Portside

DuPont Has DDT to Sell, So Watch Out! (1945), Women Want the Vote, Men Say No Way (1915), Icelandic Women Go on Strike Against Gender Discrimination (1975), Big Tobacco Kills, and Keeps on Killing (1940), Happy Birthday, Mike Doonesbury! (1970)

Readers Comments: After-Tax Income Under the Trump-GOP Budget; One Brief Shining Moment; How NOT To Run an Antisemitism Commission; Take Action in Defense of NYU Student Logan Rozos; How Can Academics Support Workers' Organizing at Amazon; more;

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.