Philip Morris International’s $1 billion fund to help stop smoking is being debated and examined by academics and health leaders worldwide.
Philip Morris International is attempting to distribute nearly $1 billion for research on reducing smoking. But the grant is being called a “billion dollar bribe” of “blood money,” a “wolf in sheep’s clothing,” a “smokescreen,” a “public relations stunt” and the “height of hypocrisy.” The American Cancer Society has even called it a “new twist out of the tobacco industry’s deadly playbook”, while the World Heart Federation says it is a “vehicle for the tobacco industry.” One anti-smoking group said “the tobacco epidemic will never be ended by its perpetrators”