In 1998, a class ac­tion law­suit be­tween the four largest Unit­ed States to­bac­co com­pa­nies (Phillip Mor­ris, RJ Reynolds, Brown & Williamson, and Lo­ril­lard) and the At­tor­neys Gen­er­al of 46 of the 50 Amer­i­can states was set­tled. The to­bac­co com­pa­nies agreed to pay US$206 bil­lion over the first 25 years of the agree­ment.

The com­pa­nies al­so agreed to “cur­tail or cease” some mar­ket­ing prac­tices and pay in per­pe­tu­ity an­nu­al pay­ments to the states to com­pen­sate them for med­ical costs as­so­ci­at­ed with smok­ing-re­lat­ed ill­ness­es. The mon­ey al­so funds the an­ti-smok­ing ad­vo­ca­cy group called the Truth Ini­tia­tive, the very group re­spon­si­ble for those ubiq­ui­tous thetruth.com ads.

In oth­er words, the to­bac­co in­dus­try has been ad­ver­tis­ing against it­self for al­most two decades. Dur­ing the le­gal pro­ceed­ings sev­er­al dis­turb­ing rev­e­la­tions were made and the Amer­i­can states de­mand­ed their pound of flesh. It re­mains the largest civ­il lit­i­ga­tion agree­ment in US his­to­ry.

To­bac­co com­pa­nies were re­vealed to have ma­nip­u­lat­ed nico­tine lev­els in cig­a­rettes to make them more po­tent, ie ad­dic­tive. Cog­nisant of the fact that the younger a per­son start­ed smok­ing the longer they would re­main a cus­tomer, they be­gan steer­ing their ad­ver­tis­ing to­ward chil­dren. It was re­vealed that the pop­u­lar Joe Camel car­toon ad­ver­tise­ment was de­signed to at­tract chil­dren and en­cour­age them to ex­per­i­ment with cig­a­rettes.

The US De­part­ment of Health and Hu­man Ser­vices had de­ter­mined that 90 per cent of US adult smok­ers be­gan be­fore the age of 20. To­bac­co com­pa­nies al­so be­gan ad­ver­tis­ing cig­a­rettes to women as an aid for weight loss and as an an­ti-anx­i­ety treat­ment; they were pro­mot­ing the “health ben­e­fits” of smok­ing.

Nev­er mind, even back then, it was strong­ly sus­pect­ed that pro­longed to­bac­co use could re­sult in can­cer and pos­si­ble death. The to­bac­co com­pa­nies did not care and, ac­cord­ing to in­ter­nal doc­u­ments, con­sis­tent­ly placed prof­its over peo­ple. So, how they are still al­lowed to op­er­ate is any­one’s guess?

Fast for­ward to the present, the Unit­ed States is in the midst of a rag­ing opi­oid cri­sis. In 2017 alone, more than 70,000 Amer­i­cans were killed by opi­oid abuse. The prob­lem has be­come so per­va­sive that the opi­oid cri­sis has ac­tu­al­ly re­duced the av­er­age US life ex­pectan­cy by one-tenth of a year, to 78.6 years.

Co­in­ci­den­tal­ly, Amer­i­cans al­so saw a sharp in­crease in sui­cide rates. Many be­lieve this epi­dem­ic was spawned by the glob­al fi­nan­cial cri­sis of 2008 and the in­ex­orable tran­si­tion from an in­dus­tri­al econ­o­my to a dig­i­tal age.

Un­skilled and low-skilled labour have had dif­fi­cul­ty find­ing jobs while those skilled in STEM fields are in high de­mand and are be­ing well com­pen­sat­ed. As a stra­ta of Amer­i­cans be­came more de­spon­dent about their eco­nom­ic prospects drug abuse and sui­cides be­came more preva­lent. Cities, coun­ties, state’s At­tor­neys Gen­er­al and even Na­tive Amer­i­can trib­al coun­cils are now su­ing the very drug com­pa­nies that swore their prod­uct was safe. The US Jus­tice De­part­ment has al­so filed suit and the US At­tor­ney Gen­er­al has filed a sep­a­rate fed­er­al law­suit at the urg­ing of Pres­i­dent Trump. Thus, all over the coun­try At­tor­neys Gen­er­al, ad­vo­cates and doc­tors con­tend, “tens of mil­lions of dol­lars were in­ten­tion­al­ly spent by phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies to down­play ad­dic­tion con­cerns, mar­ket ex­ag­ger­at­ed ben­e­fits of opi­oids, and lob­by doc­tors to pre­scribe more.” (https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicole­fish­er/2018/10/18/opi­oid-law­suits-on-par-to-be­come-largest-civ­il-lit­i­ga­tion-agree­ment-in-u-s-his­to­ry/#5afc64077fb4)

This was ex­act­ly the strat­e­gy big to­bac­co had been ac­cused of em­ploy­ing al­most two decades ear­li­er, and with prece­dent set, these ar­gu­ments of false ad­ver­tis­ing stand a good chance of be­ing heard in the courts. Con­sid­er how sim­i­lar this all sounds to what is cur­rent­ly be­ing ped­dled by mar­i­jua­na ad­vo­cates.

In the wake of the 2008 glob­al fi­nan­cial cri­sis Amer­i­can states were des­per­ate­ly look­ing for ways to gen­er­ate ad­di­tion­al rev­enues in a pro­found­ly de­pressed eco­nom­ic en­vi­ron­ment with spi­ralling un­em­ploy­ment rates.

En­ter mar­i­jua­na ad­vo­cates.

Af­ter decades of “just say no,” claim­ing that mar­i­jua­na was a gate­way drug to more dan­ger­ous forms of sub­stance abuse and that long-term use could neg­a­tive­ly af­fect cog­ni­tive brain func­tion and even cause psy­chosis, some are now ex­tolling mar­i­jua­na for its—you guessed it—health ben­e­fits.

Mar­i­jua­na has been a con­trolled or banned sub­stance for much of its his­to­ry and due to this few sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly cred­i­ble stud­ies have been con­duct­ed to con­firm any sus­pect­ed health ben­e­fits. Al­so, if you grew up in T&T you know at least one or two peo­ple who have com­plete­ly fried their brains on mar­i­jua­na; er­rat­ic be­hav­iour, poor men­tal per­for­mance and ex­treme para­noia.

All of this oc­cur­ring at a point in time when leg­is­la­tion and ed­u­ca­tion pro­grammes have re­duced to­bac­co use to an all-time low. What a co­in­ci­dence!

A 2018 Gallup poll re­vealed that the smok­ing rate in Amer­i­ca has fall­en to 16 per cent, the low­est lev­el on record since the ques­tion was first asked in 1944. Pub­lic smok­ing bans in many US cities and states have con­tributed sig­nif­i­cant­ly to this phe­nom­e­non, with rates among younger peo­ple de­clin­ing dra­mat­i­cal­ly since 1999.

In the ear­ly 2000s, 34 per cent of Amer­i­cans aged 18-29 said they smoked a cig­a­rette in the past week and by 2018, that had fall­en by more than half to 15 per cent. It has reached the point that thetruth.com has de­clared that cig­a­rette smok­ing will cease to ex­ist with­in a gen­er­a­tion. It should be no sur­prise that big to­bac­co has de­clared its in­ten­tion to piv­ot in­to the new­ly le­galised mar­i­jua­na in­dus­try.

For decades, com­pa­nies like Phillip Mor­ris have want­ed to get in on the mar­i­jua­na ac­tion. Ac­cord­ing to once-se­cret doc­u­ments ob­tained through a law­suit from to­bac­co in­dus­try lead­ers in 2014, Phillip Mor­ris, British Amer­i­can To­bac­co and oth­er large to­bac­co com­pa­nies were mak­ing plans to en­ter the mar­i­jua­na in­dus­try as far back as the 1970s. (https://www.rolling­stone.com/cul­ture/cul­ture-fea­tures/big-to­bac­co-pot-weed-cannabis-in­dus­try-727407/)

Would any­one be sur­prised if it were re­vealed one day that this sud­den surge in de­mand for mar­i­jua­na le­gal­i­sa­tion had been qui­et­ly spon­sored and or­ches­trat­ed by big to­bac­co?

Mar­i­jua­na in­fused ed­i­ble can­dies have al­ready sent sev­er­al chil­dren to the emer­gency room and many be­lieve were de­vel­oped with the in­tent of ad­dict­ing chil­dren as young as pos­si­ble. A fa­mil­iar strat­e­gy. Again, the younger they use, the longer they will use.

Some ad­vo­cates have cham­pi­oned the le­gal­i­sa­tion of mar­i­jua­na lo­cal­ly due to its po­ten­tial as a cash crop and for­eign ex­change earn­er. Suc­cess­ful in­ter­na­tion­al trade re­quires com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tage and mar­i­jua­na is no dif­fer­ent. If you have seen Sea­son 3 of the Nar­cos se­ries you would know that Mex­i­can “sen­simil­la” dom­i­nat­ed the world mar­i­jua­na mar­ket be­cause it was a high­ly con­cen­trat­ed form of cannabis, which had to be grown in a desert oa­sis (far away from oth­er plants to pre­vent con­t­a­m­i­na­tion), in a coun­try with loose enough law en­force­ment, in close prox­im­i­ty to the most prof­itable ex­port mar­ket in the world—the Unit­ed States.

How many coun­tries could pos­si­bly repli­cate those con­di­tions?

It was a su­pe­ri­or prod­uct that was ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult to re­pro­duce next to a ma­jor mar­ket, ie they had huge com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tage. What com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tages would T&T pos­sess in the glob­al mar­i­jua­na trade? What could we pro­duce that could not be eas­i­ly repli­cat­ed by oth­ers?

Al­so, in the race to com­pete against oth­er pro­duc­ers mod­ern mar­i­jua­na is dra­mat­i­cal­ly more po­tent than its hip­pie era pre­de­ces­sors.

A re­cent sci­en­tif­ic study found that its po­ten­cy is high­er than ever: at least three times more po­tent.

“The high­er the THC con­tent, the stronger the ef­fects on the brain,” says Dr Volkow, who has done re­search on this top­ic her­self. “And the more like­ly you may end up with tox­ic re­ac­tions—like psy­chosis. Even the oc­ca­sion­al user may end up in the ER. The very sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in ER vis­its, it’s due to THC con­tent be­ing much high­er now. It’s not that we’ve in­creased the num­ber of peo­ple tak­ing mar­i­jua­na.” (https://www.forbes.com/sites/al­iceg­wal­ton/2015/03/23/pot-evo­lu­tion-how-the-make­up-of-mar­i­jua­na-has-changed-over-time/#46275ebb59e5)

The point is that it’s fine if peo­ple want to smoke, drink, use opi­oids or even mar­i­jua­na. The chal­lenge is that we shouldn’t re­main naive and vul­ner­a­ble to hy­per­bole about “health ben­e­fits” which may be tai­lored by those who may want to ben­e­fit at our ex­pense. It’s like peo­ple who ac­tu­al­ly be­lieve that di­et soft drinks are healthy; it’s not healthy, just less harm­ful.

Much like cig­a­rettes and oth­er drugs, mar­i­jua­na us­age needs to be reg­u­lat­ed so users are not mis­led by the un­scrupu­lous in an­oth­er ef­fort to place prof­its ahead of peo­ple.

We have seen it be­fore, sev­er­al times and, if there isn’t enough cau­tion, we will see it again.