By Jim Gogek
Frank Niles (right) had NOTHING on Big Tobacco when it comes to lying
In the film noir The Naked City, Detective Muldoon tells the smarmy Frank Niles, “…you are probably the biggest and most willing liar I have ever met.”
Muldoon never met the modern day tobacco industry. In its battle against California’s Proposition 29, the $1 sales tax increase on cigarette packs, commercials brought to you by your friends at RJ Reynolds and Philip Morris tell the biggest and most willing lies I’ve ever heard.
LIE: No money will go to cancer
TRUTH: About $440 million will go to research into cures for cancer and other tobacco-related disease. In fact, Prop. 29 will make California the second biggest cancer research funder in the world.
LIE: It will divert money from our schools
TRUTH: This doesn’t even make any sense. Prop. 29 won’t affect schools except that fewer kids will begin smoking because tobacco will be more expensive
LIE: Wasteful spending creating massive bureaucracy
Truth: Administrative costs are capped at 2%
And on and on. Below is a great interactive graphic on CaliforniasforaCure.org that answers each of Big Tobacco’s lies, and even tells you who those doctors are that shill for the tobacco industry. I’m pretty sure a majority of California voters are smart enough to dismiss Big Tobacco’s lies. In a way, it’s instructive to hear the bold-faced whoppers by Big Tobacco, because now you know how an industry gets fabulously rich selling a product that kills half the people who use it as intended – by lying.
Click for Big Tobacco: Lord of the Lies
