Only Survival Of The Profitable Counts

“I believe the children are our future.”

That’s a line from an old Whitney Houston song. Appallingly, it’s also the thinking behind a collection of recently released R.J. Reynolds Tobacco company documents.

The cache of internal communications, covering the years 1973 to 1990, was made available last week by California Congressman Henry Waxman, who obtained them from law firms involved in anti-tobacco suits. In the papers, tobacco executives speak of the need to develop aggressive marketing campaigns tailored to children as young as 14 years old - variously referred to as “beginning” smokers, “pre-smokers,” and “replacement smokers.”

Reynolds is, you will remember, the same company that has so loudly denied ever encouraging young people to smoke. The one that reacted with wounded indignation to suggestions that its Joe Camel cartoon mascot was a way of reaching kids.

Yet there they are on this paper trail, seeking ways to appeal to 14-year-old children. Indeed, one 1984 document reportedly defines the target market as beginning two years younger than that, with boys and girls 12 years of age.

I don’t know why I’m surprised; I’ve always believed that where our best interests collide with a corporation’s bottom line, our best interests haven’t a prayer. The company with the avuncular spokesman, the one that says it cares so deeply about the environment, the one that claims it’s a friend in time of need … chances are, they’d push grandma’s wheelchair off a cliff with her in it if they thought it would benefit the profit-loss statement.

Yet even by those standards, this seems to me a new low.

Of course, there’s never any telling what a person or industry will do when fighting for survival. And make no mistake, survival is definitely the issue here. Not just because antismoking forces have the tobacco industry reeling but also because older customers have been quitting the habit in droves, either by choice or because death by smoking-related illness makes the choice for them.

Even worse, from the industry’s point of view, is the statistical fact that if a person doesn’t start smoking when he’s young, chances are, he’ll never start at all.

So, the tobacco industry’s mandate is clear: to survive, it has to hook ‘em while they’re young. Thus the playground becomes the battleground. Young people, as one Reynolds memo puts it, “represent tomorrow’s cigarette business.”

I guess I knew all along that they felt that way. But there’s a difference between passively knowing a thing and seeing it in front of you, proved in black and white. I find myself choking on the sheer, unmitigated gall.

And suddenly, the historic $368 billion agreement negotiated last year between 40 states and the tobacco industry doesn’t look like such a sweet deal to me. Not because of questions about the amount of money or the strength of the prohibitions, but because it shields the industry from future litigation. That’s what the industry most wants. It’s also what it least deserves.

In fact, I think a little more litigation might be appropriate here - punishment levied on behalf of every middle-aged man on an oxygen tank who started smoking as a kid because a tobacco company said it made him look cool. And tough legislation about prosecuting companies whose marketing had even a semblance of an appeal to children. These people sold death sticks behind a smiley face, and even if you think that’s OK, even if you think smoking is a decision adults get to make, you cannot condone the fact that they went after our children. And lied about it.

Are still lying, in my opinion. Reynolds issued a statement last week which said in part that the company’s “position and policy have remained constant … smoking is a choice for adults and marketing programs are directed at those above the legal age to smoke.”

In other words, pay no attention to what you’ve seen with your own eyes, only to what we say. It didn’t work for the Wizard of Oz and it mustn’t work for R.J. Reynolds.

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