The “green” tobacco strategy: divert, pollute, whitewash

It is an indisputable fact: the best way to deal with a pollution problem is to deal with it at the source. So how can we reduce the 24 million tons of solid waste produced each year by the tobacco industry (to cite just one figure)? By reducing the prevalence of smoking.

But the tobacco industry systematically rejects this approach. Proof of this is its fierce opposition to the initiative to protect children and young people from tobacco advertising. Worse still, it starts from the assumption that smoking is a “normal” activity, fully accepted by society, and that questioning it is therefore not on the agenda. The “Lara Green” campaign, launched in 2021 by the Swiss Cigarette Association (which brings together the Swiss subsidiaries of British American Tobacco Switzerland, Japan Tobacco International, and Philip Morris International), attempts to give a greener and more ecological image to a polluting industry, but in reality it is a strategy aimed at shifting responsibility from the manufacturer to smokers and collecting thousands of pieces of data whose use is still unknown.