Evil Propaganda of Tobacco Industry

The history of the tobacco industry has a significant addition to the study of industry strategy. Many newborn industries come to better understand the fundamentals that the tobacco industry relied on and the handling of conflicts of interest that they won successfully. Being a detrimental product seller, tobacco industry managed itself to hold the position at the forefront in the global market using science and various strategies. Its evil industry campaign—apparently open secret—is widely known to the world. The world is currently undergoing a deadly pandemic of COVID-19. In this crisis moment, we’ve seen some significant move of the tobacco industry with its weird publicity. This is not a very new strategy, rather it is just a part of the legacy of its old-fashioned activities. To understand this fact, we must summarize the history of tobacco industry’s growing up.

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By the early 1950s, some major medical journals and mainstream media published some scientific methods and findings that disclosed the fact that smoking caused lung cancer with other serious respiratory and cardiac diseases. This brought the tobacco industry to crisis; led them to deal with an overwhelming situation. This was the first time tobacco industry got such a big threat in their business that resulted in an unprecedented brand-new strategy—a strategy of eroding, confusing, and condemning the scientific studies that made trouble in selling tobacco products. They realized that consumers might be influenced by these scientific studies and could be more conscious about tobacco products. In this case, if any engineered approach—encompassing burning questions and public health concerns that raised science—can be driven with some scientific researches which make people know about these harms, people will deliberately support these ideas and will become conscious according to the results and suggestions of these researches. But what benefit goes to companies here? Generally, no company wants any issues that create a negative impact on its consumers. They get prepared for the things before becoming key issues for them and create such situations and narratives that go in favour of them. And tobacco industry just did it carefully. They exploited all the critical aspects and discourses by social engineering. Edward Bernays, a prominent public relations theorist, so nicely elucidated this social engineering in his book “engineering of consent”. By this strategy, they first manipulated antagonistic voices from the public debate and directed it in favour of them using too many tools. Science, media, politics, culture are some common tools they used.

The tobacco industry conducted campaign in the field of science with the motive of oversetting the study results and its normative processes. To engineer the science to hide all harms caused by tobacco products, they established a strong base of industrial interests and influence. Some major companies hired John W. Hill, the president of Hill & Knowlton, and endorsed his strategic plan of manipulating scientific research, debate and outcomes. He owned a well-known public relations firm. He aimed to create an industry-sponsored research entity.  The Tobacco Industry Research Committee (TIRC) was formed. Hill & Knowlton carefully designed it to serve the industry’s collective interests by controlling scientific discourse about smoking and health. It managed more than 400 newspapers across the country (USA) to preach its promises to the consumers that the companies would pursue the science of tobacco to unravel all the bluffs. The Tobacco Industry Research Committee proclaimed that there is no conclusive scientific proof of a link between smoking and cancer. They manipulated journalists who are ignorant of scientific education and easily secured media coverage to establish scepticism to the people about tobacco harm. With all the publicity Tobacco Industry Research Committee wanted people to believe that there is no conclusive scientific proof of a link between smoking and cancer and medical research finds many possible causes of cancer. They left no stone unturned to reiterate this message for the next 40 years to influence the media, public opinion, policy, regulation, and the law. TIRC budget approached $1 million for Hill & Knowlton, media ads and administrative costs in 1954 which increased substantially in later years. Most of the TIRC's program centred on basic questions in immunology, genetics, cell biology, pharmacology, and virology. They were generally sceptical or agnostic. With all of their initial efforts, tobacco companies experienced enormous success at that time. Individual smokers filed lawsuits against the tobacco industry for many legit reasons and the tobacco industry won almost each of their cases. They spent a huge amount of money on these cases with the motive of overwhelming plaintiffs with legal costs. They came up with a no-proof strategy­ to defend such litigations. So we see the industrial benefits of scientific uncertainty they created. Hill & Knowlton built a strong political lobby and public relations operation. Before 1960 it became Washington’s most powerful political lobby. At that time their cigarettes sales rose dramatically. Two-thirds of men and one-third of women used to smoke cigarettes in the USA.

In reality, there was some good scientific evidence of a relation between cigarettes and cancer which had a strong effect on smokers, encouraging them to quit smoking. When public concern got risen, cigarette companies started to defraud the consumers by redesigning their product and calling it safer. The tobacco industry put forward a new concept that smoking—even if it is considered to be a potential risk taken—is an “individual” choice. It means it is totally consumers' decision what they should consume and what not. By establishing the notion of personal choice in this context, they put all the responsibilities considering health risks associated with their product on the individual smoker. And this helps the corporation to get freed from all of the litigations connecting to public health issues.

In the early stages, cigarette companies made misleading and false-claimed advertisements to attract consumers. The slogan of Craven “A” cigarette company was “For Your Throats Sake.” Lucky Strike spread some evil messages through its ads like its product will reduce coughing and will help to gain weight loss. It hired some prolific actors to create an impact on these actor's fans.  Philip Morris claimed its product scientifically proved far less irritating to the nose and throat on its ads! Camels cigarette company brought doctors to its campaign to convince consumers. This company ridiculously claimed more doctors smoke Camels! They urged people to consume their cigarettes for “digestion’s sake”! Tobacco companies requested throat specialists to present cigarettes as worthy of acceptance to patients with coughs and other complaints. They encouraged such practitioners in many ways. To make their business ground strong Tobacco Companies gave more than $50 million since 1990 to Republicans. It indicates their interest and engagement in lobbying in politics.

With all efforts, Tobacco Industry had a lot of successes in past. They interfered in making laws. “The Control of Essential Commodities Act, 1956” was created (in Pakistan) to provide for powers to control the production, storage, distribution, and trade and commerce in certain commodities. In this act, a cigarette was classified as an “essential commodity”. When the Covid-19 outbreak in Bangladesh got worsen, Tobacco Industry lobbies government agencies to protect its business during this pandemic. British American Tobacco Bangladesh (BATB) and Japan Tobacco International (JTI), two dominated transnational tobacco companies in Bangladesh, sent a similar letter to the Secretary of the Ministry of Industries (MoI) to give support from the administration level to carry their business smoothly in lockdown. They put the aforementioned old law down on their letter that classified cigarettes as essential commodities.

Not only in Bangladesh, During the Covid-19 breakout all over the world in 2020, they also gridded up their loins to protect their running markets from all kinds of negative impacts. They published numerous misinformation with the support of the world most renowned online and printing newspapers. It goes without saying that, they invested a mammoth amount of money in media coverage. Many renowned newspapers published the news titled “Smokers seem less likely than non-smokers to fall ill with covid-19!” the gist of this news was that researchers found in their study that smokers are much less likely to suffer severely from Covid-19. In conclusion, the news said, “All this suggests that something in tobacco smoke is having a protective effect. The best guess is that something in question is nicotine.” The news further added that smoking may lessen the damage! What a disgusting strategy tobacco industries took to keep their business profitable in a pandemic situation! Some renowned newspapers also published news on the possibility of making vaccines from tobacco leaf! All of these are the result of nasty propaganda of the tobacco industries and their investment in media. Such misinformation was circulated all over the world backed by Tobacco Industries while World Health Organization (WHO) was relentlessly warning people that smokers are likely to be more vulnerable to COVID-19. WHO said on their website, “smoking is already known to be a risk factor for many other respiratory infections, including colds, influenza, pneumonia and tuberculosis. The effects of smoking on the respiratory system makes it more likely that smokers contract these diseases, which could be more severe. Smoking is also associated with increased development of acute respiratory distress syndrome, a key complication for severe cases of COVID-19, among people with severe respiratory infections.”

It is high time to raise a voice against all the evil propaganda that tobacco industries have been carrying on from its beginning to the present time. Still, Tobacco Industries are maintaining their ill-motivated strategy. Currently, India is facing its worst-ever situation of the Covid-19 outbreak. Death rates and infection rates become higher day by day. Delhi is running out of space to cremate Covid death. Under such a terrible situation in India, Tobacco Industries have published news in many renowned Indian newspapers titled “smokers and vegetarians less vulnerable to Covid-19 infection: CSIR study”. After creating public rage some news portals have removed this content but this news is still visible in some other online news portals. The business of the Tobacco Industry in a country must be brought under control. Any sort of advertisement of tobacco products should be banned permanently. Sin tax on tobacco products should be doubled every year. All plans and Suggestions should be carried into effect. The history of the Tobacco Industry’s business policy clearly speaks volumes for its mischiefs and crimes. Government should make a brand new law to force cigarette companies to compensate victims who suffer diseases associated with smoking.