Smokescreens and State Responsibility: Using Human Rights Strategies To Promote Global Tobacco Control

Abstract

Based on a 2001 study commissioned to justify the repeal of restrictions on smoking in the Czech Republic, Philip Morris advocated that tobacco had saved the Czech government about $147,000,000 in reduced health care costs, pensions, and housing expenditures for the elderly due to smokers' early deaths. The report was met with disgust that such morbid considerations should be used to inform tobacco policy, prompting a public apology from Philip Morris. Subsequent reviews of the analysis on which the report was based revealed that the economic costs of smoking-including health care, absenteeism and fires-were actually thirteen times higher than the so-called "benefits." Philip Morris's flawed economic analysis is a classic example of the lengths to which the tobacco industry has gone over the last several decades to secure new markets in the developing world.