Today sees the start of a co-ordinated week of action by ASH and our partners to highlight the global harm caused by the tobacco industry.

What about the harm caused by Tobacco Control?  The deaths, the misery, the loss of employment?  How about the loading of ever increasing taxes on [as you yourselves proclaim] the poorest sections of society?

Tobacco kills around 6 million people every year — a figure greater than the number of people living in Denmark.

Using a bullshit figure to sustain a bullshit argument.

Why not just nuke Denmark?

Smoking is the largest preventable cause of death and disease across the world.

*yawn*  We all have to die of something.  It might as well be something we enjoy?

Despite the widespread harm caused by the tobacco industry, the businesses involved continue to harvest enormous profits. BAT alone made a profit of £5.2 billion in 2016 from their global market share of about 11%.

So?  The idea of business is to make a profit [and to provide livelihoods].  Fair play to them.

The harm from the tobacco industry extends beyond that caused to individuals who smoke or are exposed to second-hand smoke. Tobacco farming takes valuable land that could be used to produce food and other more useful resources, and increases poverty in low income countries.

Tobacco is a crop like any other and as such is providing a valuable income for tobacco farmers.  Maybe they should be farming opium?

Child labour is used extensively in tobacco farming and production, harming efforts to improve educational outcomes, while the adult labour involved could be put to more productive and beneficial work. Many workers involved in harvesting tobacco, especially children, fall ill with a condition called green tobacco sickness.

Great!  The kids have an income.  Only fair that they should contribute to the household.

Hundreds of millions of trees are felled every year to make way for tobacco crops, accelerating deforestation and contributing negatively to climate change.

Hundreds of millions of trees are felled every year to make way for other crops and farming.  So what’s your point?

Here are some ways in which you can get involved in the campaign.

Share your stories about how tobacco has affected you and tag them with #ActOnTobacco

Years of pleasure.  Need I say more?

Help make the campaign visual — share images and photos of the impact tobacco has had on you or those around you.

I think you’ll find a couple of photos I have published in the past of my self enjoying the pipe?

Check with your pension provider to see if they invest in tobacco and if so, encourage them to disinvest. ShareAction can help on this and this ASH briefing provides further information.

I shall indeed contact my pension provider and highlight your excellent point above concerning Big Tobacco’s huge profits.  I hope they have tons of shares.  It sounds like an excellent investment to me?

I hope ASH have shares in them?

Or do they just prefer to sponge off the tax payer?