Read my blogs about Philip Morris.
This was my first impression when I glanced at a headline of the venerable ASH (Action on Smoking and Health) Daily News of 19 August 2020. But then I realised I was indulging in wishful thinking. The actual wording was, ‘Pow threatens tobacco firms over litter.’ Pow is the surname of the British Conservative MP for the constituency [...]
The highly esteemed tobacco company, Philip Morris International (PMI), in January 2019 published an anonymous fifty-five page document entitled Public Health – Much Harder than Rocket Science. They modestly call it a White Paper, as if it’s an official government report, and it’s padded out with eighteen artistic black-and-white photos of no relevance to public heath except for [...]
The March 2018 edition of the highly esteemed journal, Tobacco Control, contains interesting examples of infelicitous writing, to say nothing of wrong-headed ideas: addiction sticks and tobacco control vaccine. As part of an attack on Philip Morris International’s cynical and false claim, 'We're trying to give up cigarettes', it’s gratifying that the editor, Professor Ruth E Malone, is [...]
Let me explain. Tobacco Control is the name of a learned journal that states one of its aims is: …to study the nature and consequences of…efforts to prevent and control the global tobacco epidemic… This is confused. The tobacco epidemic, as it’s called, is all too obviously in full swing. Therefore, it's too late to prevent it. What [...]
Towards the end of December each year many smokers announce a new year’s resolution: to give up smoking. Or they might say they resolve to give up cigarettes. What they don't say (or if they did it would be meaningless) is that their new year’s resolution is to try to give up smoking or cigarettes. Smokers often say, [...]
What is this colourful montage? It's comprised of the logos of organisations from all over the world who were signatories to a letter addressed, as you can see, to Mr André Calantzopoulos (they omitted his title and if this was from lack of respect for this loathsome person I don’t blame them), the Chief Executive Officer of Philip [...]
Laughing all the way to the bank Philip Morris International (PMI) claim their new ‘heat-not-burn’ tobacco product that goes under the name of IQOS isn’t an e-cigarette. They say this because e-cigarettes are prohibited in Thailand. The Managing Director of the Thailand division of PMI, Mr Gerald Margolis (pictured), argues that their new product ‘is different from e-cigarettes, [...]
There’s no shortage of ideas, particularly from people who appear to have no experience in actually treating smokers, about how to solve the smoking problem. For example let’s take a look at an article in the online Dorset Echo of 29 September 2017 written by a trainee reporter. To set the mood there are two large illustrations: ‘A [...]
The words that came to me as I read this piece in today’s Financial Times were disingenuous, self-serving, cynical, and the like. Philip Morris International has pledged up to $1bn over the next 12 years to an arm’s-length foundation that will fund scientific research designed to eliminate the use of smoked tobacco around the globe. [Philp Morris]…last week [...]
It's only a rat! Perhaps in my post of 4 July 2017 in which I accuse the tobacco giant Philip Morris International (PMI) of torturing animals I was being a little unjust. I had not at that time seen their proclamation, ‘Our standards for animal testing’. In this document they reassuringly tell us ‘PMI takes to heart public [...]
I quote from British American Tobacco’s International Marketing Principles, 2015: We will not portray smoking as an activity that makes people appear more popular, appealing or successful. But they seem to have no qualms about portraying the use of their new product with the almost unpronounceable name of ‘glo’ as an activity that makes people appear more popular, [...]
Why should you need willpower to refrain from poisoning yourself? We do not need to read very far into the July 2017 edition of Tobacco Control to have demonstrated to us yet again the feebleness of the current official approach to the tobacco problem, the duplicity of the tobacco industry, and the futility of academic research into smoking. [...]
Yesterday Today The tobacco giant, Philip Morris International (PMI), has applied to the US Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) to market what they call ‘modified risk tobacco products’ (MRTP), in particular, their heated tobacco contraption with the unpronounceable name of IQOS, or iQOS. They start by putting their cards on the table: ‘PMI recognizes that cigarettes are a [...]
Here is an interesting piece of news reported in the online Health News (Reuters Health) on 26 May 2017. The headline is the alarming statement: ‘Heat-not-burn cigarettes still release cancer-causing chemicals.’ Shock, horror. This is according to an investigation by Dr Reto Auer and colleagues of the University of Bern, Switzerland. The heat-not-burn type of cigarette has recently [...]
We have to thank the BBC for bringing us news of a major scandal (online 30 November 2016). Andre Calantzopoulos, the CEO of Philip Morris, a tobacco company that turned out 850 billion cigarettes in 2015 from which it generated net revenue of about $74 billion, was recently interviewed on the BBC. AC: We produce a product that [...]