11. Snail Mail

Please sign our OnLine Petition.

Letter to the National 4-H Club

September 9, 1999

Richard J. Sauer, President and CEO
National 4-H Council
7100 Connecticut Avenue,
Chevy Chase, MD 20815

Dear Mr. Sauer:

From my childhood days in Buffalo, New York seeing the great work of 4-H Club members attending the Hamburg County Fair until now, I have had a very positive view of the 4-H Club.

I was very disheartened that the 4-H Club would permit its good name to be tainted by accepting funding from Philip Morris Co. Inc.

Philip Morris Co. Inc.’s association with the 4-H Club enhances its public image and gives it a charitable donation tax deduction. Your organization is inadvertently collaborating with Philip Morris Co. Inc. to carry out its business plan: (1) enhance its tarnished public image and (2) maximize profits for its shareholders.

In reference to Philip Morris Co. Inc.’s marketing to youngsters, you were quoted that your "gut instinct is that they don't anymore." Please take a look at any issue of Sport magazine, one of the most popular periodicals for young boys, and your "gut instinct" will change.

The money your organization has accepted comes from revenues generated by the directors and employees of Philip Morris Co. Inc. who knowingly sell an addictive and lethal product, cigarettes while painting them as Sexy, Sophisticated, Cool, Macho or Liberating. No moral person would knowingly sell an addictive, lethal product to children or adults. Surely these are not the kind of people that you would be happy with publicizing that they are supporters of the 4-H Club. They know how to schmooze, use, and spin the news.

The 4-H Club can make a great statement for all youngsters to hear if your organization refuses to accept funds from Philip Morris Co. Inc., a company that knowingly participates each year in addicting nearly 1,000,000 youngsters, killing nearly 500,000 adults and disabling millions more in the US and millions of our international neighbors.

I applaud your commitment to helping America’s youth resist the predators of the toxic-tobacco industry and know that you can find alternative funding.

Please reconsider your acceptance of this "blood money."

Sincerely yours,

Terence A. Gerace, Ed.M., M.A., Ph.D.
National Coordinator, Toxic-Tobacco Law Coalition,
Adjunct Research Associate Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health,
University of Miami School of Medicine

Letter to Georfrey Bible, CEO of Philip Morris

February 6, 2000

Geoffrey C. Bible
Chairman and CEO
Philip Morris Companies Inc.
120 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10017-5592

Dear Mr. Bible:

Congratulations on the Fifth Anniversary of your promotion to your current position.

I know that you did not get to your position without being able to assess empirical data and use common sense. Therefore, I am confident that you understand that toxic-tobacco products cause great harm to millions of Americans and tens of millions worldwide every year.

Nearly everyone in the United States knows someone who has suffered and died early from cancer or heart disease caused by toxic-tobacco. I know that you have lost friends and family members prematurely because of toxic-tobacco. I have.

My Uncle Sam suffered for years from emphysema until he died; my Uncle Al died from lung cancer. My father-in-law Wallace suffered for ten years with emphysema. He could not walk across a room without becoming breathless. My wife’s Aunt Marian died at 60 from lung cancer and her husband, John, died shortly thereafter from a premature heart attack. Recently, my wife’s Aunt Kay died after suffering from emphysema as did my friend John.

Please think about how you would respond to a business associate who approaches you with the idea of your joining her in a new manufacturing venture. The associate tells you that the new product will yield gross margins of 15-30%, consumers will use the expendable product 10 to 60 times each day; and once they get used to it, they will use the product until they die. And, the product can be sold worldwide in convenient portable packages.

The downside is that the product is addictive and undeniably toxic; it causes lethal cancer, heart disease and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

It is hard for me to imagine that you would accept the offer to manufacture a new product that you knew caused cancer, heart and lung disease in its users. But, you don’t have to contemplate participating in such a new venture.

I am respectfully asking you to contemplate bringing the old venture to an end. Please work to end the massive production and promotion of toxic-tobacco worldwide. Create a plan to systematically reduce the production of toxic-tobacco products. Plan with the rest of the industry to set a date certain after which toxic-tobacco products will no longer be marketed and sold at millions of venues.

Please consider the ideas set forth in my enclosed article from the current issue of the Journal of Public Health Policy. Someone in the industry needs to step forward with the courage and moral integrity to say:

Knowingly making and marketing toxic-tobacco products are wrong. Continuing to market these products as attractive consumer goods is immoral. Resisting all attempts to control these substances is unethical.

Someone in the industry must have the courage to do the right thing. Someone in the industry must know that the "bottom line" does not determine whether the industry is doing the right thing.

The only possible explanations for continuing to operate as usual is 1) that you do not know "right from wrong," an idea that I consider preposterous, or 2) that you will allow greed or "need for achievement" to determine your business practices rather than ethical decision making, something I also trust is not true.

I look forward to hearing from you and assisting you in anyway I can. This would definitely be preferable to my spending the next 10 years working to pass the Toxic-Tobacco Law.

Sincerely yours,

Terence A. Gerace, Ed.M., M.A., Ph.D.
National Coordinator and
Adjunct Research Associate Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health
University of Miami School of Medicine