Tobacco: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

Tobacco used to be a cornerstone of American life. So we knew that sex was over before the female orgasm was invented. Even if you didn't smoke, you couldn't escape those who smoked. The cigarettes were in the hands of trusted journalists. Beloved cartoon characters. and the cowboys in the television commercials you already had dinner and had coffee the horses are calming down you calm down you start thinking about Saturday night in the city come where the flavor is the iconic Marlboro Man as synonymous with robustness and freedom as he was with dying from smoking-related illnesses because and this is true, that's what happened to at least four of the actors who played him as dead actors, it's like there was a gas leak on who's line It's, anyway, you could have done it, it's strange to see. those cigarette ads now and that's because for the

last

half century the United States has consistently limited the behavior of

tobacco

companies, we've put warning labels on packages and banned cigarette ads on television, all while executives

tobacco

workers were defending themselves from difficult questions about public health, it is true.

Babies born to women who smoke are smaller but are as healthy as babies. Lord, for pregnant women, pregnant ladies, enough cigarettes and you're practically shooting Lego babies that fit into Star Wars toys, who wouldn't want that? adorable, in the late '90s, regulations were such that the tobacco companies here voluntarily recalled not only the Marlboro Man but also Joe Camel, who people had ridiculously accused of being aimed at children just because he was an adorable cartoon camel cartoons that dressed like the Fonz and smoked everything. These restrictions help reduce U.S. smoking rates from around 43 percent in 1965 to 18 percent today, which one might assume would decimate the U.S. tobacco industry, which is what makes this 2008 clip be so surprising.

Tobacco is what you could call hot smoking. Is this the best time to be a tobacco farm? more profitable Wow, so it's an old product that's declining in popularity and yet somehow can't stop making money. It's basically the agricultural equivalent of the two of you. Now, one of the reasons for this could be that Americans smoke. Less in some parts of the world people smoke more to an occasionally shocking degree. You may remember this viral video of this two-year-old boy who is smoking a cigarette in Indonesia and it has gone completely viral - the mother says it is. totally addicted and if he doesn't smoke, he gets angry and starts banging his head against the wall, yes of course, he gets angry when you take away his cigarettes, he thinks they are gone, he still has no object permanence.

The baby was a media sensation. News crews from around the world tried to find him. Just on the other side of this bridge is the small fishing village that is the home of the Smoking Baby. We briefly meet Aldi and her mother Diana at the airport, flanked by a local television. team you're Aldi hi I'm Dan are you making a holy little friend just look at that kid he's his own Rat Pack all he's missing is three other kids dressed like him and a casino and this is where this story gets really interesting because It's baby's favorite brand of cigarettes was Mild, owned by Philip Morris International, the company that sells Philip Morris brands everywhere but the United States.

Like other multinational companies, they have flocked to Indonesia, a market where two-thirds of adult men smoke and there are very few restrictions. and I mean very few, this really reminds me that this is the entrance to a school and come with me, just a few steps from the entrance there is a kiosk sponsored by Marlboro Lights and at this kiosk a student can come and they buy an individual cigarette , they're only ten cents each and they even have a lighter on a string, of course lighters on a string, what kind of irresponsible cigarette seller outside of school would let a kid walk away with a lighter?

They are dangerous. Indonesia is far from the only country where Philip Morris International or PMI has expanded: they own seven of the world's top 15 international brands, including Marlboro, and Marlboro has recently increased its global market share thanks to its global donation. It won't be a maybe it's Marlboro campaign and if you're thinking what the non-maybe factors mean, let this video from the people responsible for the campaign explain it to you as a brand, Marlboro wasn't resonating with smokers. adults despite their values ​​of freedom, authenticity and work as a master of destiny, smokers lost the essence of the cowboy which led us to our opportunity to eliminate the word, perhaps so that more smokers the vocabulary becomes the catalyst that inspires smokers to move from simply thinking about life to taking initiative in their life. living Marlboro values ​​to be true and forever that's a load of bullshit, even Don Draper looks at that ad and takes it back a little.

We're talking about cigarettes, not Jesus. Now countries can try to counter the influence. of that type of marketing, but if the tobacco companies feel too threatened, they will subject them to legal hell. Let me take you on a world tour of how they attack laws meant to protect public health because it's kind of amazing, let's start in Australia in 2011. They passed a plain packaging law and what that means is that cigarettes come in packaging like this message from Quite monotonous color, the Australian government writes images, chooses the brand name, they are really relegated to the background.

Australia's plain packaging law bans tobacco companies' branding on packaging and I replaced it with disturbing photos like the stud on a corpse's toe, the cancerous mouth, the nightmare eyeball or the diseased lung now, oh yeah yeah, I'm pretty sure I'd find a healthy lung disgusting, but that thing looks like you're trying. breathe through baked ziti so just take it out, take it out, just take it out, take it out, maybe not surprising since this law was implemented, total tobacco and cigarette consumption in Australia fell to record lows and nightmares about balloons eyepieces have increased to record levels. demon eye to get these laws, although Australia had to file a series of lawsuits first the tobacco companies sued Australia in its highest court to stop them, the result was a bit surprising as Australia's attorney general let everyone know which I am delighted to be able to say that we have won that legal action and as icing on the cake it seems that the big tobacco companies will also have to pay the cost of the government, yes, even if that little one is the sixth largest country in the world in terms of land Mass and the tobacco companies didn't just lose.

The judges found his case misleading under alien synthetics and said it was fatally flawed, which sounds a little like early reviews of NBC's The Slap. What is this? How long am I supposed to watch it? What's the slap? Australia's legal problems were just beginning because then Philip Morris Asia got involved. The company is threatening to take the Australian government to an international court and says removing the brands from cigarette packs will reduce the value of its trademark and intellectual property. That's right, a company was able to sue a country for a public health measure through an international court.

How is that possible? Well, it's a simple explanation actually: they did it by digging up the 1993 trade agreement between Australia and Hong Kong which had a provision that Australia could not seize the property of the Hong Kong-based company, so nine months before As the lawsuit began, PMI put its Australian business in the hands of its Hong Kong-based Philip Morris Asia division and then sued alleging that the confiscated property in question was the trademarks. on their cigarette packs and you have to give it to them, that's awesome, someone should really give those lawyers a pat on the back and a punch in the face, but flat on the back, first hit, first hit, little pat , the big albums, that's what it takes, but but wait, there's more here because you'll never guess who else is coming after Australia.

Three governments. Honduras, the Dominican Republic and Ukraine have five complaints to the World Trade Organization against Australia's plain packaging laws. That's true. Ukraine is accusing Australia of doing some damage to its tobacco exports. which was a bit surprising to a member of the Ukrainian Parliament when I first read about the government's position. It seems to be a joke because we have zero trade between Australian Ukraine and any tobacco product 0 correct 0, so Ukraine is inserting they are getting into something they have nothing to do with they are taking Kanye West's approach towards International traders The truth is, as you've probably already guessed, tobacco companies have encouraged these lawsuits, even covering some of the legal costs, which means the tobacco industry is treating Ukraine. like a theater dad treats a kid in a beauty pageant even though no brandy wants to do it yeah i paid for a suit and i pushed her on stage but this was all her idea and i swear to god brandy if you drop that flaming cane they are the king walking home you walk home brandy tobacco companies are not only going after big countries like Australia Philip Morris has also launched a legal challenge against the small South American country of Uruguay for damaging its trade prospects Uruguay has a population of just three and half a million people and it's a relatively small cigarette market, that's right, Philip Morris International is currently suing Uruguay, a country you think so little of that you didn't even realize it's not Uruguay, this is Yoruba.

Nine years ago, your guys started introducing bigger and bigger products. health warnings smoking rates decreased and Uruguayans like the laws - 68% of smokers say they should be stronger, but just because they wanted that hasn't stopped PMI from suing them for the

last

five years and that's a lot for a small country. Luckily they have had help. Uruguay's path has received the support of the World Health Organization and the Pan American Health Organization as well as the mayor of New York City Michael Bloomberg who donated $500,000 to pay legal fees. legal fees were getting expensive, they had to take money from Michael Bloomberg on the scale of how shitty that must feel, it's barely higher than borrowing money from your ex girlfriend's current boyfriend's stepfather and forcing Uruguay to do that no It was bad enough, let me tell you something.

Philip Morris International has made Togo Togo one of the ten poorest countries in the world and they have recently introduced some new laws on tobacco ludo goo Togo is setting conditions for the sale of tobacco packets starting September 1, 2014 of cigarettes sold in Togo must carry warnings in French AV and kPa about the health risk associated with tobacco use, now a first written warning sounds great until you learn that 40% of Togo's adult population is illiterate , which is why some members of the Togolese government wanted something more like Australia. lung ziti packaging tear it down tear it down is still disgusting, but when they found out about Philip Morris International, a company with annual net income of 80 billion dollars basically threatened to sue Togo, whose total GDP is 4.3 billion and when their GDP is only a couple of billion more than Avatar's box office a protracted legal case isn't really what you need now we contacted Togo and asked to see their correspondence with the tobacco companies and they gave us this letter EMI we had to translate it from French, but it was worth it because this is almost comically appalling, informs Togo that plain packaging laws would lead to an untold amount of international trade litigation, suggesting that Togo would lose any legal challenge by citing, among other things, a decision of the Australia's High Court writing, concluded that plain packaging constitutes a substantial deprivation of property rights.

Now the court case they are referring to is the one from before, remember?, the one in which the tobacco companies lost so much that they had to cover the legal costs and yet they summon a judge. in that case who ruled in favor of tobacco ignoring the other six who presented their case if you remember misleading unreal and synthetic and saying that it had fatal flaws that's like when a shitty movie gets a good review from a bad one like Mordecai is a lot of dot dot dot great bits letter is and yet Togo is justifiably terrified by threats of deals of thousandsof millions of dollars retracting a public health law that many people wanted and it's not just Togo.

British American Tobacco sent a similar letter to Namibia and one of its subsidiaries sent one to the Solomon Islands, a country with a population of 600,000 at the moment, it's safe to say that if you live in an apartment with at least two other people and you You ask one of them to smoke outside, you can expect a letter from a tobacco company very soon. Look, I might get angry and I might call the tobacco companies or monsters or open sores on Satan's dick, but instead, let's get over this and Let's try to negotiate peace because it is clear what each side wants, the countries want to warn their citizens. about the health dangers of smoking tobacco, tobacco companies want to be able to present brand images that they have spent time and money cultivating, so I suggest a compromise.

Meet the new face of Marlboro Jeff, the sick lung in a cowboy hat. We are offering two Fs to Philip Morris International to use as it wishes. Put it on your billboards. Put it in some ads. In fact, don't be angry. We have already started doing it for you. This is a real billboard. He's in Montevideo right now and people seem to like him there because they like him, of course, they look, everyone loves Jeff, the sick lung in a cowboy hat, oh, one more thing, um. To be completely honest, no. We only did it in Uruguay because we also, and don't be mad, we made some Jeff brand t-shirts and sent them yesterday to Togo, where they have been a big hit and if not, don't believe me, check this out.

Jeff is already there, you just need to claim him. Our lawyers, unlike yours, will not sue and I know our viewers would love to help you spread the word; In fact, you can tweet about Jeff using the hashtag Jeff. we can be trending around the world and get the attention of the pmos, post Jeff's photo on Google+ and tag him Mull bruh, which could take him to the top of Google Image Search for Marlboro. We can do this, everyone don't be a maybe because he is definitely suffering. since emphysema from his stress, they don't market to kids anymore, kids love Jeff, don't you kids?