I agree that the Dr. Evil hidding in a cave is a naive vision of the world.
But I struggle to understand why would you consider my description closer to a conspiracy than to what a board meeting at JTI or Philip Morris might look like. I guess they don't laugh like maniacs, but I'm pretty sure that they do meet in some tall offfice building, they do count their billions, and they do think we are idiots.
There are probably a certain percentage of them smokers as well. They're not evil elites - they just genuinely think they're selling a normal product - like all people from unethical companies convinced themselves they do. I also doubt that they are looking down on us - they're shitting their pants right now because of loosing customers fast and fear loosing their jobs when 60yo Peter from Virginia complains a lot on the shareholder meting and it convinces too many shareholders.
All that aside, my main point was that I don't like the lingo.
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Phillip Morris is getting out of the cigarette game and moving towards the addictive drug delivery system game:
People who think this company's leadership doesn't know what's going on are naive.
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Their revenue and profit have been stagnating for many many years and their stock massively underperformed the market. The smokeless products are a panic reaction - they are trying to cling to relevance and are utterly failing at it. C-level management knows that for sure.
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