Sir, - The giant Philip Morris Tobacco Corporation's report suggesting smoking is actually a good thing and a benefit to society because smokers tend to die younger, is indeed "bizarre and morally redundant". In coming to the conclusion that the Czech Republic would save more than $100million a year in pensions and health care that would otherwise be spent on smokers now dead' Philip Morris, has vocally admitted, for the first time, it manufactures and sells a noxious substance that slowly brings death to millions of users, and, thereby enriches states' coffers worldwide by billions in money.
Even Fine Gael frontbencher Alan Shatter was, and rightly so, quick off the mark in admitting our Government makes £1.2 billion from tobacco taxes and only spends some £500,000 on anti-smoking advertising each year.
The real consequences of the Philip Morris report, even if retracted by the spokesperson, are still very serious:
1, The tobacco companies could be accused of promoting euthanasia by knowingly marketing a killer substance for human consumption.
2, Every government which legally allows and continues to gain from such a practice is condoning it and thereby accessories to the act.
3, Philip Morris's admission, must surely make the case for all claimants against tobacco companies, and indeed against governments too, a much brighter prospect for success.
4, The Philip Morris approach of trading it's products on the strength of its monetary gain to the State, irrespective of the consequent loss of thousands of lives, is surely a reflection as to the depths of depravity to which modern-day marketing is prepared to descend and a blatant example of the materialism that is controlling our lives. - Yours, etc.,
James A. Gleeson, Thurles, Co Tipperary.