Sunset of tobacco empire

Victory war against American cigarette producers (1997)

Archival project "Radio Liberty this week 20 years ago." The most interesting and significant from the Archive of the Radio Freedom of twenty years ago. Incomplete story. Still living hopes. Could Russia go the other way?

On the popularity of claims against tobacco companies. Participants in the program: Allan Kellan - Professor of the South -Western University in Los Angeles, Patrick Reynolds - grandson of the founder of Rj Reynolds, Richard Hakers - "Cigar Tsar". Raya Vail and Yuri Zhigalkin are journalists. Author and presenter - Marina Efimova. For the first time on May 1, 1997.

Announcer : "Smoke your cigarette, and when you finish yourself to death, tell St. Peter the paradise of the gates:" It is terrible for me to make you wait, St. Peter, but I have to smoke another cigarette. "

Marina Efimova : This popular rhyme of 1947 now seems prophetic. The Americans declared tobacco poison, the fight against smoking rose in the sphere of big policy. In Chicago, General Prosecutors of 24 states are preparing for the decisive and, perhaps, the last shock on the positions of the royal royal houses "Philip Morris", "Rj Reynolds", "Brown & Williamson", "Arizona AG" and others who gave the world such a temptation as Philip Morris cigarettes, "Camel", "Winston", "Salem", "Virginia Slimz" and "Malbore". For the first time in the history of the centenary war between opponents of smoking and the tobacco industry, the war, which three years ago seemed hopeless, representatives of tobacco companies threw out the white flag and proposed the conditions of surrender. If the congress in the future protects them from the courts, then they are ready to pay 300 billion dollars for 25 years to the Fund for the treatment of diseases caused by smoking, undertake to abandon the advertisements that depict people and, in general, living creatures, and stop the sale of cigarettes to adolescents.

For the first time in the history of the centenary war between opponents of smoking and the tobacco industry, representatives of tobacco companies threw out the white flag and proposed the conditions of surrender

The crusade against smoking actually began after the First World War, which introduced cigarettes into everyday life. The first crusaders were doctors, then the mothers of teenagers who died from asthma, public figures, and celebrities joined them. Several television columns in which the lungs dying from cancer Yul Brinner says:

Announcer : "When you see these personnel, I will no longer be alive, but I want you to remember me every time you light a cigarette."

Marina Efimova : However, a fracture in the alignment of forces occurred when lawyers opened the second front. This is how this describes the New York journalist Kevin Sak.

Announcer : It occurred to the Fround to judge tobacco companies for the trading of poison to the General Prosecutor Mississippi, Mississippi. In May 1994, Moore filed a lawsuit against one of the tobacco companies with a demand to pay for the treatment of an avid smoker, who smoked cigarettes of this company for a quarter century and was now treated for lung cancer at the expense of the state, since he did not have medical insurance. This act of the prosecutor was regarded by one - as an incredible courage, others as an incredible absurdity, and almost all - as an act of political suicide. In fact, it was a precedent. The prosecutor from the Mississippi immediately found followers, the prosecutors of the other states, but they lost the courts one by one, and for the time being it seemed hopeless for the time being. Suddenly, at the next trial in Florida, where the lawsuit filed not by the state, but a lawyer of a person who smoked cigarettes for 44 years and now dying of cancer, the jury for the first time in history issued a “guilty” verdict and awarded the tobacco company Brown & WilliamSon to pay the patient’s family 750 thousand dollars. This decision seemed to open the gateways, and now with various companies producing cigarettes, 60 lawyer firms are being judged throughout the country. ”

Marina Efimova : How is this new legal phenomenon explain the lawyers specializing in the tobacco industry? Our correspondent Yuri Zhigalkin talked with the professor of the South-Western University at Los Angeles Allan Kellan.

Yuri Zhigalkin : Do you find that the situation looks somewhat absurd? Tobacco companies are put on trial for being engaged in purely legal activities - the production of cigarettes?

Allan Kellan : Not necessarily. The prosecutors of several states, like some individuals, represent the matter in such a way that the fault of tobacco companies is not in the production of products harmful to health, but that they deliberately hid the information available to them about the lethal consequences of smoking. As a result, the plaintiffs say, consumers did not know the full truth about what they doom themselves when buying cigarettes. That is, they became victims of deception.

Yuri Zhigalkin : But on each pack of cigarettes for decades, a warning appears for decades that smoking is dangerous to health, it is said in open text that it causes cancer. The more you can scare the consumer?

Allan Kellan : Indeed, starting from the 60s, the government ordered manufacturers to put a notice on each cigarette pack of some of the dangerous consequences of smoking. The problem is that it was not mentioned that it inevitably turns into a pernicious habit. Theoretical conclusion: if adolescents who began to smoke from a youthful desire to stand out, did not know initially what they doom themselves, then by the time of growing up, smoking becomes part of their personality, they are no longer able to quit smoking, even knowing about all the sad consequences.

Yuri Zhigalkin : Nevertheless, frankly, there is hardly a person who would not know that smoking is a habit that is difficult to get rid of. What can change the recognition of this fact with tobacco companies?

Allan Kellan : If you, a product manufacturer, have represented it for decades as a healthy and fashionable accessory of life, thereby forming the attitude of several generations to it, then perhaps it is necessary to openly admit its at least partial guilt for the smoking that took deep roots in society.

Marina Efimova : I’ll interrupt the interview with Professor Kellan to illustrate his words. In 1946, RJ Reynolds, the manufacturer of Kamel cigarettes, managed to release a medical advertisement, which claimed that most doctors smoke “Kamel” because these cigarettes relieve stress. On the advertisement of 1948, then the then popular actor Ronald Reagan, sparkling with snow -white teeth assured that his favorite Chesterfield cigarettes are the easiest. Advertising skillfully lured women, for example, with a promise that smokers never get fat. Or the stunning elegance of Virginia Slimz, next to which on the advertisements are unhappy, not emancipated, non -smoking women of the beginning of the century, for example.

On the advertisement of 1948, then the then popular actor Ronald Reagan, sparkling with snow -white teeth assured that his favorite Cigarettes Chesterfield were the lightest

And the inciting inscription: "You have come a long way, Baby." There were advertisements precisely designed for teenagers. This was, in particular, the company RJ Reynolds, which depicted a camel Joe, which immediately became popular with schoolchildren on a Camel's advertisement. And the famous Malbor-meen cowboy with a cigarette in his teeth, also dead, by the way, from lung cancer, according to the right remark of one journalist, has become a symbol of the not wild West around the world, but the West as such.

Allan Kellan : The American hobby of our time is a healthy lifestyle. Smoking is increasingly replaced by public life. How will this turn out for the tobacco industry? She has long been increasingly putting on revenues from exports, on the production of cigarettes abroad. For example, China is a promising market for American companies. Here, in the USA, I think, new restrictions on advertising and tobacco will be introduced, but leading companies will not go broke and tobacco, of course, will not be prohibited.

Yuri Zhigalkin : The plaintiffs want more than moral satisfaction? Ideally, they demand that tobacco companies compensate for, compensate for the losses of each smoker who had a misfortune to get difficult to get. Do you think this punishment is adequate to the crime?

Allan Kellan : Indeed, I believe that the issuance of this kind of lawsuit as a trial puts the system of justice in a difficult situation. The fact is that specific legislation that could be guided by when considering such claims does not exist. This leads to completely opposite verdicts. Historically, until 1992, the courts rejected all attempts to receive compensation from cigarette manufacturers. Then the logic prevailed that the smokers voluntarily doom themselves to the problems associated with smoking. But the case in Florida is evidence that the moods are changing and, accordingly, the decisions of the courts are now unpredictable. This is not a very healthy trend, since there is a strong temptation to start the lawsuit with tobacco companies in the hope of random. Therefore, in my opinion, the best solution to the problem will be the legislative solution, that is, the creation of a new set of rules and laws, and not improvisational trials.

Yuri Zhigalkin : How do you even explain this sudden universal attack on the tobacco industry? How can she threaten her? Will they bring it to bankruptcy courts?

Allan Kellan : The principle came into the blood and flesh of American ethics: do not lie, do not deceive. Cigarette companies, I would say, colorfully came across this deception, and now we are observing only the consequences of understandable indignation.

Marina Efimova : This is what Professor Kellan means. Indeed, representatives of tobacco companies sometimes behaved like a hawler who once studied with me in the same class, who, to the teacher’s question, why she did not make lessons, said that she had a heart break. In the awarded Pulitzer Award, Richard Kruger's Asses to ashes, which means “dust to dust” (formula pronounced at the funeral), and “ashes to the ashes”, the author describes the 1976 television interview with the head of the scientific department of “Philip Morris” Helmut Wakeham.

Announcer :
- Not a single component found in tobacco is in such a concentration to harm.
- Are the components themselves harmful?
“Yes, everything can be harmful,” the Wakekham answered irritably, “even apple puree.”
“I don’t think,” the TV presenter remarked, “so that someone died from apple puree.”
“Just because they eat him a little,” answered the employee of the company Philip Morris.

Marina Efimova : But this was still 20 years ago, and only some month ago, according to the newspaper Miami Harold Tribun, Andrew Schindler, president of RJ Reynolds, said that he does not believe that tobacco could be the cause of any diseases. “Honestly,” he said, “I think that they get used to tobacco no more than, say, to carrots.” "Carrotage?!" - the judge was amazed. “Yes,” Schindler answered, “the British conducted such a study.” As already mentioned today, the question of whether tobacco is a drug and whether an avid smoker is actually a drug addict is at the head of the angle of the legal side of the anti -tobacco campaign. And the other day, another legal precedent was associated with this.

Andrew Schindler, president of RJ Reynolds, said that he does not believe that tobacco could be the cause of any disease

At the next trial against a tobacco company in North Carolin, federal judge William Austin recognized tobacco with a drug and ruled that the government organization "Food and Drugs Administration" has the right to regulate the sale of tobacco and especially its availability for adolescents. Say, it will be decided that tobacco kiosk cannot be closer than half a kilometer from schools and playgrounds. Although this decision of the judge will not really be without the approval of the congress, he was noisily welcomed by smoking fighters. And one of them, quite unexpected, is involved in our program today.

Patrick Reynolds : My name is Patrick Reynolds and I am a grandson A.D. Reynolds, the creator of the famous tobacco company producing Camel, Winston and many others. But I did not want to receive income from a product that brings people such harm. The only thing I remember about my father was how he was dying of a disease caused by smoking. He died of the very cigarettes who enriched our family. I loved my father, and his death brought me grief, whose shadow still lies in my life. I became a professional fighter with the tobacco industry and one of the leaders of the struggle for a non -smoker society. I think this is a very important job, and I am going to devote my whole life to it.

Marina Efimova : But in America there was already one such experience. In the 1930s, the "dry law" led to what? To the moonshine, to the Butlerance, to the heyday of the mafia.

Patrick Reynolds : We do not propose to impose a ban on the manufacture and sale of tobacco products. We only demand to increase the tax on cigarettes. In America, by the way, he is the lowest in the world. And we believe that they do not increase it because Congress receives significant amounts of money from tobacco firms for election campaigns. And for the same reason, adolescents can buy cigarettes from under the counter, even if they are under the age of 18. Alcohol is forbidden to sell people under 21 years of age, and the same rule must be introduced for cigarettes. In America, 60 percent of avid smokers began to smoke under the age of 14, and 90 percent - up to 19 years. So in fact, children become smokers.

Marina Efimova : Do not you think that you are fighting human nature?

Patrick Reynolds : What is human nature? No one was born with a cigarette in his teeth, and the first attempt to smoke always ends with a coughing attack, if not vomiting. There is nothing natural in smoking, adolescents begin to smoke not from physical need, but exclusively from psychological, in particular, from a sense of contradiction or to prove their independence.

Marina Efimova : People have been drinking alcohol for thousands of years, smoke for more than five hundred. Do you want to save humanity from such long habits?

Patrick Reynolds : In the USA, they always smoked on airplanes, and a few years ago they also asked me: do you really think that it is real to be forbidden to smoke in airplanes? And what do we see now? In the 21st century, smoking will become the same causal of the last century as Konka is now. And someday we will exclaim: did people smoke before?! Can't be!

Marina Efimova : The recent nostalgic film "Smoke" was accompanied by a farewell song that we chose for our current program:

When A Lovely Flame Dies,
SMOKE GETS in your Eyes.

When that you loved burned to the ground
Smoke eats eyes.

In a powerful choir, smoking opponents are barely audible, and even less often, protesting voices. One of them belongs to a resident of Nashville Jack Chambers, who wrote a letter to the newspaper New York Times:

Announcer : I want to remind those who draw smokers with helpless victims of tobacomania, that millions of these same smokers in America were quit smoking of their own free will and without the help of doctors. And if in most countries of the world every third person smokes, then in America - every fourth. But the point is not only this. In the righteous anger at tobacco companies, the current crusaders accidentally or intentionally forgot about personal responsibility. It seems to me dangerous. Not only because this is clearly unfair and, most likely, will lead to scorchin and extortion, both from the part of smokers and a lawyer, but also because this is a general tendency of recent years in American society - to reduce personal responsibility for their behavior, for their family, for their fate.

Marina Efimova : Another protesting voice belongs to a person, nicknamed the "cigar king", namely the king, and not the king, to the author of the bestseller about the cigars Richard Hakers, with whom Raia Weil is talking.

Richard Hakers : This fight against smoking contains a dangerous precedent when the government forcibly prescribes a healthy lifestyle for its citizens. But what if tomorrow they decide that sugar is so harmful that we should be from desserts, and in a week they will come to the conclusion that the green color is harmful to our psyche .... One God knows where this hunt for witches will lead us. One is clear - it is dangerous.

Raya Vail : How do you feel about the courts over tobacco companies?

Richard Hakers : In the end account, this can lead to the degradation of our economy, with possible consequences for the whole world. If the Americans knew how to replenish the state treasury tobacco companies, they would have thought twice before suing them. I'm not talking about farmers growing tobacco. What will they do? How many people will be without work, without a livelihood?

Marina Efimova : In one of the few letters to the New York Times, a resident of Philadelphia El Lippenkoth writes that an inevitable increase in cigarettes prices due to the fact that the government will increase the tax on their purchase, will hit workers who are mostly smoking and are unlikely to abandon this habit under the pressure of avologists of health and beauty. And cigarettes, prices for which have reached more than $ 2 per pack, already absorb a significant share of their budget. "I myself am a gastroenterologist and I think that if we talk about increasing tax on harmful products, then you need to start with a hamburger, with Big-Maka." American smokers who can dodging the need to part with a bad habit. Например, многие бейсболисты вернулись к лакомству своих прадедов - к жевательному табаку.

...многие бейсболисты вернулись к лакомству своих прадедов - к жевательному табаку

И болельщики уже, разумеется, стали перенимать эту моду. Или, скажем, как это незаметно стало вдруг считаться, что сигарета вредна, а сигара, лакомство дедов, не очень. Вот какую причину увлечения сигарами выставляет Ричард Хакерс.

Рая Вайль : Как вы объясняете, что именно сейчас, в разгар борьбы с курильщиками, стали один за другим открываться сигарные бары и салоны?

Ричард Хакерс : А вот это уже чисто американская черта. Мы - свободный народ и не любим, когда нам указывают, как надо жить. Запреты в Америке никогда не приводили к положительным результатам. Достаточно вспомнить сухой закон во времена депрессии. Сигарный бум в стране - это реакция. Чем больше будет появляться антиникотиновых законов, тем больше будет открываться сигарных салонов и клубов, тем больше будем мы курить.

Рая Вайль : Недавно в газете "Нью-Йорк Пост" как раз карикатура была на эту тему. В подвесной строительной люльке на 30 этаже стоят трое, а по карнизу к ним осторожно продвигается четвертый. Внизу толпа собралась, все волнуются, кричат, что полицию надо вызвать, что это самоубийцы. А швейцар успокаивает их: "Да не собираются они вовсе прыгать, это наша новая курительная зона".

Ричард Хакерс : Вот видите, мы даже шутить еще способны. Помните замечательного актера Джорджа Бернса? Он прожил сто лет и курил по 25 сигар в день. Джордж был моим близким другом. Однажды при мне он впервые купил десятидолларовую сигару, а всем известно, что Джордж всегда курил дешевые сигары, и сказал: "Если я плачу за сигару 10 долларов, я должен сначала с ней пообедать и переспать". Джордж любил шутить на эту тему.

Рая Вайль : Да, я помню, он как-то рассказал, что его личный врач советовал ему всю жизнь бросить курить, потому что у него, у Джорджа, слабые легкие. "А где сейчас этот врач?",- спросил кто-то из зала. "О, он давно уже умер!",- попыхивая своей неизменной сигарой сказал Джордж Бернс.

Ричард Хакерс : Он, кстати, пережил четырех своих докторов, и все они умоляли его бросить курить.

Марина Ефимова : Тут, кстати, вспоминается и шутка президента Франклина Рузвельта. Когда его спросили, почему он курит сигареты в таких длиннющих мундштуках, он ответил: "Потому что мой врач советует мне держаться от сигарет как можно дальше". Конечно, в противовес этим шуткам можно привести сцену, описанную в одной из недавних статей.

Диктор : На суде в Джексон-Вилле обвинение продемонстрировало видеозапись из палаты 49-летней мисс Коннор, умирающей от рака легких. Присяжные смотрели как усохшее, неопределенного пола и возраста существо безуспешно пыталось проглотить лекарство и отчаянно боролось за каждый глоток воздуха. Судья Некман был не в состоянии вынести это зрелище больше полутора минут. "Остановите пленку,- сказал он,- если она так сильно подействовала на меня, то так же подействует и на присяжных, и они не смогут непредвзято взглянуть на дело".

Марина Ефимова : В сегодняшней передаче мы говорили не только о правовой и психологической, но и об экономической стороне дела и, в частности, о той компенсации в триста миллиардов долларов, которую предлагают раз и навсегда выплатить табачные компании. Для тех, кто очень забеспокоился о судьбе табачных компаний я хочу заметить, что по убеждению многих экономистов половину этой суммы практически заплатят курильщики, которые вынуждены будут покупать подорожавшие сигареты. Элизабет Велан, президент общества "Наука и здоровье", на днях сказала: "За долгую историю табачные компании привыкли к кризисам и умеют с ними справляться. Будьте уверены: из каждого брошенного в них гнилого лимона они сделают лимонад".

Марина Ефимова : Судя по информации в журнале "US News and World Report", табачные гиганты "AJR" и "Philip Morris" уже передислоцируют войска. Взамен рекламных стендов, которые, вероятнее всего, запретят, они полным ходом создают рекламу в интернете, и скоро владелец компьютера сможет купить сигареты просто нажав на мышь. Однако главное последствие табачной войны, как уже предупредил профессор Келлман, состоит в том, что табачная империя переводит свой ядовитый соблазн из Нового света в Старый, и не только в Азию, но и в Африку, в Восточную Европу и в Россию. Экономический обозреватель журнала "US News" пишет: "Урок, который извлекли табачные компании из последних событий в Америке ясен: вперед на Восток!" Так что берегитесь!