Report Names and Shames Countries Cozy with Big Tobacco

PARIS — The global tobacco industry has aggressively lobbied governments during the COVID-19 pandemic to expand markets and blunt measures designed to curb their business, a report from watchdog groups aligned with the World Health Organization claimed on Tuesday. A ranking of 57 countries based on their willingness to keep Big Tobacco at bay puts Japan and Indonesia at the bottom of the list, with Romania, China and Lebanon among the 10 worst offenders.

Suppose I showed you two rooms where in one a group of programmers was developing a program to monitor a heart patient and keep him alive until the doctors arrive if something goes wrong and in the other a group of street people was using Microsoft Word to write letters to their parole officers. You would not be able to tell the rooms apart.

Richard P. Gabriel