Resist this corporate tyranny - Threat from tobacco giants

THE intervention of the Geneva-based Japan Tobacco Group in our Government’s entirely legitimate and laudable campaign to protect Irish citizens from the odious and often fatal consequences of smoking tobacco is as outrageous as it was inevitable. 

It is an unwelcome and intolerable intrusion in the affairs of a sovereign Republic by a foreign commercial entity whose only concern is the multibillion profits it can generate by selling an addictive drug that is recognised as one of the great plagues our time — tobacco.

The company, JTI Ireland, cares nothing for the 6,000-plus Irish people, or their families, who die from smoking-related illnesses each year and for them to suggest otherwise just adds hypocrisy to the indifference they already show for their unfortunate customers’ well-being.