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Big Tobacco’s Latest Deception: We Support Youth Tobacco Prevention

Companies in search of new smokers can't whitewash their true motives

Posted by: Editor | Oct 7, 2011

Altria and altruism just don't mix. 

Neither does the tobacco giant's financial sponsorship of an "Adolescent Tobacco Prevention and Cessation Symposium" in Nashville next month.

The event is funded by Philip Morris USA, U.S. Smokeless Tobacco and John Middleton Company, all owned by Altria Group Inc.  John Middleton is a cigar and pipe tobacco company that makes fruit and alcohol flavored Black & Mild cigars.  These companies collectively manufacture the cigarette and flavored smokeless tobacco and cigar brands that are the most popular with youth (Marlboro, Skoal and Black & Mild).  More high school students smoke Philip Morris' Marlboros than all other cigarette brands combined.

The companies have a clear interest in enticing youth to use their products, not in preventing kids from smoking or helping them quit.  The real intent of these sponsorships is to whitewash the companies' well-deserved negative image and create the impression they are part of the solution when in fact they are the main cause of the problem.

Here are the facts about Philip Morris and other tobacco companies:

• They spend more than $10 billion a year marketing tobacco products, much of it in ways that appeal to youth.

• The companies continue to fight public policies that reduce smoking by kids and adults, such as higher tobacco taxes and smoke-free policies.

• A federal judge has found that Philip Morris and other cigarette manufacturers have marketed and continue to market to kids, even while denying to the public that they do so.   

Tobacco companies are committed to increasing sales of their products, which they can do only by addicting a new generation of smokers.  Beware of the wolf in sheep's clothing!