March 7, 2021
IF IT WAS A CHINESE PRODUCT WE WOULD:
Tobacco killed 500,000 Americans in 2020 -- is it time to control cigarette-makers?: Four Americans die every year for every one person employed in the U.S. tobacco industry (JOSHUA M. PEARCE, MARCH 7, 2021, The Conversation)
Tobacco use killed an estimated 500,000 Americans in 2020, about the same number the pandemic killed in one year. Although education efforts by government and nonprofits have helped to curb tobacco use, 14% of American adults still smoke, even with warning labels on the packages. Tobacco deaths are so high that the World Health Organization calls smoking an epidemic.A potential solution to tobacco-related deaths is a corporate "death penalty" - otherwise known as judicial dissolution - when a judge revokes a corporation's charter for causing significant harm to society. The legal procedure forces the corporation to dissolve; it ceases to exist. Both management and employees lose their jobs.Although legal, corporate death penalties in the U.S. have not been used in years. Yet even the threat of one can be effective. For example, simply announcing the intention to revoke the charters of two tobacco industry misinformation groups (the Council for Tobacco Research and the Tobacco Institute, Inc.) resulted in both quietly closing in 1999.
Posted by Orrin Judd at March 7, 2021 12:00 AM