 80 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent every single year.²³ The tobacco industry’s emissions are larger than those for entire countries, including Denmark, Croatia and Afghanistan, and are comparable to emissions from the oil, fast fashion and meat industries.⁴ Yet the tobacco industry rarely features in discussions about reducing emissions.

World No Tobacco Day 2022 focused entirely on the environmental damage caused by the tobacco industry (Image 1). At each stage of the tobacco life cycle, tobacco damages the environment: from the intensive farming of the crop, which takes place almost exclusively in low- and middle- income countries (LMICs), and the manufacture of tobacco and cigarettes, to the distribution and use of the products, and finally to the discarding of tobacco product waste.

Image 1: Cigarette butts leach toxins into the environment and degrade into microplastics (Source: exposetobacco.org)

The growing popularity of newer nicotine and tobacco products like e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products (HTPs), adds to this existing problem. The ‘Big 4’ transnational tobacco companies all produce these newer sources of addictive nicotine, promoting them as alternatives to cigarettes, cigars and other more conventional tobacco products.⁵ Many of these products are designed to be disposed of after single or short-term use. While the precise environmental impacts of manufacturing electronic devices is currently unknown, there are numerous reports of nicotine-contaminated plastic and metal, as well as lithium-ion batteries, that are being improperly discarded into the environment from these products.⁶

It has been estimated that if cigarette production ceased tomorrow, it would be equivalent to removing 16 million cars from the roads each year.⁷ While banning tobacco and newer nicotine products altogether is an unlikely global scenario, regulatory solutions are urgently needed to mitigate the detrimental global impacts caused by the tobacco industry’s disregard for the environment.

Scale of the problem

Regulatory Solutions

The best way to reduce the environmental impacts – and indeed the health impacts – of both cigarettes and newer products is to get users to quit and make sure non-users never start. Researchers estimate that a drop in global consumption of conventional cigarettes to the 1970 level (3.26 trillion cigarettes per year) would almost halve tobacco’s global environmental footprint.⁸ However, given the urgency of the climate crisis, we must find additional policy solutions to supplement policies aimed at reducing consumption.

Clean-ups, package warnings, biodegradable filters, and consumer education interventions are all ‘downstream’ activities, which are not as effective as ‘upstream’ interventions. For example, while better labelling on products might make consumers more aware of the chemical hazards of tobacco product waste, it is unlikely that industry will take any further action voluntarily. They could instead cite such labelling as adequate consumer information about disposal. Upstream solutions, such as banning the sale of filtered cigarettes and all disposable tobacco products, are likely to be more effective interventions and make more sense in terms of a broader, more positive environmental impact. Flavour bans on both reusable and disposable devices may also reduce the appeal of these products to young people, and slow the rate of uptake.

Ban filters and problem products

The EU Single Plastics Directive 2019 will charge manufacturers for continuing to use plastic material in filters, to encourage them to come up with alternatives such as biodegradable filters.²⁰ Yet, plastic-free filters still leach many harmful chemicals from the smoked tobacco.

Filters are considered ‘the biggest fraud of our time’: they do not offer any health benefits to smokers but have actually increased health risks. Many tobacco control experts argue that now is the time to ban cigarette filters altogether.²¹²² Allowing manufacturers to develop filter alternatives, gives the industry further opportunities to greenwash their products, and this risks further deceiving the public about the value of filters on cigarettes. Allowing filters to exist in any form will continue to fuel the misperception that filters offer some protective value.

“The plastic cigarette filter is not only an environmental pollutant; it should be considered a human hazard. It makes it easier for youth to start smoking, discourages smokers from quitting because they think they are doing something to prevent disease, and actually increases the risk for some lung cancer types. A ban on filtered cigarette sales will likely reduce consumption, discourage initiation, and result in far less tobacco product waste.” Tom Novotny, Professor Emeritus of Public Health.

New Zealand became the first country in the world to suggest a filter ban in its 2021 Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products Bill proposal. As with plain, or standardised, packaging for tobacco products, it is possible that if one country, state, or even a local jurisdiction bans the sale of filtered cigarettes for environmental reasons, others will follow.

Tobacco companies instruct consumers to dispose of butts properly and encourage their customers to get involved in environmental clean ups – often sponsored by tobacco companies. This is a particular form of corporate social responsibility (CSR) which should be seen as a cynical attempt to avoid accountability and any further regulation of their products. Even in landfills, butts release toxic leachates that can get into surrounding ground water. While picking up the butts may temporarily reduce their numbers on beaches and other public places, most will have already deposited chemicals into waterways. Picking up even thousands of butts during clean-ups will not make a significant difference in the trillions of butts deposited each year into the global environment.

Help farmers diversify

Health organisations should also encourage infrastructural support for tobacco farmers to switch to alternative crops that are more environmentally beneficial and support human health instead of threaten it. For example, Kenyan tobacco farmers have recently benefited from support from a collaboration between the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization and the WHO to switch to equally profitable food crops. As part of the World Food Programme, alternative crops are making Kenyan farmers more profitable compared to when they were tobacco growers.²³

Polluter pays

There is a fundamental misalignment between tobacco companies’ sustainability talk in annual reports and their commitment to newer nicotine and tobacco products, particularly when it comes to so called ‘disposable’ products. Extended Producer Responsibility schemes are gaining popularity with policy makers, the premise being that tobacco companies ought to be legally responsible for reducing and managing their environmental footprint, a principle which could apply to all stages of the product life cycle.

Extended Producer Responsibility schemes could ensure that non-toxic and more sustainable agricultural practices are used in tobacco production (e.g. clean energy rather than fossil fuels ought to be used for powering manufacturing plants).⁸ Similarly, end-of-life buyback initiatives for electronic products would limit inappropriate disposal of hazardous materials.²⁴

Systemic change – not greenwashing

Successful policy solutions to the tobacco epidemic result when advocates and policy makers capitalise on public sentiment. Today more than ever before environmental concerns are top-of-mind for many people, especially youth. Given the global discussion and action currently underway on climate change, there is an unprecedented opportunity to implement upstream solutions to achieve both health and environmental goals simultaneously. Filter and product bans (including disposable electronic devices) and higher taxes on tobacco and nicotine products (especially on those products that appeal to youth) are key, alongside ensuring that tobacco corporations clean up their business practices and reduce their environmental footprint across the entire product life cycle.

While the impact of tobacco on the right to health has been widely recognised, the impact of tobacco on the right to a healthy environment has not received the same level of attention. Given the mounting evidence of the impact of tobacco on the environment it is critical that the global UN Human Rights as well as environmental agendas address the negative environmental impact of tobacco.

On 28th July 2022, the United Nations General Assembly officially recognised that everyone on the planet has a human right to a healthy environment an calling on states to increase efforts to ensure access to a “clean, healthy and sustainable environment” for their citizens.

In March 2022, 175 nations adopted a resolution launching the development of an international legally binding treaty to end plastic pollution to address the full lifecycle of plastic including production, design and disposal. Treaty negotiations will begin in November 2022 and are expected to be finalised by the end of 2024. The plastic treaty provides an opportunity to eliminate all tobacco-related, single-use plastic pollution.

The global community is fortunate to have the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) as a tool to address the global harm caused by tobacco, but UN environmental platforms, such as the UN Ocean conferences, the UN water Conference, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the meetings of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification and the meetings of the upcoming international treaty to end plastic pollution are tools that can be used in tobacco control. By working synergistically through UN Human Rights and environmental mechanisms along with the WHO FCTC, the world will be able to address the environmental impact of tobacco products and achieve tobacco control, health, environmental and development objectives.

Systemic change is necessary in order to protect the planet from the catastrophic environmental impact of tobacco growing, production, use, and disposal. Advocates, governments and global organisations such as the WHO and the United Nations can all capitalise on this pivotal moment in history for the benefit of our planet. Global advocacy and regulation are required to force the tobacco industry to take measures to limit the destruction it causes to humans and to our planet.

More than lip service is required; our planet depends on it.

Authors

Karen Evans-Reeves, Tom Novotny, Laurent Huber, Marzia Violini.

Go further

Tobacco and the Environment: Tobacco is not only a health issue – it is also an environmental issue

From smoking to vaping: a new environmental threat?

Cigarette butts: How the no 1 most littered objects are choking our coasts

Tobacco and the Environment

Greenwashing

TCRG Research

K. Evans-Reeves, K. Lauber, R. Hiscock, The ‘filter fraud’ persists: the tobacco industry is still using filters to suggest lower health risks while destroying the environment, Tobacco Control, 2022;31:e80-e82.

References

The post Plastics, the Environment and the Tobacco Industry appeared first on TobaccoTactics.

It was 1995 and BAT had reason to be satisfied, as Davis made clear: “In Mauritius, Uganda and Malawi, for instance, we effectively have a 100 per cent market share, and our share in Kenya is around 92 per cent.” But it was not enough. “It [Africa] represents immeasurable wealth, and it’s frustrating for Africa that these resources have never been exploited,” said Davis. “There is no lack of opportunities. It is up to us to grasp them.”²⁵

For a long period, BAT was barely challenged in Africa by other tobacco multinationals or local rivals. Its presence stretches back more than a century, first as an importer and then as a manufacturer of local and international brands. By 1980 it had subsidiaries and affiliates in 12 countries and licensed manufacturers in a further five. It had the leading brands in Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria and Sierra Leone and strong performers in Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda. Nonetheless, this only provided 4% of the company’s total turnover.²⁶

Hand in hand with that market expansion came a corrupting influence on governments across the continent. BAT has used its economic muscle to keep tobacco control measures to a minimum. Anyone getting in its way, whether tobacco competitors or health campaigners, have found themselves facing the full might of this colonial giant.²⁷²⁸²⁹

As Matthew L Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, told the Guardian newspaper in 2017:

“British American Tobacco sees fragile states as one of the few remaining growth markets for its deadly products. For a company that doesn’t care how it makes its money or what laws need to be broken to ensure future profits, countries experiencing instability present a unique opportunity.”³⁰

It is clear that BAT treats countries in Africa primarily as markets to be exploited rather than independent sovereign states. Find out more about BAT’s exploitation in Africa using this interactive map:

On this page we examine British American Tobacco’s malign corporate influence in South Africa in particular.

Historically, British American Tobacco South Africa (BATSA) has been the largest manufacturer and distributor in the country. However, in the last decade that dominance has come under attack from local brands. The country is not the biggest market in the continent, but it is one of the wealthiest and has political and economic influence over much of southern Africa. To be dominant in South Africa is to also be very well-positioned in the region.

“We will disrupt the enemy. We will destroy their Warehouses. We will blow up their supply lines.”

It can be too easy to reach for military metaphors when discussing business activities. However, in the case of BAT in South Africa, this was a war. It involved security staff from the UK and ex-policemen from South Africa. It used surveillance and apparent bribery. It used, military style language. As one subcontractor tasked with disrupting BAT’s competition put it: “We need to work as a unit, lean mean fighting machine. We will disrupt the enemy. We will destroy their Warehouses. We will blow up their supply lines.”³²

And as with any war there are casualties. Every year an estimated 25,000 to 42,000 people in the country die from tobacco related diseases.³³

In protecting its trading position, BAT used its Anti-Illicit Trade (AIT) Division. This was meant to crack down on smuggling and counterfeiting. Instead, the team looked to disrupt competitors. In South Africa they turned to a company called Forensic Security Services (FSS) for the particularly dirty work.³⁴ They also used members of the South African police departments charged with enforcing the law objectively to target rival tobacco firms.

Back in 2002, competitor Apollo Tobacco accused BATSA in court of colluding with state officials and operatives at BAT’s service provider, FSS, of “industrial espionage.” The head of Apollo, Hennie Delport, accused BATSA and FSS of breaking into his offices and planting listening devices in order to disrupt Apollo’s operations.³⁵ BATSA denies the allegations which have yet to be determined in court.

Twenty years on there is evidence to suggest BAT was engaged in similar corporate espionage on an industrial scale via FSS. One senior FSS personnel member said that, under BATSA and BAT’s orders, FSS undertook a “systematic campaign of maximum disruption to the production plants and business”.³⁶ That meant using surveillance to monitor shipments, infiltrate factories and warehouses, plant tracking devices, recruit informers and liaise with law enforcement to order bogus stops and seizures.

“All the people at FSS were ex-Apartheid managerial positions.”

Many FSS employees were veterans of the notorious Apartheid police department, Reaction Unit 9, which was infamous for “questionable shootings” and brutal force. As the ex-FSS employee turned whistleblower Francois Van Der Westhuizen would later tell the BBC: “All the people at FSS were ex-Apartheid managerial positions. All of them had links, direct links back to certain factions within the police, within law enforcement, within the revenue service. So it was just the old guard continuing.”³⁷

Directing them were UK BAT personnel. They had ‘burner’ phones and travelled under aliases when visiting South Africa to brief and train operatives.³⁸³⁹

The BAT operation comprehensively penetrated the South African law enforcement community. FSS also obtained physical access to Johannesburg Metropolitan Police Department’s CCTV control room, allowing it to monitor 240 cameras, including one in particular positioned outside competitor Carnilinx’s offices.³⁶ BAT was part of the state’s Tobacco Task Team set up to fight the growth of illicit trade.⁴⁰ BAT’s relationship with the police meant it could manipulate the Tobacco Task Team, providing intelligence to guide where it wanted the police to act. In return FSS got access to classified police material including personal data on officials at rival companies.

As a Government Commission of Inquiry would later say to the Task Team: “The one thing the Tobacco Task team did not investigate was the illicit trade in cigarettes, but investigated instead the investigators who once investigated that trade”.⁴¹ “For all this effort, one would imagine that between BAT and FSS they would have had some astonishing successes pinning criminal charges on their competitors. They didn’t—and that was apparently not the goal anyway. The goal seems to have been to simply to disrupt them to taunt them.”⁴² notes ex-South African Revenue Service official Telita Snyckers in her book Dirty Tobacco: Spies, Lies and Mega-Profits. South African state efforts to control illicit tobacco had effectively become a division in BAT’s corporate armoury.

Not only did BAT target rival companies but the BAT informant ring also infiltrated organized crime groups, including Pakistani, Mozambiquan and Zimbabwean syndicates. FSS whistleblower Francois Van Der Westhuizen has described how he got “illegal sources on board” including from the South African “mafia.” The whistleblower alleged that one sensitive source was a notorious crime boss: “He’s an underworld figure that ran the South African police system at this stage,” adding, “I was dealing with him on behalf of BAT. I had to debrief him to get intelligence from him.”³⁷

The South African operation did not stop at the borders. Tobacco shipments went into Mozambique, Swaziland, Botswana, Namibia, Angola, Zimbabwe and Zambia, so the informants followed them. Meanwhile, South African operatives were flown over to the UK to be wined, dined and briefed. They were joined on at least one occasion by a South African Police Service captain. And the paperwork describing the system of payments used to fund this spy network suggests BAT was also sending agents to Latin America.⁴³

From its London headquarters at Globe House, BAT operated a continent-spanning informant network to pursue its economic interests. Globe House sits barely a mile away from where another global corporation was founded on similarly aggressive lines, authorised in its founding charter to wage war and which maintained its own army and navy. In doing so the East India Company “[transformed] itself into an aggressive colonial power.”⁴⁴, stripping India and the Caribbean of its wealth over several centuries to benefit shareholders in London. And it did so with the tacit approval of the UK government which, at best, looked the other way and at worst was complicit in the exploitation.

BAT is following in that colonialist tradition.

Author

Phil Chamberlain

Further Reading

BAT Uncovered

British American Tobacco in South Africa: Any Means Necessary

Buying Influence and Advantage in Africa: An Analysis of British American Tobacco’s Questionable Payments

TobaccoTactics Resources

The BAT Files

South Africa Country Profile

British American Tobacco

TCRG Research

R.R. Jackson, A. Rowell, A.B. Gilmore, “Unlawful Bribes?”: A documentary analysis showing British American Tobacco’s use of payments to secure policy and competitive advantage in Africa, 13 September 2021, UCSF: Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education.

References

The post British American Tobacco: Dirty Deeds in Africa appeared first on TobaccoTactics.

It was also an unwitting reminder by tobacco companies of their deep and troubling ties to slavery. The vital role slavery played in establishing the wealth of the sector is well-understood,⁴⁷ though not if you look on tobacco company websites.

“There is a line of heritage and practice that runs from 17^th century slave-trading merchants to modern-day tobacco companies.”

The Imperial Brands website explains the company’s origins. Imperial grew out of the Wills company, founded in Bristol in 1786. “Wills was known for its family spirit and a belief that workers should enjoy themselves,” it proudly says.⁴⁸ The Wills company has been accused of profiting from slave produced tobacco.⁴⁹ On the opposite side of the Atlantic other tobacco businesses, such as RJ Reynolds, now part of British American Tobacco (BAT), grew out of slave owning, tobacco farming families.⁵⁰

But exploitation and colonial practices by the tobacco industry are not relegated to history. The global tobacco trade is still largely run by companies in Europe and the USA that have been accused of exploiting cheap labour and weak regulations in low- and middle-income countries.⁵¹ They also stand accused of employing racially predatory marketing; for decades Black Americans have been targeted by menthol cigarette advertising.⁷ There is a line of heritage and practice that runs from 17^th century slave-trading merchants to modern-day tobacco companies.

Roots in slavery

From the late 1600s, Bristol, where Imperial Brands is still headquartered, became involved in the production of tobacco on Virginia plantations. While initially the crop had been produced by indentured white labourers, African slaves soon became a cheaper alternative.⁵²

Supporting the transatlantic slave trade were tobacco merchants and investors in England. Bristol was a hub for both slave ships and the tobacco and sugar trades.⁵³ One well-known Bristol figure at the time was Edward Colston.⁵⁴ According to Bristol Museums “Edward Colston never, as far as we know, traded in enslaved Africans on his own account […] What we do know is that he was an active member of the governing body of the [Royal African Company (RAC)], which traded in enslaved Africans, for 11 years.”⁵⁵ In his role Colston “played an active role in the trading of over 84,000 enslaved African people (including 12,000 children) of whom over 19,000 died on their way across the Atlantic.”⁵⁶ Those transported were enslaved on American tobacco and sugar plantations.⁵⁴⁵⁷

Colston’s statue was torn down in the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 and thrown into Bristol harbour where slave ships once docked. Despite the lives destroyed by his trafficking, Colston’s philanthropy earned him admiration in the city. The plaque that remains on the empty pedestal describes Colston as “one of the most virtuous and wise sons of their city.” To this day, tobacco company philanthropy is employed to distract from the lives lost to the trade.

The Company of Royal Adventurers Trading into Africa, established by Royal charter in 1660, eventually became the Royal African Company (RAC), receiving an official charter to conduct slaving operations in 1672.⁵⁸ From then on the RAC maintained a military presence in Africa, controlled the shipping of people and goods, answered to a headquarters in London and deployed a network of agents to maintain its monopoly.⁵⁹ There are parallels to be drawn between the RAC and British American Tobacco (BAT), formed in 1901 and still dominant in Africa and many other parts of the world, where it often acts with the quasi-support of the British government.⁶⁰

Colonial operations

BAT continues to operate with a colonial mindset, according to African tobacco control activists like Dr. Yussuf Saloojee. He is a former director of the National Council Against Smoking, a South African-based NGO pressing for African governments to launch criminal investigations into BAT and its alleged continued involvement in cigarette smuggling. Saloojee says of BAT: “The days when they can march in with their colonial arrogance and treat Africa like some lawless frontier are over[…] Africa has enough problems without multinational corporations undermining the stability of our governments and national policies.”⁶¹ BAT has also been accused of using bribes to undermine the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) in East Africa. At the time, BAT told the BBC: “We do not and will not tolerate corruption, no matter where it takes place.”⁶²

The leadership structure of BAT, Philip Morris International (PMI), Altria and Imperial Brands are also reminiscent of their colonial past. From headquarters in the tobacco plantations of the USA and ex-imperial centres of Europe, they control the global tobacco trade, having bought up smaller, regional companies. Executives and directors are almost exclusively White European or American posted to South East Asia, North Africa, West Africa or South America to run local operations.⁶³⁶⁴⁶⁵ Low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) suffer most from this familiar system, where an industry born of Empire imposes its destructive business on less powerful nations. Cigarette consumption and associated mortality is now higher overall in LMICs and growing, thanks to aggressive marketing, and cheap labour that is frequently exploited.⁶⁶ Fear of improvements to labour and tobacco marketing laws means tobacco companies often interfere in the governance of these regions, echoing the history of empire and colonial control.

Tobacco company exploitation in Africa is apparent in the mounting accusations of child labour on tobacco farms. In Malawi, the British legal firm Leigh Day is representing farmworkers in a lawsuit against British American Tobacco and Imperial Brands for the “widespread use of unlawful child labour, unlawful forced labour and the systematic exposure of vulnerable and impoverished adults and children to extremely hazardous working conditions”.⁶⁷ In Zimbabwe, child labour and human rights abuses occur on tobacco farms⁶⁸ and in Zambia, farmers risk COVID-19 to boost Japan Tobacco International profits.⁶⁹ The industry’s response to criticism over these abuses is to fund a front group that has achieved little in reducing child labour.⁷⁰

Racist marketing

Modern day exploitation also extends to the consumer. In the US, companies use predatory marketing to target Black customers with menthol cigarettes,⁷¹⁷ worsening the disproportionate health harms to Black communities from smoking. Meanwhile, they preach support for Black Lives Matter and racial justice. In June 2020, Altria announced it would provide $5 million to “fight racial inequality”.⁷² In contrast, leaked company documents from the year 2000 reveal plans to specifically target African American and Hispanic leaders as part of an image rebrand called PM21, describing these leaders as “influential on political thinking.” and saying “We need to develop relationships with them and ‘educate’ them.”.⁷³

Kool Menthol (1981)

Newport Menthol (2005)

Salem Menthol (2004)

The industry’s efforts to target Black consumers began after the Second World War, as communities became more urbanised and increased in spending power.⁷⁴ Prior to WW2, advertisements featured deeply racist and imperialist imagery to appeal to white consumers. Stanford’s tobacco marketing archives give an idea of the range of offensive material produced.⁷⁵

Bill Durham Tobacco (1900)

Black Maria Chewing Tobacco (early 20th century)

Courage Tobacco (1930)

Red Man Snuff (2008)

It is not just the Black community that is subject to racist exploitation by tobacco companies. Experts on US public health racial disparity, D’Silva, O’Gara and Villaluz, write: “The tobacco industry has misappropriated culture and traditional tobacco by misrepresenting American Indian traditions, values and beliefs to market and sell their products for profit.”.⁷⁶ One of the first products to exploit Native American identity was Red Man Chewing Tobacco, introduced in 1904 by Pinkerton Tobacco and still sold today by Swedish Match.⁷⁷ In response to criticism, one cigarette manufacturer highlighted how much money they gave to Native American charities and the free tobacco offered for ceremonial purposes: “We’d like to think that we’re giving something back to these people in exchange for using this imagery,” Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Company (now owned by BAT) wrote in a briefing note.⁷⁸ Meanwhile, cigarette company identity is often based on colonial imagery. The branding is designed to evoke a fantasy of benevolent rule and status from a time where tobacco companies were making major profits off the back of slavery and brutal empire building. The name Imperial Brands (formerly Imperial Tobacco) is an obvious example, as are brands like Colonial cigarettes sold by British American Tobacco in Belize.⁷⁹

“No cigarette company has been held accountable for its history of targeting minority communities and the disproportionate health harms inflicted.”

Tobacco companies are not the only ones to have used racist and imperialist iconography. However, while brands such as Quaker Oats and its Aunt Jemima syrup have pledged to remove racist stereotypes, no cigarette company has been held accountable for its history of targeting minority communities and the disproportionate health harms inflicted. Ethnic minorities in the USA and Europe are more likely to die of smoking related diseases than the White population and this disproportionate suffering is now magnified by the COVID-19 pandemic.⁸⁰⁸¹⁸²

Corporate social responsibility and race

Rather than confront a history of colonialism and racism, Big Tobacco uses philanthropy and corporate social responsibility (CSR) programmes to distract from past and present misdeeds. Third-parties or front groups are employed to create the façade of independent and influential support.

For example, there is emerging evidence that Philip Morris International has begun recruiting cultural influencers to its PR “communications platform”, Mission Winnow.⁸³ This move is reminiscent of the aforementioned PM21, when the company sought to target “civic leaders, women and minority communities.”.⁸⁴

Another group wholly funded by PMI, The Foundation for a Smoke-Free World, has suggested a ban on menthol cigarettes would cause Black Americans to be targeted by police.⁸⁵ Tobacco control advocates Sandra Mullin and Dr Mary Bassett say this is “perverse logic”: smoking kills, and menthol cigarettes kill far more Black people.⁸⁶ As the history of police brutality against Black Americans can attest, police officers do not wait for a whiff of menthol smoke to employ violence. In response to marketing that targets Black communities, activists have joined force with the American Medical Association and are suing the FDA to ban menthol cigarettes.⁸⁷

The tobacco industry is rooted in the Atlantic slave economy and while this may have ceased, the exploitation of Black communities and low- and middle-income countries continues. Any tobacco industry outreach in the name of racial justice is disingenuous if it refuses to face up to historical transgressions, continues to exploit tobacco workers and targets its deadly products at Black and other minority communities.

Authors

Phil Chamberlain, Nancy Karreman and Louis Laurence.

With thanks to Michél Legendre from Corporate Accountability for his assistance with this article.

Go further

If you wish to explore this issue in more detail the following resources are useful:

Watch the University of Bath film Tobacco Slave

STOPPING MENTHOL, SAVING LIVES ENDING BIG TOBACCO’S PREDATORY MARKETING TO BLACK COMMUNITIES

Community-Led Action to Reduce Menthol Cigarette Use in the African American Community

Menthol-Flavored Tobacco Products

Why tobacco is a racial justice issue

The Tobacco Atlas: Growing

TobaccoTactics: Child Labour

The Black Community: A Target for the Tobacco Industry Since Slavery

Tobacco, Slavery and Empire

Ghosts of Bristol’s shameful slave past haunt its graceful landmarks

References

The post Racism and the Tobacco Industry appeared first on TobaccoTactics.