Boston Globe - Setting the stage for more smokers

By Derrick Z. Jackson
Globe Columnist

EVERYONE wonders how Bernie Madoff lives with himself after his decades of fraud. But what about Louis Camilleri?

Camilleri is CEO of Philip Morris International, which last year was spun off from Altria and Philip Morris USA. The separation meant Camilleri could pursue with more vigor, and without US regulation or lawsuits, his sordid business of addicting millions more people to cigarettes.

The World Health Organization says cigarette smoking kills 5.4 million people a year around the globe, and is on track to kill 8 million people a year by 2030, the equivalent of a New York City disappearing every year. If Camilleri has anything to do with it, we may be seeing more than 8 million die annually.

At its first shareholders meeting since the spin-off, Camilleri boasted this week, "We transitioned flawlessly to our new status as the largest publicly traded tobacco company. PMI's strong results underscore that our business fundamentals are in excellent shape and our solid business momentum has set the stage for further growth in the years to come."

In Camilleri's world view, a flawless transition means a 13 percent rise in revenues around the globe, totaling $25.7 billion in 2008, and profits rising 14 percent to $6.9 billion. It means the Marlboro Man, figuratively deported from the United States after four decades of anti-smoking campaigns (and after Marlboro Men Wayne McLaren and David McLean died of lung cancer), rides taller than ever on billboards elsewhere in the world.

At the shareholders meeting, Camilleri singled out successful growth of Marlboro products in Korea, Romania, Japan, Hong Kong, and Indonesia. He cited impressive sales of other brands, like Parliament, L&M, and Chesterfield, in Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, Germany, Austria, France, and Portugal.

That is only a thumbnail sketch. Net revenues were up as high as 22 percent in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, up 23 percent in Latin America and Canada.

"In my opinion," Camilleri said in his prepared remarks to shareholders, "very few investment opportunities today are as compelling as PMI."

To be sure, anti-tobacco activists are trying to fight the invasion of the lung snatchers. Some socially conscious advocates at the shareholders meeting got Camilleri to agree to one minute of silence for the 5.4 million people who will die this year from smoking. But the extent that Philip Morris continues to exploit the world came toward the end of Camilleri's remarks, where he praised the 30,000 workers in its affiliate operations in barely regulated Indonesia.

Most of the workers are women, and Camilleri praised them as breadwinners. "We take our responsibility to contribute to the local community very seriously," Camilleri said. " . . . In addition to providing for the welfare of our staff, we fund programs which support poverty alleviation, education, environmental protection, disaster relief, and employee volunteerism."

Of course, all Camilleri has to do to alleviate poverty, protect the environment, and make disaster relief unnecessary is shut down his business.

Camilleri was America's eighth-highest-compensated CEO last year. This week, his flawless transition earned him a $9.4 million bonus and a total of $32 million. In interview after interview, Camilleri displays no conscience about suckering adolescents (despite denials of marketing directly to youth) with sexy, adventuresome, and rock-star cigarette imagery that overwhelms anti-tobacco education and common sense.

In a feature this month on Camilleri, Business Week interviewed a 16-year-old high school student in Jakarta who buys her cigarettes at a cart outside her school. Asked what he would say to the girl if he had a chance to meet her, Camilleri said he would tell her "exactly what I told my kids and continue to tell my kids: I don't think they should smoke."

Everyone knows Camilleri's $32 million depends on hooking that girl to her grave. While 69 percent of Indonesian men smoke, according to the WHO, only 5 percent of girls smoke. Camilleri's job is to scam that girl into the greatest, preventable public health disaster we have ever seen.

To read the story in the Boston Globe, click here. 

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