That’s why you won’t see the following on the website:

– our product kills half its best customers

– our product kills one out of five Americans today

– our product kills more women than breast cancer

– our product kills our customers and the people closest to them

– our product causes irreversible damage

– our product gives you diseases you don’t get better from

– we engineer our product for addiction

These are simple statements of fact about what Philip Morris’s most profitable product does to the customer, and to those closest to the customer.

No, the website was put there for other reasons.

First and foremost, the site is there for Philip Morris to point at when it’s in court. The site was designed to have things to point out to judges and juries. So it’s no accident that Philip Morris cites it in this trial: that’s why it’s there.

A related reason: PR. A major PR goal: blame the customer. That’s what Philip Morris means when you decode “informed choice”. It doesn’t mean it wants an informed public. It doesn’t mean it will stop engineering product for addiction, so choice can be an issue. No, when “informed choice” comes out of Philip Morris’s mouth, it means “blame the customer”.

Blame the customer for what the product does to the customer. Make that credible by framing smoking as choice, then put out “information” and call that “informed choice”. As if addiction were about choice. As if anyone became a smoker by sitting, down, weighing the evidence, and saying “I”ve decided to take up smoking!”

ASCH puts it this way:

“Philip Morris wants you to believe that it is now open and candid, allowing customers to make fully informed decisions, but in reality they have cleverly muddied the waters further…”

http://www.acsh.org/healthissues/newsID.461/healthissue_detail.asp

So, how does the website (or Philip Morris’s inserts and ads) get credibility for blaming the customer, without actually informing anyone, say in a way that would lower Philip Morris’s profits? It’s not that hard, actually. Here’s how ACSH puts it:

“When an industry has been lying for more than half a century, then announces it is going to tell the truth but only tells a fraction of the truth, the impact can be as bad as or worse than the original lie. Philip Morris wants you to believe that it is now open and candid, allowing customers to make fully informed decisions, but in reality they have cleverly muddied the waters further. This advertising insert communicates the barest minimum of information about the negative health effects of smoking and contains misleading, ambiguous references. When links for ‘more information’ about health effects, addiction, and quitting are offered, the links are to highly obscure, consumer-unfriendly sources.”

“Philip Morris was very careful not to give an overview of the horrors of cigarette-related disease in the United States. For example:

“Nowhere did they mention the fact that cigarette smoking is the leading cause of preventable death in the United States, causally linked to one in every four deaths daily — one in every two premature deaths…”

“The publication didn’t address the concept of relative risk, ignoring the unique status of cigarettes as the only legally available product that is hazardous when used as intended. In these times when the media reports to us about the ‘carcinogen du jour’ in our food, air, or water, for Philip Morris to say that ‘cigarettes cause cancer’ is hollow unless they note that it is the leading preventable cause of cancer death in the United States…”

“The text completely omitted reference to the grim reality that some effects of smoking are irreversible. For example, after decades of smoking, an ex-smoker will continue to have a substantially elevated risk of lung cancer compared to a never-smoker…”

“This minimalist disclosure attempt is further proof that cigarette companies are subject to different legal standards than are any other companies…”

So, does the Philip Morris website and its health admission mean it’s informing smokers?

I’d put it: too little, too late.

Too little: it’s nothing more than a “minimalist disclosure attempt” as described above.

Too late: did Philip Morris discover in 2001 that its products killed people? What new evidence arrived in 2001 that convinced it? Did it really believe up to that time that there was no proof?

The reality is, Philip Morris and the tobacco industry knew decades ago everything they’re saying now. For decades, while saying in public there was no proof the product caused disease, in private this industry was saying “this has long since ceased to be an area for scientific controversy”.

www.ashaust.org.au/pdfs/fact10.pdf

The things Philip Morris says today on its website about smoking and health, it knew 30 years ago — and it could have said 30 years ago.

Philip Morris didn’t discover anything in 2001 that convinced it smoking causes disease.

What changed in 2001? Philip Morris’s legal situation. It wasn’t winning all its cases any more. So it designed a new litigation and PR strategy. It decided to project an image of being open and honest:

http://www.financialexpress.com/fe/daily/19990707/fco07053.html

That’s why its website is there, why its ads are there, and why it made a Big Deal about them in court today. That’s why starting a few years ago it started to let on that its product causes disease. As a courtroom strategy, its timing was just right. But if it had wanted to inform anyone, it would have said that 30 years ago.

Of course, Philip Morris will now say, well, OK, maybe we should have said that then, but the fact that we say it now, shows We’ve Changed! No likelihood of future violations! See, right on our website, we say it: smoking causes disease. Isn’t that being honest?

No, being honest would mean you can’t take it back whenever it’s inconvenient:

http://www.tobacco.neu.edu/Extra/hotdocs/simon_answer_ex.htm

The bottom line: what has changed is Philip Morris’s ligitation and PR strategy. Its long record of putting its profits over public health has not changed. Its website information on smoking and health is aimed at protecting its profits, not informing the public. It accomplishes that by providing little real information, and projecting a lot of image.