http://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/editorials/2015/07/20/Chamber-of-death-America-s-top-business-group-promotes-smoking.print
By the Editorial Board
American business has always been the business of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. But why does the chamber go out of its way around the globe to advocate the dirty, unhealthful business of cigarette smoking?
The nation’s premier business association, which officials in other countries sometimes mistake for an arm of the U.S. government, has become the chief promoter of the tobacco industry’s agenda, according to a recent report in The New York Times. The chamber uses a country-by-country strategy to block, delay or kill initiatives meant to steer people in developing countries away from tobacco use.
Efforts that have been opposed by the chamber or its agents include: raising cigarette taxes in the Philippines, restricting smoking in public places in Moldova, barring cigarettes from display by retailers in Uruguay and putting explicit health warnings on cigarette packs in Jamaica and Nepal. By attacking the kind of progressive measures that are commonplace in the United States, the chamber is trying to inflict on foreign consumers the outdated, dangerous mindset of the early 1960s. In 2015, Americans know well the perils of smoking. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, chillingly, wants to keep the rest of the world in the dark.
The chamber also is lobbying to enable tobacco companies to sue under new international treaties, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, when nations enact statutes, even health laws, that could have a negative impact on the tobacco business. Talk about the ugly American.
In its defense, the Chamber of Commerce says it is just looking out for the interests of one of its member industries. But what about the views of other chamber members? What about health care businesses that have preached for decades about the ills of tobacco use? CVS Health resigned from the chamber in protest.
A respectable U.S. Chamber would stop shilling for cigarettes, smoking, lung cancer and emphysema before vulnerable foreign populations. America already has enough merchants of death.