Philip Morris Wants To Stop Selling Cigarettes But Can't Seem To Quit

USA TODAY – Philip Morris International has made a dramatic New Year’s resolution: “We’re trying to give up cigarettes.” 

What? 

The maker of such cigarette brands as Marlboro, L&M, Parliament and Chesterfield took out full-page ads in several newspapers in the United Kingdom that said its new ambition in 2018 is to build a smoke-free future and eventually stop selling cigarettes.  

The manifesto, as described on the company’s web site, is to help people quit smoking traditional cigarettes and to one day replace them all with smoke-free alternatives like e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products. 

The company claims the alternatives are less harmful and that “we can achieve a significant public-health benefit only when a large number of these smokers switch from cigarettes to better products.”

The Philip Morris ad states: “No cigarette company has done anything like this before. You might wonder if we really mean it.” 

This is a real story. A cigarette company wants to stop selling cigarettes. One might wonder, “why don’t they, you know, just stop?” If you want to not sell cigarettes, just slap the big red button in your factory and shut down the production. Of course, the answer to that is that the company needs to make money and that people have jobs, so they just aren’t going to quit cold turkey. They have acknowledged outright that cigarettes are cancer causing and that they are trying to stop, but for the time being they will continue to ship out boxed cancer at affordable prices.

What a quandary. A cigarette company that’s addicted to selling cigarettes. I’d love to see Philip Morris on Intervention with all his family surrounding him, begging him to quit selling cigarettes. He would swear that he’ll quit, but right before the big intervention he would sneak out and make one last cigarette sale just to get his fix.

I would like to propose a solution to Philip Morris. It’s a little project I’ve been working on. A patch for people who are addicted to selling cigarettes.

When applied correctly, it can help you wane off slinging Marlboro cigarettes one pack of patches at a time. Each patch has a low dosage of cigarette sales, just enough for any addicted salesman to get his fix. And for those that feel squeamish about slapping a band-aid spiked with an addictive substance on their arm each day, it also comes in a gum! Beat addiction to selling cigarettes today.