Quit smoking cigarettes demands yet another Philip Morris funded initiative
Tuesday, May 7, 2019 at 14:09 We’re all familiar with Philip Morris’s plan to ‘eventually stop selling cigarettes altogether in order to achieve a “smoke-free” future’.
It followed the news, announced in September 2017, that PMI was to donate one billion dollars over twelve years to the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World.
Since then the company has launched a series of anti-smoking initiatives including, most recently, the risible ‘Unsmoke Your World’ campaign that features the instruction:
If you don’t smoke, don’t start.
If you smoke, quit.
If you don’t quit, change.
Now the company is funding yet another stop smoking initiative. Quit Cigarettes has been created by Change Incorporated which describes itself as a ‘new, purpose-driven media company owned by Vice [magazine]’.
Curiously, apart from a report in the Financial Times in March, the campaign has gone largely unreported.
(The FT claimed, inaccurately it was said, that PMI ‘has teamed up with youth-focused Vice Media to promote vaping’. So far, to the best of my knowledge, there has been no mention of e-cigarettes or other risk reduction products.)
What is surprising is that despite posting a series of articles and videos on its website, Change Incorporated has tweeted just once, on April 2. To put this in perspective, the Vice and PMI Twitter accounts post numerous tweets every day.
As far as I can tell, neither the PMI nor the Philip Morris UK accounts have mentioned the Change Incorporated Quit Cigarettes initiative at all. Not once.
Nevertheless the campaign must be building a head of steam because last week it held its first live event – in Norwich!
Sadly I had a previous commitment in London otherwise I would have been tempted to go, not least because I rather like Russell Kane!
Anyway I'll keep an eye out for further events. Meanwhile, if you’re wondering what you’re missing by not visiting the Change Incorporated website, here are a few headlines:
Here’s how smoking is sabotaging your love life
How smoking harms your memory
The sweet smell of successfully giving up smoking
Update: It appears that Change Incorporated is far more active on Facebook where its videos ('She smokes, I worry', 'Sucks to be a smoker', 'Smoking can shrink your penis' etc etc) are attracting hundreds of thousands of views. I'd love to know where they are all coming from.
PS. My interest in this initiative is fuelled partly by the fact that I was interviewed in January by a freelance journalist who said he had been commissioned by Vice to write an article about the 'smoking lobby'.
In March I was told the article was due to be published in April. It still hasn't appeared. I'm beginning to think it never will. The question is, why?
Reader Comments (2)
Just a bit of propaganda there, eh? Smokers have failed relationships, smokers have bad memories, smokers get dementia...
Some of that is lies. As to the failed relationships, that one is loaded. We know that people fall for hysteria and moral crises all the time, and eventually sanity once again prevails. But a short time in history can be a very long time to live through. And they've already cut us out of polite society. People can do or say anything to us, and there's no penalty for it, because smokers...we're not quite human.
And when that's been personally levelled at you for a couple of decades, the idea of quitting so that you can be accepted by those people, who've shown nothing but hatred and contempt towards you...well, it's not much of a reason, is it?
PMI has been taken over by the anti smoking industry. How can they think that insulting potential customers will bring in trade? Tobacco companies would not but the antismoker industry has been pushing this abuse for decades with no self awareness.
I hope all smokers stop buying PMI products and in the name of decency, if they switch, then buy vaping or hnb products from other, more ethical, companies. If they smoke, then make PMI's wish come true and stop buying their tobacco or cigarettes. Find another brand.