Table 2.

Unfair Portrayals of Tobacco Farming in Tobacco Industry Videos

Categories	Video Title	Year	Portrayals of Tobacco Farming in Tobacco Industry Videos	More Accurate Portrayals of Tobacco Farming in Industry Videos
Culture and Tradition	A Plant for Tomorrow (Lorillard Tobacco Company 1956)	1956	“[Tobacco is] part of our heritage. This is our bread-and-butter crop.”	Tobacco farm culture is characterized by long hours of stoop labor, abject poverty, staggering debt, exposure to nicotine and pesticides (Farm Labor Organizing Committee 2007).
	Brown and Williamson Web Site- Tobacco Processing (Brown and Williamson 1999 [inferred])	1999	“Stripping tobacco has become a family tradition. With the check from tobacco sales at auction, the farmer pays his bills, provides for his family, and gets ready for the holidays, and starts buying seeds and fertilizer for next years crop.”	Tobacco companies ensure farmer subordination through inflated prices for farm inputs and fields for tobacco instead of food crops (Loker 2004; Gostin 2007).
Tobacco Industry History	A Plant for Tomorrow (Lorillard Tobacco Company 1956)	1956	“From our earliest beginnings, first as a colony and then as a nation, tobacco has been inseparably bound with our history. As our country won independence and flourished, so did the tobacco industry grow and prosper.”	Tobacco history intersects with enslaved African Americans involved in tobacco farming beginning in the 1700s, and unfair sharecropping arrangements in the 1900s (Daniel 1985; van Willigen 1998).
	Tobacco Speaks Out (Tobacco Institute 1983)	1983	“[Tobacco] is in fact, America's oldest industry dating back to the early 1600s when John Roll, better known as the husband of Pocahontas became America's first tobacco farmer and exporter.”	The tobacco industry obtained its economic influence over farmers through a monopoly and monopsony of tobacco buyers since the industry was established (Algeo 1997; Craig 2005).
Employment and Jobs	The Brown and Williamson Story (Brown and Williamson 1975 [inferred])	1975	“[W]hen you count all the people who grow the tobacco and those who manufacture it, distribute it, and sell it, you've got 17 million Americans for all or part of their income.”	Tobacco companies ignore annual health-related economic costs of $167 billion, including adult death-related productivity costs, adult and newborn medical expenditures (American Cancer Society 2007).
	Tobacco: Seed to Pack (Philip Morris 1979)	1979	“[Tobacco] provides jobs for two million Americans. 600,000 farm families receive income from the production of tobacco.	U.S. tobacco companies harm local tobacco farmers by increasingly growing, processing, and making cigarettes overseas beginning in the 1970s (Lindblom 1999).
Taxes	The Brown and Williamson Story (Brown and Williamson 1975 [inferred])	1975	“Annual taxes collected on the sale of tobacco products are well over $5 billion.”	Smuggled illegal cigarettes deny governments $40 to $50 billion in taxes each year (Framework Convention Alliance 2007).
	Real Lives (National Smokers’ Alliance 1994)	1994	“Nationwide, the tobacco industry employs more than 2.3 million people, who along with industry, pay more than $39 billion in taxes.”	Tobacco companies paid $2.9 million to state lobbyists in the U.S. in 1997 to minimize tax increases and weaken state tobacco control policies (Givel and Glantz 2001).
U.S. Trade Balance	Tobacco: Seed to Pack (Philip Morris 1979)	1983	“A significant part of American tobacco and tobacco products is shipped out of the country. Each year these international sales contribute a positive foreign trade balance of more than $1.7 billion to our economy.”	U.S. tobacco companies hurt U.S. tobacco farmers by purchasing inexpensive tobacco from developing countries, paying low tobacco prices to U.S. farmers, establishing cigarette manufacturing plants abroad, and entering new markets outside the U.S. (Johnson 1994).
	A Taste for Tobacco: The Story of Tobacco from Seed to Smoker (Symes 1991)	1984	“America's been wrestling a lot lately with foreign trade, balance of payments, exported jobs, and imported products. Tobacco gives us a trade surplus of $6 billion.”	In 1984, U.S. tobacco companies lobbied the U.S. government to oppose high tariffs and high retail taxes in Asia in tobacco-related global trade disputes (Shaffer, Brenner et al. 2005).
Technology and Skills	Leaf (Tobacco Institute 1974)	1974	“From seed beds to barning, to grading leaf for auction sales, good tobacco depends largely on the hands, the eyes, the skills of those who understand this temperamental plant.”	Tobacco farmers and workers suffer from bladder cancer, allergic or irritant skin disorders (contact eczema), and pesticide exposure (Schmitt, Schmitt et al. 2007)
	BAT in the Developing World [Kenya] (British American Tobacco 1988)	1988	“[A tobacco farmer in Kenya] realizes that [BAT] will instruct him in new agricultural methods which are relevant to his needs. At the same time, traditional skills such as plowing with oxen are not forgotten if they represent the most appropriate technology.”	A tobacco farmer in Kenya said, “The loan the tobacco firm provides is really weighing down on us. Actually, after the deduction you get nothing. Year in year out of the company ensures that you have an outstanding loan” (Patel, Collin et al. 2007).
Alternative Crops and Livelihoods	A Taste for Tobacco: The Story of Tobacco from Seed to Smoker (Symes 1991)	1984	“[T]obacco is not an easy crop to grow for it requires more than 270 hours of labor per acre. In contrast, an acre of wheat needs only three and half hours of labor.”	U.S. tobacco farmers successfully diversified to organic bell peppers, tomatoes, and dozens of other heirloom vegetables (Halweil 2003), and in many cases, replacement crops demand as much if not more labor than tobacco (Warren 2002).
	A Taste for Tobacco: The Story of Tobacco from Seed to Smoker (Symes 1991)	1984	“[T]he tobacco plant is from the same family as the tomato, pepper, potato and petunia.”	The tobacco plant contains nicotine, a substance responsible for cigarette addiction and 490,000 tobacco-related deaths in America each year (Institute of Medicine 2007).
Tobacco Growing Process	How Cigarettes Are Made (Philip Morris 1993)	1993	“The process of making cigarettes begins in the field, where the tobacco is grown and harvested.”	Tobacco companies alter and manipulate nicotine levels to ensure cigarette addiction and marketplace viability of tobacco products (Hurt and Robertson 1998).
	Carolina Tobacco: Roots of an Ageless Triumph (Carolina Tobacco Company 1995)	1995	“At maturity, the burley plants stand about two meters tall. It is harvested whole stalk and speared on stakes usually 5 to 6 stalks each. Stakes are positioned so the severed end of the stalk faces the sun at its greatest intensity to provide maximum protection to the leaves.”	Tobacco workers suffer from green tobacco sickness due to nicotine poisoning from dermal nicotine absorption, leading to vomiting or nausea during or after exposure. The cumulative seasonal exposure to nicotine of workers in tobacco fields is equivalent to smoking 180 cigarettes (Schmitt, Schmitt et al. 2007).
Cigarettes and Smoking	How Cigarettes Are Made (Philip Morris 1993)	1993	“The unique taste of American cigarettes is a result of the blending of burley and bright tobaccos, which have different characteristics.”	Tobacco companies use expanded and reconstituted tobacco with nitrogen, isopentane, and liquid carbon dioxide additives to puff up discarded tobacco to use in cigarettes (Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids 2001).
	Tobacco Working for America (Brown and Williamson 1996)	1996	“Today, approximately 45 million Americans enjoy tobacco products from plants grown in fields like this one.”	Cigarette consumption is declining 1.5% each year in the U.S. and increasing 2.1% a year in developing countries, where inadequate health care systems exist and restrictions on tobacco companies are virtually absent (Warner 2000).
Government Intervention	Real Lives (National Smokers’ Alliance 1994)	1994	“To raise only a tiny portion of what [President Clinton's administration] need[s] to fund health care reform, the administration has chose to place an unfair burden on not only the 15 million adults who choose to smoke but on an industry that has been the backbone of American society since colonial times.”	Tobacco companies place an unfair burden on 38,000 nonsmokers who die each year due to exposure to secondhand smoke (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2005).
	Real Lives (National Smokers’ Alliance 1994)	1994	“From plant workers, to farmers to convenient store workers people all over the country real people with jobs and lives that depend on decisions that you could make or influence wait for the outcome of the health care reform battle with mixed emotions. They want health care for all Americans, but they don't want to be singled out for unfair taxation.”	Health Professor Gary Giovina said, “1 year of [tobacco-related] employment comes at the expense of one person losing 15 years of life from a disease caused by the product supporting the job. Because money not spent on tobacco would be spent on other goods and services, the job is replaceable. The life, however, is not” (Giovino 2007).
Farmer-Company Partnerships	Tobacco: Seed to Pack (Philip Morris 1979)	1983	“[Tobacco] contributes to America in a positive tangible way financially. It is able to do so because of a successful partnership between manufacturer and grower. .”	In 2003, tobacco companies opposed U.S. government recommendations to provide economic development assistance to tobacco communities; tobacco growers supported the Commission's report and recommendations (The President's Commission on Improving Economic Opportunity in Communities Dependent on Tobacco Production While Protecting Public Health 2001; Myers 2003).
	BAT in the Developing World [Kenya] (British American Tobacco 1988)	1988	“[BAT] agricultural extension workers visit the farmers on a regular basis providing advice on how to improve the quality of all their crops not just tobacco.”	BAT, other tobacco companies, and leaf buying companies provide seeds and fertilizers on loan to farmers in Kenya and elsewhere, pushing farmers into debt, poverty, and in extreme cases, desperation leading to suicide from pesticide exposure or unfulfilled contract arrangements with leaf companies (Christian Aid 2002; La Via Campesina 2007; Patel, Collin et al. 2007).
Developing Countries	Gringo Amigo (Verband der Cigarettenindustrie 1979)	1979	“Berkeley Cohn has been living in Guatemala for the past five years. He speaks Spanish. And since he wasn't willing to simply accept their poverty and misery, he decided to do something about it all by himself. Berkeley is financing the schooling of Ricardo Perez’ youngest son, Gandalfo, from his own pocket.”	Similar to anthropologist Dinah Rajak's findings on mining companies in South Africa (Rajak 2006), tobacco companies in Guatemala and other developing countries conceal their power over farmers and economies with claims that tobacco companies are synonymous with empowerment and sustainable development.
	BAT in the Developing World [Kenya] (British American Tobacco 1988)	1988	““[In Kenya] BAT has worked hard to improve farming methods which have led to higher standards of living for rural Kenyans.”	BAT contributes to poverty through tobacco-related deforestation, soil erosion, chemical contamination of water tables, farmer indebtedness to BAT, and child labor in Kenya and other tobacco growing countries (Eldring, Nakanyane et al. 2000; Chacha 2003). Clearing land for tobacco amounts to 500,000 acres cleared every year worldwide (Geist 1999; Esson and Leeder 2004).