This has always been the problem with “harm reduction” initiated by the industry. Its incentive is always to sell product. Fundamentally that conflicts with the most effective harm reduction approach known: reduce consumption.

However as it turned out, the industry made a great deal worse choice than that. It sold the illusion of harm reduction: filters, lite product, both of which it knew were ineffective or even counterproductive. It marketed a false reassurance of safety.

And reduced crippling polio, how about that? Now with reduced maiming! Well, maybe with just as much maiming, we can’t be sure. Great stuff!

But wait, there’s more: reduced brain damage mad cow disease. At Philip Morris, we’re working on it. We just want to help out. Because that’s just how nice we are.

What’s that? You don’t want reduced death SARS? You want less SARS? You want less polio? Less disease?

But, but, at Philip Morris we make money spreading disease.

And that, in a nutshell, is why Philip Morris will never talk about the most effective, least effective tobacco harm reduction known: reducing consumption.

Instead, Philip Morris will push the most expensive, least effective way known: tinkering with product. And will paint itself as our big friend for doing so. Because that way makes the most money for Philip Morris.

If Philip Morris really wanted harm reduction, it could do so immediately. No tinkering needed, no research needed. We already know how to reduce consumption: stop pushing up consumption. Stop promoting tobacco. Stop making it appealing to 12 year olds. Stop spending $14 billion a year painting it as sexy, glamorous, fun, a sign of independence. Stop engineering it for addiction. Stop fighting smokefree policies that help smokers quit.

If the tobacco industry really wanted harm reduction, it could do this tomorrow.

Instead the tobacco industry once again puts its profits above public health, and pushes reduced carnage product. And puts on that it should be thanked for doing so and viewed as part of the solution.

The solution is not reduced crippling polio. It’s less polio.

The American Health Foundation has a somewhat checkered history, but for purposes of this blog it was a politicized, but largely legitimate research foundation associated with the New York Medical College. . .one that was virulently and overtly anti-tobacco for decades. . .until they overfed at the public trough, overdrawing their cushy Federal Grant money, and abruptly went bankrupt, leaving we-the-taxpayer to foot the bill.

No matter. These are more irrelevancies from the gov’t as their case dies on the vine and they continue to grasp at straws.

Who cares what Dr. Whidby believes about smoking and disease. . .how do those beliefs constitute RICO violations?

Likewise, whether or not his putatively reduced harm products can be proven to be effective is irrelevant also. Last time I checked *NOT* being able to prove reduced lung cancer rates isn’t racketeering. Neither is showing that there are scientific documents that contradict him. Maybe Philip Morris *hasn’t* made cigarettes safer in the last 30 years. So what? Since when is that a Federal crime?

The real news today is Tobacco’s rebuttal brief on remedies, post the DC circuit decision. That disciplined response is going to take all the wind out of the DOJ’s sails. Even if the gov’t can establish proof of ongoing or likely future RICO violations (which they haven’t been doing a very good job of so far), pretty soon they are going to find themselves unable to actually do anything about any of it because virtually all of the non-disgorgement remedies they have asked for, (smoking cessation programs, more research, etc), are now legally completely unavailable to them.

This case *IS* over now, for practical purposes.