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Excerpts from: Philip Morris Apologizes for Report Touting Benefits of Smokers' Deaths

To read the Death $avings Report, click here: Read Philip Morris' Death-$avings Report

Also read a rebuttal by ASH:  Death and taxes  AND

A rebuttal by Czech activists:
 Comments to the Philip Morris Study concerning the economic impact of smoking in the Czech Republic by Czech NGOs
 

 By GORDON FAIRCLOUGH, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL [07/27/01]

 Trying to defuse a widening public-relations crisis, a top executive at Philip Morris Cos. apologized for
 a company-funded report calling cost savings from smokers' early deaths one of the "positive effects"
 of cigarette consumption.

                      "We understand that this was not only a terrible mistake, but that it was
                      wrong," Steven C. Parrish, a senior vice president, said in an interview
                      Wednesday. "To say it's totally inappropriate is an understatement."

                      Philip Morris officials in the Czech Republic last month distributed an
                      economic analysis concluding that cigarettes aren't a drain on the
                      country's budget, in part because the government saves money on health
                      care, pensions and housing when smokers die prematurely.

 Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, last week wrote a letter to Philip Morris chief executive
 Geoffrey C. Bible after reading about the Czech report. Mr. Bible answered in a letter dated Tuesday,
 saying that the funding and release of the study "exhibited terrible judgment as well as a complete and
 unacceptable disregard of basic human values."

 The Czech study, commissioned by Philip Morris and produced by consulting firm Arthur D. Little
 International, weighs the costs of tobacco use, such as medical care for sick smokers, against
 benefits, including revenue from excise taxes on cigarettes. The study found that in 1999 the Czech
 government had a net gain of $147.1 million from smoking.

  "Tobacco companies used to deny that cigarettes killed people. Now  they brag about it," columnist
 Ellen Goodman wrote in the Boston Globe. On ABC's "Politically
 Incorrect," host Bill Maher endorsed the study's conclusion that cigarette smokers aren't a drag on
 public finances, but called Philip Morris "industrial scum" and said that "smoking is a drug" and
 "cigarette companies are the pushers."

 The report and the outcry have dealt a serious blow to Philip Morris's efforts to rehabilitate its
 reputation. The company has been reaching out to its critics and pouring $100 million a year into
 feel-good ads promoting corporate good deeds, such as donations to food banks and shelters for
 battered women. The goal has been to persuade politicians, potential jurors and the public that Philip
 Morris has changed.

 "This is just more evidence that they haven't changed," an aide to a senior Democratic senator said of
 the study. "It reinforces the notion that everything they say has to be taken with a great deal of
 skepticism."