Tobacco: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN uses it in TPP and trade-deal threads as a clear example of ISDS being used by corporations against governments.
What it is
A Last Week Tonight segment on how tobacco companies sustain profits by pushing sales overseas. It covers suits against countries like Australia over plain packaging through trade-deal arbitration.
Recommended by 6 HN commenters across 6 different months, 2015 to 2021.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec hkarthik · 2015-03 · on “Latin America Is Quitting Smoking, and Africa Is Taking It Up”
There was a great John Oliver segment on the tobacco industry and how it's evolved to become even more profitable worldwide than it ever was in the US. Highly recommended to watch it. [this video]
Strong rec dailyrorschach · 2015-07 · on “CVS Health Quits U.S. Chamber Over Stance on Smoking”
A great deal of the Chamber's funding comes from Tobacco companies. In fact there are conference rooms named for them. If you haven't seen Last Week Tonight's take on the international bad behavior of the Tobacco companies I really encourage you to check it out. It's about 18min long, but well worth it: [this video] They've responded to a shrinking market in the US and other highly developed nations, by doubling down on their efforts to sell to everyone in the rest of the world. And woe to the country with a smaller GDP than Phillip Morris who decides to try to put restrictions on a pack of smokes.
Recommends pdkl95 · 2015-02 · on “Go to Prison for File Sharing? That's What Hollywood Wants in the TPP Deal”
Keep watching - the corporate stuff starts a few minutes in, with the tobacco industry throwing around threats to various countries legislatures to stop those legislatures from passing Australian-style packaging laws and other public-health regulations. edit: if you're in a hurry, try starting at about 5:55 [this video]
Recommends walterbell · 2015-10 · on “The Final Leaked TPP Text Is All That We Feared”
Those pre-TPP cases are nothing compared to the future combined scope of TPP (Pacific), TTIP (Europe) and RCEP (China, Korea, India, and other Asian countries). Never say there is nothing you can do. Tell other people about ISDS. Share the videos [1][2][3][4]. Jon Oliver's video [4] about the Philip Morris tobacco ISDS lawsuit against Australia (for brown paper packaging) caused such an outcry that TPP negotiators were forced to exclude the entire tobacco industry from ISDS. This is the first time such an industry-specific carve-out has appeared in a trade agreement. [1] [LINK] [2] [LINK] [3] [LINK] [4] [this video]
Recommends ggame · 2017-01 · on “US Announces Withdrawal from TPP”
Not a fan of Trump but this is a good thing. See this exert from John Oliver on the effect of such trade deals; [this video] And that's the existing trade deals, TPP would have made it much worse. There is a reason why democratically elected governments need to protect their sovereignty. The scope of the legal provisions along with the requirement to use easily corruptible mediation is superfluous to free trade. In addition, I don't understand those that think boxing out Russia and China from the rest of Europe and Asia is a good thing.
Recommends staz · 2018-08 · on “Smoking around the world”
Most countries in the EU are taking steps to combat this and the number of smokers is steadily diminishing, even if too slowly. I'm more worried about the non smoker countries which the tobacco companies are seeing as new territories to conquer. John Oliver did a good segment about that two years ago [this video]
Cites pdkl95 · 2015-04 · on “Leaked TPP Investment Chapter Reveals Serious Threat to User Safeguards”
The comic[1] that I posted in the previous thread has a nice overview about the situation. The specific issue the EFF article is pointing out is how the ISDS is designed to trumps national sovereignty, so business can strong-arm countries into removing any law they don't like. It works more or less like this: 1) pass TPP as a treaty , which by definition has the same power as a constitutional amendment. (this is probably a serious bug in the constitution). This means TPP trums congress. 2) TPP sets up an international tribunal (ISDS) that hears complaints from businesses. (i.e. "Australia is hurting our tobacco sales with their plain packaging laws"[2]) 3) The tribunal, as mentioned in this
Cites TeMPOraL · 2015-10 · on “Why Free Markets Make Fools of Us”
They adjust their strategies to local conditions. In EU they can do little. Elsewhere, they actually sue countries [0] to keep their rights to advertise death. [0] - [this video]