do you think that tobacco company executives smoke their own toxic product?

[novicecrafter]

Can you imagine? I know that most of the low level tobacco pushers that go around to bars and hand out "free sample packs" do not smoke. Im pretty sure the twinkie top exec eats twinkies... but something tells me that the tobacco execs do not partake.

Here is an interesting and somewhat related article.

http://www.nytimes.com/1994/03/20/magazine/how-do-tobacco-executives-live-with-themselves.html

"How do tobacco executives live with themselves"

 

[Jerk]

I would say that there would be a higher rate if smokers in the tobacco companies because some non smokers would have a hard time working for them.

 

[Del Boy]

I wonder if the executives get free cigarettes ? Dodgy perk to be getting if you ask me...lol

I think i would either have to smoke or leave the company. I'm quite principled on certain things. I'm not sure i could be promoting something that i didn't or wouldn't do myself.

 

[Eddie.Willers]

My folks both used to work for John Player & Sons, in Nottingham, in the 60's-80's. Every employee, from high to low, was given a free carton of cigarettes per month (or equivalent in loose tobacco) - even if you didn't smoke or didn't smoke Player's cigarettes.

The non-smokers, naturally, used to sell theirs but this was in the days when cigs were not that expensive anyway.

 

[Del Boy]

Hey Eddie so you're from Nottingham ? I lived there for 6 years after i moved up from London. The players factory had become automated by 1988 when i moved there. They still employed quite a few people though. We actually lived in Ruddington.

 

[UntamedRose]

Know one mild mannered inheritor who hides as a history professor. He also doesnt smoke.

 

[Eddie.Willers]

Hey Eddie so you're from Nottingham ? ..

Yup, born and bred in West Bridgford, moved to London when I was 18 (in '82) - had many school-friends who lived in Ruddington - nice little village. The old man worked at Player's from 1962 to 1991 and my old mom from 1976 to 1991. She says now the workforce is down to 800 people working three shifts and new machinery has many, many times the output of the clunky old British designed and built machines they used to work on.

 

[Del Boy]

What are you doing in Mexico me duck ? ...lol Do you like it ? Are you on the run ?...lol

We used to go to the Asda in West Bridgford. Saw Cloughie there once with Neil Webb...ha.

 

[sqirl1]

they probably smoke cigars but not cigarettes. I don't know of any premium cigars made by the big 3 (PM, RJR, BAT), although I know Phillip Morris makes/owns Black & Milds. So yeah, they probably use tobacco, but nothing their company makes. if I were the CEO of Drew Estates, I'd probably be smoking a Tabak Especial every night.

 

[DaveP]

Considering that people who smoke and people who don't get those diseases, they have an argument that cigarettes are not to blame for all and maybe not any of those. They argue that genetic predisposition is more of a factor.

They also have the argument that smoking is a choice. Never mind that it is addictive.

When I was 15, there were people going around giving out free packs of Newports and free lighters at a local water park/ski show. They caught me just at the point of experimentation and pushed me on with a couple of packs of my own and something to light them with. That was back when 3 out of 4 people were smokers. I never saw the guy light one, but odds are he was a smoker, too.

These days, it would be easy to recruit smokers. Non-smokers would be less likely to apply for a free sample sales pushers job. OTOH, there was a cigarette factory in our town where half of the employees never smoked. They were given a pack a day and a carton a week plus all the free cigarettes they wanted to smoke while at work. Visitors were given free packs to smoke while there and required to swap them for complimentary tax paid packs as they left the building.

I used to smoke in their computer room while servicing the equipment! That was the only computer room where you could do that, even if you could smoke other places in the building.