We’re Not Talking Last Roundup Here
The Marlboro Man lives. He’s squinting into sunsets on the Russian steppes, the mountains of India, the rice fields of China, the beaches of Malaysia. It’s the cowboy way. No idealistic schoolmarm or her lawyer can tie a real man-of-the-west to the apron strings of social responsibility. After he’s had his way, he’ll saunter off to romance someone new.
Americans are forgetting who they’re dealing with, if they think last week’s settlement will convert the tobacco industry into a domesticated citizen who does the dishes and feeds the cat.
The tobacco industry would not have agreed to the settlement if it wasn’t good for the tobacco industry.
Some analysts say tobacco firms may recover the cost of the deal merely by spending less on the advertising that the settlement bans. Plus, the industry of course will raise its prices. Why do you suppose Philip Morris stock rose 60 percent in the last 52 weeks?
Already, the Wall Street Journal reports, tobacco marketers are dreaming up ads that use only words and thus obey the settlement’s ban on advertising with pictures or cartoons.
Advertising limits won’t end U.S. tobacco consumption. Years ago the industry did fine - and saved big bucks on marketing - after TV ads were banned. The industry’s biggest asset costs it nothing: teen rebelliousness. With nearly every adult in the nation telling adolescents not to smoke, what can teenagers do to show independence and shock their elders? Guess.
By dropping its denials of tobacco’s health impacts, which had become a laughingstock anyway, the industry now can profit by admitting health impacts. It can eliminate a few of the 600 chemical additives in cigarettes and sell new, “safer” smokes.
The settlement will cut down on some of the litigation that had yapped at the industry’s heels. It will create a fund to pay Americans for the health consequences of their own foolish decisions. That’s progress?
Aside from the industry itself, lawyers could be the biggest winners from this deal. Some attorneys in the settled state lawsuits have contracts that could bring them up to 25 percent of the billions the industry agreed to pay.
If U.S. tobacco sales do fall below 1996 levels, the deal provides for tobacco firms to get rebates on their promised payments to the victim compensation fund. How sweet.
Even if U.S. sales fall, business is booming overseas. U.S. tobacco firms are galloping across Russia, Asia and India, advertising heavily and corralling factories for a U.S.-owned industry whose potential sales dwarf the persnickety market at home. The industry penetrated those foreign markets with trade assistance from the same government that now hails the settlement.
Happy trails, Marlboro Man.
, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Webster For the editorial board