Phillip Morris, Stop Claiming Your "Low-Tar" Marlboro Golds are Safer!
- al: Susan V
- destinatario: Phillip Morris President Cifford Fleet
Over a decade ago federal District of Columbia judge Gladys Kessler, after noting the overwhelming evidence that the tobacco industry lied to the public about cigarette safety, ordered that the companies stop claiming that so-called “low-tar cigarettes” reduced the risk of cancer.
However, reports the Center for Public Integrity, Phillip Morris is continuing “to do just that.” In about a dozen pending lawsuits, Philip Morris “routinely argues that the nation’s top-selling cigarette, once known as Marlboro Lights and now called Marlboro Gold, reduces the risk of cancer.”
To get support for their claims in court, CPI says Phillip Morris hires the public relations experts who regularly contend that their clients’ products pose no danger to consumers - the same consultants who represent the chemical industry.
By “emphasizing the doubt inherent in health science,” and contradicting studies by reputable scientists, adds CPI, these firms have been instrumental in delaying regulations and any attempts by the EPA to crack down on dangerous chemicals like formaldehyde - which happens to be one of many toxic components of cigarette smoke.
What’s ironic is that tobacco companies invented these tactics. As professor Robert Proctor notes in his book, Cancer Wars, the tobacco industry made a point to fund studies that contradicted each other - ones that said cigarettes were safe and others concluding they were harmful - secretly proclaiming that “doubt is our product.”
As the DOJ ruled years ago, and reliable science confirms, the evidence discounting claims that “low-tar” cigarettes are safer than others is overwhelming - and this deception has to stop.
Sign this petition to demand that Phillip Morris stop misrepresenting the health dangers of its Marlboro Gold cigarettes.
To Phillip Morris President Clifford Fleet:
As a former student at UNC School of Public Health, I researched the dangers of cigarette smoke and other toxic chemical exposures, including reading Robert Proctor’s excellent research in his book, Cancer Wars. Because there is no reliable scientific research to support your claim that your “low-tar” cigarettes are safer, I am writing to demand that you stop misrepresenting the risks of smoking Marlboro Gold cigarettes.
[Your Comments]
According to The Center for Public Integrity, the testimony by Gradient Corporation’s Peter Valberg, which Phillip Morris relies on to support its claim that its low-tar cigarette is safer than others, “contradicts the findings of the Surgeon General, the National Academy of Sciences, and the National Cancer Institute." It also contradicts research presented by Robert Proctor and many others.
Aside from science, common sense alone will tell you it’s not just the nicotine and tar in cigarettes that is causing disease in smokers and others who inhale cigarette smoke. The formaldehyde alone can kill you! And the synergistic effects of the legion of toxic chemicals emitted from cigarette smoke and inhaled via cigarette filters has never been studied but is certainly a factor aside from concerns about tar and nicotine.
As director Stanton Glantz, of the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at the University of California, San Francisco told CPI, referring to Valberg and his ilk, “They are public-relations people who happen to have degrees in science. These are people who make their living producing results that their clients want. And that’s not science.”
Furthermore a ruling just this month by the FDA extending consumer protections to include e-cigarettes and other tobacco products came with a comment by Commissioner Robert M. Califf, M.D. that as a physician, he’d “seen first-hand the devastating health effects of tobacco use,“ and he adds that “At the FDA, we must do our job under the Tobacco Control Act to reduce the harms caused by tobacco. That includes ensuring consumers have the information they need to make informed decisions about tobacco use and making sure that new tobacco products for purchase come under comprehensive FDA review” [emphasis added].
It flies in the face of real science and the FDA’s recent announcement for your company to continue misrepresenting the risks of Marlboro Golds. Therefore I, the undersigned, demand that you stop lying about the safety of your “low-tar” cigarettes.
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