Philip Morris study finds smokers less likely to get a job or find love

I missed this while I was on holiday the other week but I couldn't let it pass without comment.

Reported by MailOnline on April 6, ‘Smokers are less likely to get a job or find love, new study shows’.

The survey also exposed strong feelings towards smokers in their everyday life, particularly around money and health.

Most non-smokers believed that smokers waste money (80%) and smelled bad (73%), and over half (54%) stated that had a negative impact on NHS resources.

I would normally treat such studies with the contempt they deserve and ignore them.

For the record though it’s worth noting that the survey of 1,800 non-smokers and 2,000 smokers was commissioned by none other than Philip Morris Limited, the UK and Ireland arm of Philip Morris International, the global tobacco giant.

Readers of this blog won’t be surprised because the company’s anti-smoking agenda has been noted here many times.

In 2019 I briefly considered setting up a standalone blog and calling it PMI Watch. I didn’t but I did draft an intro that began:

According to Peter Nixon, managing director of Philip Morris UK, “There is no reason why people should smoke anymore.” This comment is one of a series of anti-smoking statements issued by the tobacco giant over the past three years.

Others include the headline-grabbing claim that the company wants to stop selling cigarettes in the UK by 2030. Another was the announcement, in September 2017, that Philip Morris International (PMI) will donate one billion dollars to a new organisation, the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World, over twelve years.

In April 2019 a new initiative, Quit Cigarettes, was launched. Created by Change Incorporated (part of the VICE media group) but funded by PMI, headlines included 'How Smoking Increases Chances of Genital Warts', 'This Is How Smoking Makes Your Penis Shrink', 'How Smoking is Ruining Your Sex Life', and 'Is Smoking a Deal-Breaker on Tinder?'.

A disclaimer on the Change Incorporated website stated that, ‘VICE maintains editorial control, so Philip Morris International may not share the views expressed.’ In reality the initiative’s relentless anti-smoking message is not dissimilar to the stance adopted by PMI on social media and elsewhere.

I then added:

To be clear, I fully support efforts by PMI (and other companies) to develop, manufacture and market risk reduction products. I also support efforts to educate and inform consumers about the relative risks of different tobacco or nicotine-related products.

Having spoken to ex-smokers who have switched to e-cigarettes or heated tobacco, I am also favourably impressed by PMI’s IQOS device. I have written or said as much on several occasions.

I cannot however support a strategy that actively belittles consumers who enjoy smoking and don’t want to quit, whilst targeting a ‘smoke free world’ that can only be achieved by discriminating against millions of adults, raising taxes to punitive levels, and creating a world in which consumers are not only denied the choice of combustible products but are increasingly restricted from using them.

If smokers choose, of their own volition, to quit or switch to reduced risk products, that’s absolutely fine. Treating them like imbeciles if they don’t is not.

Although PMI Watch lay dormant I nevertheless used those comments when speaking on a panel at the Global Tobacco and Nicotine Forum (GTNF) in London last year.

I then repeated them in an article for Tobacco Reporter, ‘Back Choice, Beat Prohibition’ published in January (2022).

Personally I find the company’s position - continuing to sell cigarettes to millions of people worldwide but at the same time targeting smokers with what I can only describe as playground barbs - pretty objectionable.

Someone must think this is a clever way to wean smokers off cigarettes and on to the company's smokeless products but imagine a food manufacturer commissioning a similar study and reporting that ‘Fat people are less likely to get a job or find love’ as part of a campaign to reduce obesity.

That said, there’s one place where smokers are less likely to have a job and that’s Philip Morris. When the Independent interviewed Peter Nixon, PM’s UK and Ireland MD, in 2019 it reported:

Nixon is almost evangelical in his conviction and sense of purpose … Among his 400 employees in London apparently, there is one hold-out who still smokes. “I’m working on him though.”

I accept that last comment was probably tongue-in-cheek but, either way, the point was made. The number of smokers employed by Philip Morris in London is almost nil which is remarkable given that 13 per cent of the adult population still smoke.

Statistically you might expect there to be around 50 smokers in a workforce of 400 but even in a white collar, middle class environment I would still expect at least half that number (ie 25) to smoke.

And let’s not forget, this is a tobacco company whose profits still come from selling cigarettes!!

Last year Peter Nixon’s successor Christian Woolfenden said, “Without a doubt, the best choice any smoker can make is to give up smoking.”

Quoted by MailOnline a few weeks ago there was a subtle change because this time he said, “The best thing any smoker can do is quit tobacco and nicotine completely."

I've said this before but I have to question this approach. After all, if the best thing any smoker can do is quit tobacco and nicotine completely what does that say about any nicotine product, smokeless or otherwise?

It's hardly a ringing endorsement is it?

Oh well, I’m sure they know what they are doing. In my experience, if there’s one thing Philip Morris execs don’t lack it’s self confidence.

PS. In February last year we invited the company to take part in a Forest webinar on tobacco control. Christian Woolfenden, who had joined Philip Morris three months earlier (in November 2020), was mentioned as a possible speaker.

Understandably perhaps we were told he might not ‘be comfortable participating so early into his leadership of PM in the UK’.

Fifteen months on the invitation is still on the table if PM would like to reconsider. A one-to-one online interview would be particularly interesting.

Comments

[Pat Nurse]

Until smokers learn to stop funding Philip Morris and to take their custom elsewhere, either for tobacco or heat not burn products, then these types of attacks will continue.

I think it has been pretty obvious for some time that antismokers have taken over this particular company so stop funding hate.