Phillip Morris Company Quotes
We recognize that we create a product that is harmful and causes serious disease.
This was the first cigarette company that admitted what by then had been known by the cigarette companies for almost 50 years during which they continued to knowingly kill people and deny that there was any harm that could come from smoking.
Phillip Morris Company, Official Public Statement, Spring 2009
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
This quotation not only illustrates Ford’s wide ranging concern about public affairs but illustrates that the addictive properties of cigarettes were known long before the cancer and other disease causing properties of tobacco were understood. Yet the addictive properties were the last deleterious effects of smoking that the tobacco companies would admit to. At the end of the 20th century, the CEO’s of the major tobacco company all lied to Congress in hearings, claiming that cigarettes were not addictive. Ford and millions of people knew better generations ago.
This is a classic example of the interaction between legislation, health and science. In 1931 the State of Michigan passed a law to protect the public health. It was written to ensure that there would not be unhealthy or dangerous substances added to cigarettes or the tobacco in cigarettes. No “ingredient deleterious to health” could be put in a cigarette. However, although it was not generally known at the time, there are few substances known to man that are as “deleterious to health” as the tobacco itself. The law protected public health, but the enforcement did not concentrate on the right ingredients.
The CDC scientists track communicable diseases and are responsible for creating vaccines each year in time to limit the “flu season’ and other disease mortality and morbidity. In the government shutdown, they could not even volunteer to work in their own laboratories.
The deaths and health problems caused by smoking exist the world over. In Islam the religion is overriding into all facets of society and life. Whereas this lack of separation of church and state presents many difficulties, this quotation demonstrates one positive aspect if the ability of Islam to improve the quality of life. Smoking cessation and avoidance becomes a religious obligation—not just a sensible thing to do to preserve health.
The 1963 Civil Rights Bill passage infuriated the Southern Racists, and the Republicans invited them to switch parties in revenge and by 1990 the shift was almost total.
The. law was enforced and upheld by the Tennessee Supreme Court (Austin v State) which recognized the health danger of tobacco. Tennessee was an agricultural state where tobacco was grown and the law was repealed as the result of political pressure. But this is the first and only absolute state prohibition on tobacco that has been enacted in the United States.
