Behind the smoke screen of Big Tobacco
Four multinationals dominate the global tobacco industry. Publicly, these companies all advocate a smoke-free world. But that discourse masks more than just the quest for a new lifeline.
Translation of this article is provided by kompreno, using a combination of machine translation and human correction. More articles from MO* are included in kompreno‘s curation of the finest analysis, opinion & reporting — from all across Europe, translated into your language.
Admittedly, necessity breaks law. After all, what industry now eats its own customer base? According to the World Health Organisation, one in two smokers die from the effects of their addiction. That observation should almost lead to a permanent crisis situation in Big Tobacco's war rooms.
But Big Tobacco's lobbyists are experienced smokers. Their earliest experience stretches back to at least 1575, when the Catholic Church issued the world's first smoking ban. In that year, smoking went into banishment in Mexican church buildings. Little research has been done on the resistance of tobacco growers at the time, but there is no doubt that the ban was ineffective. Over the next few centuries, the smoking habit spread like wildfire. A good two hundred years later, in 1779, it came full circle when, according to various sources, the Vatican, god forbid, opened its own tobacco factory.
Today, four companies (Philip Morris International, British American Tobacco, Japan Tobacco International and Imperial Brands) stir the big drum worldwide. Five if you also include China National Tobacco Corporation, but that focuses mainly on China itself. Their trade in the brown leaf, but equally the products they offer, has evolved considerably. Former showpieces like the pipe have been all but phased out, and the classic cigarette is also getting a rough deal in many parts of the world.
How different from the last century, you might think. Until deep into the 1950s, companies like Philip Morris paid doctors to promote their cigarettes, including to pregnant women and children. Cigarettes were supposed to promote health. That lie paid off. About half of the adult US population smoked, and cigarettes were also immensely popular in Europe.
Gradually, however, the evidence that smoking causes lung cancer became so overwhelming that Big Tobacco had to do something. A first attempt at a new strategy was to spout fog about the research. "Some cigarettes may be harmful, but certainly not ours!" echoed the corporate propaganda at the time.
It would take until 1998 for the first tobacco company to openly admit that smoking is harmful. That eureka moment marked the start of a second business strategy. The industry started pushing alternative tobacco products, such as the electronic cigarette. That device was launched on the market in 2003 and was supposed to wean smokers off the traditional cigarette. Other non-flammable tobacco products such as snus, a bag of tobacco powder (or a nicotine bag without tobacco) inserted under the upper lip, were also promoted as smoking cessation aids.
Anyone surfing to the Big Four's websites today is effectively knocked around the head with terms like 'quit', 'smoke-free', 'less harmful' and so on. The umbrella term for this is harm reduction, the new magic word with which the industry seems to be taking the plunge for global public health.
That Big Tobacco is trying to price new products into the market is, of course, nothing less than an economic law. E-cigarettes and snus signify the lifeline of an ailing industry. Yet this is not the full story.
'The rifle may have changed shoulder, but manipulation remains trump as it did in the 1950s,' argues Lekan Ayo-Yusuf, professor of public health and tobacco expert affiliated with the University of Pretoria, in an interview with MO*.
Through the work of whistleblowers and researchers, we have a relatively clear picture of what goes on under the bonnet of Big Tobacco. One tried-and-tested tactic stands out emphatically. The industry sponsors its own scientific research into the harms it creates, while lobbying governments to block regulation.
But what Ayo-Yusuf argues goes beyond that. The professor argues that Big Tobacco itself does not believe in its rant about harm reduction, the evidence for which can be found in a market analysis. Depending on the market, the companies promote different products, the professor argues. To understand this, we need to zoom out. Policies in the global market show that Big Tobacco speaks with a double tongue.
More than a lifeline
'Everything depends on what stage the market is at,' argues Professor Ayo-Yusuf. The professor divides the market into four different stages. The first stage is a market where smoking takes off among a small part of the (mostly male) population. In that first stage, deaths are rare because the cancer simply has not yet been able to take root.
Two stages later, the tobacco market reaches its end point where a wide range of tobacco products have taken hold among the broad population, and tobacco-related deaths are high. In the fourth stage, decline sets in and public opinion and legislation sides against smoking.
'Especially Western countries are in the latter stage, while many African countries are in the first stage,' Ayo-Yusuf argues. In a country like Ghana, smoking has traditionally been associated with street crime and prostitution. The smoking rate is correspondingly high. Only 4 per cent of the population smokes, and these are almost exclusively men.
Swedish snus
Smoking is also very low in Sweden. But unlike Ghana, Sweden has already gone through the entire market cycle. Since the 1980s, the number of smokers there has been falling steadily. Today, the figure is just above 5%, which is the threshold for the European Union to declare a country smoke-free. With this, Sweden is well past the fourth stage and the once omnipresent smoker is well on his way to becoming a social pariah.
Snus use, on the other hand, is on a steep rise. According to figures from producer Swedish Match, usage is around 14%.
This should not come as a surprise. Until 2022, there was no restriction on the sale of snus. The nicotine product could be sold to anyone, including young people. Producers were handing out free samples at the drop of a hat, glitzy flavours were promoted and advertising was clearly aimed at attracting young people.
Except in Sweden, snus is illegal in the European Union. But the Swedish government has traditionally got on well with snus manufacturers and its use is so well established that the country negotiated an exemption when it joined the Union in 1995.
In 2023, taxes on cigarettes went up by 9%, while those on snus fell by 20%. Big Tobacco welcomed the decision. Because with snus, it sounded, "we are building a smoke-free future together".
Just a few months later, the platform Quit Like Sweden saw the light of day. It appears to be an independent grassroots platform that cares about public health. With a glitzy campaign, they are highlighting the 'Swedish success'. 'We want to replicate the Swedish experience to other countries to save lives,' we read on their website. Spinoffs can already be found on social media, such as the Mozambican #QuitLikeMozambique.
What the website does not mention? Suely Castro, initiator and director of Quit Like Sweden, is not an independent anti-smoking activist as she portrays herself. The Brazilian is a shrewd marketer who is on Big Tobacco's payroll through a front organisation.
According to the independent expert centre Expose Tobacco, Castro works for Knowledge-Action-Change, a private lobbying organisation sponsored by the Foundation for a Smoke Free World. That organisation, in turn, is integrally sponsored by Philip Morris. But co-founder Anders Milton is not beyond reproach either. He is head of Sweden's snus committee. In addition, a tobacco giant took over Swedish Match in 2022.
In the absence of a European lobby register, it is almost impossible to uncover the networks or money flows behind these individuals. What is nevertheless clear: #QuitLikeSweden is simply one of Big Tobacco's many satellites.
And impact they have. The hoary report on the creation of #QuitLikeSweden is reproduced in full and unquestioningly on well-known news sites like CNN Brazil and Euronews. To this end, the in-house fabricated research serves as proof: 'Snus is the key to decimating tobacco-related deaths'. And: 'Snus cannot be linked to cancer'.
Sara Skyttedal, Swedish member of the European Parliament, may come and shamelessly present Sweden's rant on harm reduction in the European hemisphere, nota bene on World Day Against Tobacco. According to the Smoke Free Partnership, an independent think tank, Skyttedal met with one of the Big Four. The organisation concludes: 'The nicotine lobby is in the European Parliament.'
These are the same vintage Big Tobacco tactics from the 1950s being repeated today: spouting fog to stop regulation.
One addiction becomes another
Meanwhile, of course, the real question about the Swedish experience is: why is it that tobacco use in Sweden is so low? Is Big Tobacco right and is it because of the availability of alternative nicotine products? In its view, snus serves to help people quit smoking. She therefore recommends that alternative tobacco products should be readily accessible and affordable, in different flavours and strengths, indeed even promoted by the government.
But a much more likely cause is that Sweden was one of the first countries in the world to launch large-scale tobacco prevention campaigns, including advertising bans and smoking cessation aids. This has been happening since the 1970s. The curves show that the number of smokers began to decline effectively since then.
In Sweden, Big Tobacco has simply succeeded in replacing one addiction with another. In the 'Swedish success story', the tobacco giants shamelessly promote themselves as the solution to an epidemic they themselves created.
This has not escaped Professor Lekan's notice either. 'The reality is that Big Tobacco is promoting non-combustible alternatives in countries like Sweden, which have ''outgrown'' the cigarette. There, they are supposed to get people off smoking, so to speak.'
Cigarettes for children
The Swedish story shows just how committed Big Tobacco is to alternative tobacco products. But what strikes the professor is that this line is only taken in countries that have outgrown the traditional cigarette. 'In fledgling markets that are still in the early stages, Big Tobacco continues to push the classic cigarette,' Lekan argues.
This was already demonstrated in a 2019 study by Public Eye. That showed that cigarettes for the African market are more addictive than the same cigarettes for other markets. Note: the cigarettes are produced in the same Swiss factory.
Not much has changed in the meantime, a recent event in the Sudanese tobacco market shows. That country is at Stage 1 according to Lekan's categorisation: a small proportion of the (male) population has started smoking since the 1990s.
In July 2024, a leading cigarette manufacturer tried to convince the Pakistani government to produce 'kiddie packs' for the Sudanese market. These are cigarette packs of 10, making them cheaper and therefore more accessible, including to children.
In Pakistan, the sale of such packs is banned, as in the majority of the world. The legal basis for this is a WHO agreement that explicitly states the reason: not to lower the threshold for children.
From 25 other African countries, opposition to the proposal promptly rose. 54 different organisations from across the continent petitioned the Pakistani government not to accede to the request. It was feared that Sudan would only serve as a bridgehead, in order to export the kiddie packs to several countries on the continent afterwards.
The tobacco company concerned reacted like a wasp stung: 'The small packs are not meant for the Pakistani market, but they are meant for the African market,' it sounded. By doing so, the company directly indicated that it has no problem with manipulating legislation in one country, with the aim of throwing a vulnerable target group in front of the bus in another country.
That Big Tobacco looks at the African market with greedy eyes is no secret. It is pretty much the only continent that is almost entirely in the first stage. Moreover, it has a very young population. So a market with huge potential. And the earlier the cigarette can be spoon-fed, the longer you can keep the customer.
This shows: the examples are numerous in which tobacco companies try to sell cigarettes to children.In a report, Tobacco Tactics lists the main tricks: blackmailing politicians committed to tobacco regulation, offering free loose cigarettes to children, employing 'cigarette girls' at events, gaining the trust of rural communities by offering gifts, infiltrating government bodies to weigh in on policy, and deliberately exaggerating figures on contraband cigarettes with the aim of convincing governments not to regulate.
The list is long. Meanwhile, according to Professor Lekan, it is no coincidence that Big Tobacco is trying to open up the market for kiddie packs in Sudan. 'Big Tobacco benefits from weak states. The less regulation, the smoother the companies get their products into the market.'
The cigarette remains the basis of the revenue model. And so production must follow: a new cigarette factory opened in Morocco in 2023, with a production capacity of 20 billion cigarettes a year, 'intended for the local market'.
Addiction at any cost
The market analysis paints a grim picture: where legislation and public opinion oppose Big Tobacco, alternative tobacco products (vapes, snus ...) are pushed. Elsewhere, the traditional cigarette remains king. Big Tobacco thus seems to give little credence to its own story about a 'smoke-free future'.
True harm reduction, meanwhile, must take public health as its starting point and not corporate interests, argues Truth Initiative, an independent research institute. 'It is about the tentative development of alternatives focused on helping tobacco users struggling to quit.'
This clearly clashes with the vision of tobacco companies, which merely want to build a growth market for nicotine products.
But in the last decade, hijackers have appeared on the scene. Since 2015, several companies saw the light of day investing in electronic cigarettes. The only difference with the classic Big Tobacco, is that they do everything they can not to be associated with it. Yet their practices are exactly the same as those of their old teacher. This was demonstrated by the book Big Vape and the Netflix documentary based on it.
The conclusion? A vaper is simply an improved way of delivering nicotine into the bloodstream. The product is a perfected addiction machine. The company involved in the documentary was gobbled up by Big Tobacco, after which it disappeared into the wings post-covid.
Ironically, the exact same thing is threatening to happen today. The internet research for this article has recently provided me with a plague of ads trying to get me off the cigarette. They promote plant-based fragrances. After the pure chemical smells of the vape industry, we have come full circle. 'We pinky swear it's cool'. It really does say it.
It is as if we have re-entered the 1950s.
Translation of this article is provided by kompreno, using a combination of machine translation and human correction. More articles from MO* are included in kompreno‘s curation of the finest analysis, opinion & reporting — from all across Europe, translated into your language.