Episode 250 - A History of Smoking [2]
Once it was established, the Tobacco Institute was
hell-bent on trying to preserve its product's reputation.
Yet, try as it might, it was fighting a losing battle.
Since the Surgeon General Luther Terry released his bombshell report in 1964, dozens
of other reports have come out that linked smoking to chronic illness and death.
People might have liked smoking, they might have liked the feeling of smoking cigarettes
but they didn't like the idea of dying, and smokers started quitting the habit and
teenagers stopped taking it up, at least to the same degree that they had in previous years.
But it was in the 1980s and 1990s, that tobacco companies started to feel the
legal consequences of being more concerned with profit than public health.
In 1996, a man named Dr.
Jeffrey Wigand — a former executive at the U.S.
tobacco company Brown & Williamson — revealed that his company had added
harmful chemicals to its products in order to make them more addictive.
Perhaps the most groundbreaking case, however, was something called the Master Settlement Agreement.
In 1998, Brown & Williamson, along with three of the U.S.' largest tobacco companies, would be
forced to pay $206 billion — around €350 billion in today's money— over a period of 25 years.
The money went towards covering tobacco-related healthcare costs in the United States,
and the settlement put an end to many of the industry's most harmful marketing efforts.
Many individuals have also succeeded in suing tobacco companies over smoking-related health issues.
One of the most famous was Howard Engle, a paediatrician who, along with a group of other
plaintiffs, other people in the case, successfully sued the tobacco industry in 1994 for
smoking-related health problems, forcing the tobacco companies to pay out $145 billion.
And since the start of the 1990s, the leaders of the tobacco industry continue
to face lawsuits like these, and they have paid out hundreds of billions of
Euros in damages to both victims of smoking-related illnesses and their families.
And yet, Big Tobacco — the name given to the world's most
powerful tobacco companies — shows no sign of going anywhere.
Even though smoking rates in the United States and the U.K.
have been falling for decades, and global rates have been falling on the whole, population
growth has meant that more cigarettes are being smoked by more people than ever before.
Indeed, in 2019 there were an estimated 7.41 trillion
cigarettes smoked worldwide by 1.14 billion people.
And although there are more cigarettes being smoked than ever before, and there is
no shortage of current customers for Big Tobacco, the percentage of adults who smoke
is falling, and the percentage of teenagers taking up the habit is also falling.
This might be a good thing as far as public health is concerned,
but it presents a rather large problem for Big Tobacco.
Big Tobacco knows that it has an incredibly addictive product that its users
physically need to use multiple times a day and have great trouble stopping using.
With over a billion smokers worldwide, cigarette companies make vast amounts of
money, but the business model isn't sustainable long-term because fewer and fewer
young people are taking up smoking and, well, it's not a nice thing to say but the
nature of smoking is that it doesn't help its customers live a long and healthy life.
In developing countries with less regulation about tobacco advertising, Big Tobacco can continue
to use the same strategies that worked to get hundreds of millions of Americans and Europeans
smoking, but in more regulated environments they need to innovate and develop new products.
E-cigarettes, or “vapes”, for example, which allow the user to inhale nicotine through
vapour, have - as I'm sure you know - become enormously popular in recent years.
This is particularly true among the younger generation; in
2018, over 20 percent of high school students in the U.S.
vaped — vaped is the word for using an e-cigarette – vs just 8% for cigarettes.
Many vape brands, it just so happens, are owned by Big Tobacco.
Although vaping is considerably less harmful than smoking, it still isn't without its dangers, and
there have been hundreds of deaths and thousands of lung injuries caused by vaping in the US alone.
Now, with everything we now know about the tobacco industry, one very
large question remains: what does the future of smoking look like?
As I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, New Zealand plans
to enact a law that will effectively ban anyone currently 14 years
old or younger from purchasing cigarettes for their entire lives.
The U.K.
government also recently announced its goal to make England smoke-free by the year 2030.
Tobacco companies like Philip Morris have even proposed what they're calling a ‘smoke-free future,'
in which cigarettes are replaced entirely by smoke-free tobacco products, such as e-cigarettes.
Yet there's still no evidence that switching to e-cigarettes
will help cigarette smokers quit tobacco for good.
So, all of this begs the question: will we ever live in a smoke-free world?
And will mankind ever be able to wean itself off its addiction to tobacco?
Well, one thing's for sure.
Big Tobacco has been fighting hard for hundreds of years, and for all its
talk about a smoke-free future, it sure isn't going down without a fight.
OK then, that is it for today's episode on the history of smoking.
I hope it's been an interesting one, and that you've learnt something new.
As always, I would love to know what you thought of this episode.
What is the culture towards smoking in your country?
How has this changed over the course your lifetime?
What do you think when you hear that a tobacco company wants to help create a “smoke free future”?
I would love to know, so let's get this discussion started.
You can head right into our community forum, which is at
community.leonardoenglish.com, and get chatting to other curious minds.
You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
