Dear Sir/Madam,

There is a very - in fact, vitally - important lesson crying out to be learned from the tobacco industry's criminally callous and irresponsible response to the mounting evidence for the harm done to human health and life expectancy by its products ("Tobacco firm research linked cot death to passive smoking").

For decades - since the first evidence came to light (I think, in the 1950's) - the tobacco industry has sought to deny, discredit or distort the evidence, while continuing to spend billions of dollars on advertising every year (creating a positive, healthy image for its deadly products) and fighting tooth and nail every piece of legislation designed to warn people about or protect them from the dangers.

It is estimated that smoking kills around 3 million people every year world-wide, which, to put such a large number into some kind of perspective, corresponds to a "Holocaust" every two years - but because the tobacco industry is profit, rather than racially, motivated, we fail to see it as a crime. 

The tobacco industry doesn't, of course, force anyone to smoke - it just encourages them, in the knowledge that it is addictive and that once hooked a smoker will find it very difficult to stop, especially if he is exposed to advertising that associates smoking with all kinds of positive images.

The tobacco industry may or may not have broken any laws; if not, then technically speaking it has not behaved criminally - despite doing all it can, and spending billions of dollars promoting products that are addictive and kill 3 million people annually.

Think about it for a bit. It's difficult to get your head around. When I first became aware of the statistics, at a time when cigarettes were still being advertised (associated with positive, healthy images) on every street corner, I felt giddy - literally - with disbelief: how could those working in or for the tobacco industry be so callous? How could our politicians allow it? How could public opinion tolerate it - the blatant promotion of something that was killing so many people?!

It took me a long time to understand it, and in so doing I have discovered that the tobacco industry is not exceptional in showing so little concern for the harm it does, nor our politicians and public opinion in being so slow in responding to and correcting such a malevolent development. 

The tobacco industry is an "ecotope " in the "socio-economic environment ", providing and serving many (some very lucrative) economic niches, the occupants of which are primarily concerned with maintaining their position, at least until they can move to a better one.

Despite the terrible harm it does, the tobacco industry is of elemental importance to those who have their economic niche there, or in a dependent ecotope (an industry, such as advertising or motor racing) - more important even than the millions of lives that are lost every year world-wide through smoking-related diseases.

When an individual kills someone for economic gain it is considered a very serious crime, but not when done legally within the framework of the socio-economic order. We have a similar situation in wartime, when it is permissible - even commendable - to kill other people. In war we kill the enemy in defence of our country, or whatever; in defence of their economic niches and the struggle for survival and advantage (making money) in the socio-economic environment, those serving the tobacco industry kill many of their customers. That may sound self-defeating, but it's not, because they make a lot of money out of them before they die, and thanks to advertising and addiction are assured of replacements, now increasingly drawn from the "developing world", which is seen as an "emerging market". The annual death toll from smoking-related disease is expected to increase to more than double its current level (corresponding to a Holocaust every single year). Anyone who can read German might like to take a look at the documentation of a campaign I undertook against a particularly obnoxious form of cigarette adverting when I lived in Germany: "Ich, Idiot, rauche gern".

Can those who work in or profit from the tobacco industry really be so evil? Most of them, I am sure, simply refuse to face up to the reality of what they are involved in. They are in denial, just as most of us are in denial about what we are doing to our planet, i.e. plundering it to satisfy our craving for motor cars, cheap air travel, and generally for a criminally wasteful and extravagant way of life that is utterly unsustainable and will have devastating consequences for our children and coming generation, with the death toll likely to be in the billions rather than the millions.

Just as humans have lived with the madness of war since the beginning of civilisation, today, in the civilised world, we live with the madness of our capitalist, free-market economy and the struggle for survival and advantage in the socio-economic environment. But because it is so normal, with us all participating in and dependent upon it, we don't see it for the madness that it is. Certainly, business and trade are better than war, but when driven by the same animal instincts, and conducted with the same ruthlessness and lack of responsibility, ultimately the consequences will be no less devastating.

We each depend on our niche in the socio-economic environment, and thus give it absolute priority (until we can exchange it for a better one). Despite most of us having our our niche (source of income) in ecotopes (industries) that are not so obviously harmful as the tobacco industry, the underlying mechanism is the same: our primitive behavioural programming, which evolved to help us in the struggle for survival and advantage in the natural environment, but is now focused on making money in the artificial socio-economic environment.

Roger Hicks
@ www.spaceship-earth.org