Op Ed: Big Tobacco Lies in Its Teeth:
Desperately Dollar-Driven
Despite Poison-Drug Damages

Why Allow Millions-More Victims of Uncontrolled Greed? They are the sure consequence of long-paid "corporate campaign contributions."

"Duck Soup" art courtesy: bankruptcylitigationblog.com

(BEND, Ore.) - “WHO You gonna believe, me or your own eye?” is the classic rejoinder from Chico in the famed Marx Brothers film DUCK SOUP.

“Caught in the very act”, Chico proclaims precisely the same reaction of Big Tobacco in its latest effort to “manufacture consent”; and public compliance for killing off a reasonable/rational Legislative decision to seek the wit, wisdom and will of Oregonians.

This one, headed by Reynolds Tobacco, was so far off any possible reasonable-rational tv-ad approach that “immediate angry public response has forced the media channels to demand changes” from a heavy/dollar-paying client; an almost-unheard/of happening in the advertising world.

The OREGONIAN (9/7/07) termed the Reynolds ad “mendacious”, “contemptibly misleading”, “oily spittle”. The front-page lead story pointed out that the program-attacked was “the result of months of work by Gov. Ted Kulongoski, enlightened legislators, hospitals, medical providers, and a host of public health and child welfare workers throughout Oregon.”

The TV-ad attack was an old and proven strategy, The OREGONIAN continues: “Muddy the waters, leaving voters so confused that enough will vote no to defeat a measure that would have passed easily without the disinformation campaign.”

The Big O then concludes: “Oregonians should ignore the industry’s onslaught.”

I agree, absolutely; nothing done by private-gain dollar-driven “media buys” should ever be allowed to decide a commonweal-issue decision by weight of distorting, then perverting money-manipulation.

Insightful Oregonians have now told Big Tobacco, clearly and with intensity “so intense it could not be ignored”: “You lie in your teeth, you cur, SIR !” --surely a seminal and significant new level of public action.

Those words in past ages were the trigger for deathly duels --and here they may have the same effect, as this corporate confrontation continues to seek malign manipulation of state-level political protocol.

Several tv stations led this remedial action, responding to their own judgment on composition and responsibility-shown for the ad.

Insider information clearly demonstrates that their rapid refusals were motivated strongly by negative public responses received in high volume both locally and across the entire state, from many communities.

Major network affiliates were considering the same response when action came from stations first involved, somewhat delayed by headquarters indecision. Now on-record public demand should cure that.

The ad-claim went well beyond the facts-of-the-matter: Images-and-narration clearly implied intention AND even some actions by the Legislature which never occurred.

But the ad openly and clearly stated --with both words and displayed personal action-- highly-visible sloganeering statements added to the Oregon Constitution; consequences not contemplated in the initiative, reflecting the wit, wisdom and will of the Oregonian public, demonstrated in prior votes.

This very illuminating action-response is clearly seen as even more important than the fate of the Oregon initiative itself, determining the people’s decision on increasing the tax-per-packet on cigarettes; now known to all, across the world, as “those death-sticks delivering nicotine nastiness” and addiction, leading to a slow-and-painful death for most so exposed over years.

Those facts have been established over the past century --and further detailed in very deep legal control already exercised by our Court system --to the tune of millions in damages already force-paid, with more to come.(Disclosure: A family member, captured as a child by similar misleading advertising, suffers from unbreakable addiction and is now, after “decades of puffing and protesting”, coming into the very painful phase inevitable for so many, so -captured, so exploited over lifespan.)

That Court decision --the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement--was the largest civil settlement in U.S. history, when signed in 1996 by 46 states and the four leading Big Tobacco firms R.J. Reynolds, Philip Morris, Brown & Williamson, and Lorillard.

It provides billions of dollars for distribution to the states as compensation for Medicare costs associated with smoking-related disease. The payments are perpetual, with no limit to the yearly settlements.

Every state and 6 U.S. territories signed; Florida, Minnesota, Texas and Mississippi had already reached agreement with the industry, and 40 other tobacco companies joined rapidly.

(Information on TMSA is proved here as most-probable motivation for the desperate attempts by Big Tobacco to snatch more lifelong victims via keeping down cost-per-pack, since voluntary restrictions on marketing and advertising are included in TMSA; and total cigarette consumption in the U.S. fell to a 50-year low in 2004)

Thus “the current realistic status”, with much more historical information, makes crystal-clear the malign determination of this so-called “industry” to continue its poisonous impacts on American society; with roots leading right on back to Colonial (even pre-Colonial!) beginnings, built on the evil reliance on slave-labor --at even-then phenomenally-low costs-- to build a Southern States agricultural empire and culture producing a product known --even then !-- to be extremely damaging to health for any-and-all users.

What is clearly at open and public-stake here in whether the heavy flow of Big Tobacco dollars into distorted, perverted public information channels can be manipulated and maneuvered to cloak, hide, sugarcoat or otherwise make meaningless well-known public health facts. With the companies partially-controlled via the TMSA, at the cost to corporations involved of billions on billions, motivation for that increasingly desperate struggle is made crystal clear.

That echoes the ongoing strong attempts by corporate interests to take over control of American government at every level, using “corporate campaign contributions” as the first essential weapon; and destructive attack on the initiative programs in every state, while manipulating the court system, too, as needed.

Deregulation and privatization are major weapons now constantly brought to bear; but in education, as in NCLB, new “faucets for federal funding” are sought and have been set up, leading on to still further depredations against taxpayer funds meant for more positive purposes.

Making any added-tax seem to be “unfair”, levied too loosely against ONLY cigarette-users, is a false-attack flash-reaction/button, carefully designed to produce unthinking rapid-response based on proven and widely-held Oregonian principles of fairness for all.

That revealed-design fell far too flat for most insightful citizens of this well-informed State, resulting in this spectacular demand-for-ad/reversal by the very media channels targeted for that manipulation.

But the major point here is still and most painfully one more wide and very damaging application of the bought-and-paid-for “decision in error” by the Supreme Court, allowing falsely-manipulated reliance on the First and Fourteenth Amendments to provide unnatural and now proven unseemly and extremely damaging provision of “political speech” rights to corporations; precisely as if that long-recognized “legal fiction format” actually WAS a living, breathing person entitled to that right.

In Oregon, with the insights of community-minded smaller tv-station management, a further strong blow against Big Tobacco manipulation has been struck.

NOW is the time for YOUR follow-up: To Congressional members, particularly the Oregon delegation; AND to returning members of our own “elected representative assembly”, gathering soon in Salem, with huge problems yet to solve; surely including demanded reform of the corporate tax-payment “national joke” of “$10 minimum...”, now SEVENTY YEARS OLD.

That’s one sure to bring on further/flourish and lavish-lay/on of those “corporate campaign contributions” --you can bet!

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Reader’s Note:

“See also”: Big Tobacco Muscle Still Manipulates “Clean” Session; Op Ed archived; 4/28/07: click on my list in STAFF. Second sentence reads: “Heavy-duty dollars still outweigh the balance of informed, responsible and conscience-driven electoral choices.”

Balance helps place responsibility for Legislative failure to deal with this demanding issue, forcing it into the initiative process, now under attack as expected by Big Tobacco.

Quotes are verbatim, shortened, summarized; complete statements and original sources available on request.

Information re TMSA from Wikipedia; much, much more re tobacco health effects and worldwide growing regulation, obviously preparing for total ban on what has proven an extremely expensive and dangerous drug, easily accessed there.