Big
tobacco is evil. This “truth” serves as the foundation for
tobacco control policymaking across most of the world. Public health bureaucrats, politicians and non-profit health advocacy groups believe so strongly in the evil of big tobacco that they ostracize any person or group they deem to be advancing the interests of the tobacco industry.
Perhaps big tobacco is evil. Combustible tobacco products are deadly and for decades the industry lied to the public, marketed to children and spent untold millions influencing public policy. Yet, by branding big tobacco as evil, public health organizations like the WHO have egregiously marked vastly less harmful alternatives to smoking, such as
vaping and snus as complicit.
Joining us today on RegWatch is Clive Bates, tobacco control policy expert and former Director of Action on Smoking and Health (UK). Bates believes tobacco control crusaders have baked into policy a principle of “irreconcilable conflict” between the interests of the tobacco industry and public health. Bates says the principle is both permanent and inescapable.
