While one might argue that Congress in the past decade has acted in an increasingly punitive manner toward cigarette manufacturers, the reality is that the industry has absorbed all the punches and is still quite healthy. Indeed, for the first time in years, statistics indicate that more, not fewer, Americans are smoking. Media Magazines and newspapers in the U.S. derive much of their revenues from cigarette advertising. This guarantees editorial silence about the dangers of smoking. Social Groups For many cultural, ethnic, athletic and civic organizations cigarette money is habit forming.
Corporate offspring are fiercely loyal to the parent company.
Further, cigarette companies are consumers themselves needing chemicals, paper, solvents and flavoring agents. In return, a killer industry derives legitimacy from an association with wholesome products. Welcome to the extended cigarette family, with all the benefits and obligations that go with it. By buying its way deep into the nation's political, cultural and economic fabric, cigarette companies have rendered a remarkable portion of society beholden to and dependent on them. Until Congress strips the industry of its privileged legal status and makes it face responsibility in court for marketing a product that is hazardous when used as intended, and until the Industry's current corporate, media and societal allies divorce themselves from an industry that is literally selling death, the tobacco survival strategy will succeed and the cigarette carnage will continue.