Portside

The Lie That Made Food Conglomerates Rich...And Is Slowly Poisoning Us. The Truth vs. Alex Jones | Documentary. Jon Stewart Interrogates America's Support of Israel. Civil War | Movie. Trump Promises Rich Donors He'll Cut Their Taxes.

Deadly Fire's Legacy (in 1904), Forgotten Respect for Radicals (1939), Big Money in Lies (1954), So Long, Subway Tokens (1994), Racism wins, then loses (1959), Innocent man freed after 22 years (1939), FBI Finds "Right Kind" of Black Leader (1964)

In 1940s North Carolina, a Communist-led union of tobacco workers fought to bring democracy to the Jim Crow South.

Far from accepting defeat, Western tobacco companies like British American Tobacco (BAT) and Philip Morris International (PMI) have instead set their sights on Africa to protect their profit margins.

Philip Morris International, the world’s largest tobacco company, is investing billions of dollars in an attempt at reputation rehabilitation, including millions in the creation of the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World (FSFW). But there is a big distinction between “smoke-free” and “tobacco-free”.

With friends in the White House, and a pending $49 billion merger, Big Tobacco is back. The US remains the “world’s largest tobacco profit pool” outside of China, with “exciting” prospects for “long term growth”. Mergers and acquisitions have allowed the deadly industry to squeeze huge profits from customers, increasingly the poor, less educated and marginalized, and the supply chain, contract farmers, and workers, including children, who work for poverty wages.

Leading tobacco control expert Stanton Glantz analyzes how a big public health push in California defeated Big Tobacco and resulted in a two-dollar cigarette tax increase. The first tax increase on tobacco in 18 years has the potential to reduce smoking prevalence from today’s 9.4 percent to 7.1 percent by 2020. Yet Glantz adds a note of caution: with diminishing cigarette profits, Big Tobacco could find a place in the marijuana market, as more states legalize marijuana.

The ire of McConnell and other tobacco-state lawmakers throws a wrench into the negotiations.

The giant energy companies are taking a page from Big Tobacco’s playbook. As concern over climate change begins to lower the demand for fossil fuels in the United States and Europe, they are accelerating their sales to developing nations, where demand is strong and climate-control measures weak or nonexistent. As in the case of cigarette sales, the stepped-up delivery of fossil fuels to developing countries is doubly harmful...