Big Tobacco Favored In Regulation Of Tobacco Products Making US Farms Less Stable

Main Category: Smoking / Quit Smoking
Also Included In: Regulatory Affairs / Drug Approvals;  Water - Air Quality / Agriculture
Article Date: 13 Nov 2008 - 1:00 PDT

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In an attempt to reinvent itself as a "responsible corporate citizen," tobacco company Philip Morris supports regulation of tobacco products by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. A new study in American Ethnologist reveals that proposed FDA regulation fails to address the suffering of migrant tobacco workers, the prevalence of smoking, and the redistribution of leaf production to the developing world, and it may actually favor the tobacco industry by reducing its liability for tobacco-related death and disease, by sustaining its operations around the world, and by strengthening its control over the terms of its contracts with U.S. tobacco growers.

Peter Benson, Ph.D., of Washington University explored the impact of Philip Morris's "makeover" and FDA regulation on tobacco farmers and migrant farmworkers in North Carolina.

While the company's support for FDA regulation of tobacco products seems calculated to enhance its public image, limit its liability, and maintain its global operations, it will also contribute to the continued restructuring of North Carolina's agriculture toward large-scale farming and dependency on undocumented immigrant labor from Mexico and Central America.

"In North Carolina, this historic tobacco control measure and cornerstone of Philip Morris's corporate makeover risks shifting the financial, moral, and political burdens of health-driven production onto the shoulders of insecure farmers and subordinated farmworkers," Benson concludes.

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This study is published in the journal American Ethnologist.

Peter Benson is affiliated with Washington University.

American Ethnologist is a quarterly journal concerned with ethnology in the broadest sense of the term. Articles published in the American Ethnologist elucidate the connections between ethnographic specificity and theoretical originality, and convey the ongoing relevance of the ethnographic imagination to the contemporary world.

Wiley-Blackwell was formed in February 2007 as a result of the acquisition of Blackwell Publishing Ltd. by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., and its merger with Wiley's Scientific, Technical, and Medical business. Together, the companies have created a global publishing business with deep strength in every major academic and professional field. Wiley-Blackwell publishes approximately 1,400 scholarly peer-reviewed journals and an extensive collection of books with global appeal. For more information on Wiley-Blackwell, please visit http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/ or http://interscience.wiley.com/.

Source: Amy Molnar
Wiley-Blackwell

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