Are you having trouble giving up smoking?
Tobacco could kill 1billion people in the 21st century unless governments act to reduce smoking dramatically, the World Health Organisation warned. Governments around the world collect more than £100billion in tobacco taxes every year but spend less than one fifth of one per cent of that revenue on controlling its use, the UN agency added.
‘We hold in our hands the solution to the global tobacco epidemic that threatens the lives of one billion men, women and children during this century,’ WHO director-general Dr Margaret Chan said.
Your friends and family may nag you because smoking is going to contribute to your death, but when I was trying to give up, somebody nagging me just made me reach for the packet.
But I love you, gentle, smoking-reader, and so I am going to give you an additional incentive to stop.
Here are some pictures of just four of the Board of Directors of Imperial Tobacco:
They look happy don’t they? It’s not the biggest tobacco company by a long way, but don’t worry about them, they are doing ok. The dude on the left had a salary of £835,000 with a bonus of £802,000 and along with ‘benefits in kind’ of £22,000 (free ‘baccy?), and shares schemes, his total for 2007 from Imperial Tobacco came to £3,494,000. He wasn’t the highest earner either.
I don’t want to get all precious about this, but I believe that sometime in the future schoolchildren will learn in history class how millions of people were killed by smoking, and they will ask why nobody in government stopped it. In the history of the world it will have killed more people than war.
On their website Imperial Tobacco state that “studies have shown that smoking is associated with several diseases and have led public health authorities to conclude that smoking is a cause of lung cancer and other diseases in smokers.”
Really?
They also say, “Our strategy is to create sustainable shareholder value by growing our operations both organically and through acquisition.” i.e. like any other business, they want to sell more. Don’t blame them. It’s their job. They do it for the shareholders.
Next time your will-power is waning I hope this helps.
