Big Tobacco needs to kick old habits if it wants a healthier future

If the Tobacco industry wants to recruit talented young people from prestigious universities who can ensure its survival over the long term, its only option is to stop killing its customers.

As the academic year draws to a close, the world's biggest companies will soon begin their annual bidding war for global universities' brightest talent. For the tobacco industry, the stakes are particularly high: companies such as Philip Morris, British American Tobacco and Imperial are investing billions of euros in vaping and heated tobacco brands to mitigate falling smoking rates among its wealthiest consumers, but these new products require the recruitment of hundreds of tech-savvy engineers, scientists and designers.

As the tobacco companies admit, they've got an extremely tough job attracting such talents ahead of companies like Apple and Google, given the endless media criticism their industry has received. Yet, at the same time, the industry persists with the very same practices which prompted all that coverage in the first place. In the West, Big Tobacco is striving to reinvent itself around e-cigarettes, using buzzwords such as "switch" and "change" to tell consumers it has changed its ways. However, in the developing world, where conventional smoking rates continue to rise, the manufacturers keep discreetly pushing their core product by any means necessary.

In Uganda, for example, the tobacco industry is desperately trying to cling on to its market share. Research shows that tobacco-related illness exerts a heavy toll on Uganda's already beleaguered healthcare system while driving down productivity, exacerbating the economic plight of the world's third-poorest country. Yet British American Tobacco has still tried to thwart a flagship piece of control legislation, designed to implement the World Health Organization's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC).

The Tobacco Control Act, passed in 2015, imposed a series of restrictions including graphic health warnings, workplace smoking bans and public advertising blackouts, all of which are commonplace in the developed world – where BAT has pledged to help regulatory bodies. In Uganda, however, it attempted to claim that such measures were unconstitutional, and told the MP who sponsored the bill that it would no longer work with the tobacco farmers in his constituency.

Thankfully, Uganda's Constitutional Court quashed the challenge last month, finding it was part of a global strategy by tobacco lawyers to scupper public health legislation. In other countries, however, the industry wields far more influence. One of those in South Africa, where cigarettes, popular among poorer communities, have been shown to increase economic inequality and drive a black market which deprives the state coffers of millions of rand every year, stunting the economic progress of a country whose debt levels are soaring.

The Tobacco Institute of Southern Africa (Tisa), funded by the major manufacturers, has commissioned a series of studies to condemn this illicit trade, pointing the finger of blame squarely at smaller, independent producers. Yet, at the same time, it has expressed concern about plans for a new system known as a track-and-trace, another key piece of WHO regulation which is specifically designed to curb such activity.

The Tisa says the South African Revenue Service is pushing the traceability system too quickly and it won't solve the fundamental problems behind cigarette smuggling. However, critics point out the industry giants are really worried about their own conduct coming to light. After all, the major manufacturers stand accused of corporate espionage and bribing public officials, and a former Sars executive has claimed it is, in fact, the major market players who are running the bootlegging operation. Sars set up an investigative unit to monitor the tobacco industry, but this body was suddenly dismantled in 2015.

Yet even in Europe, Big Tobacco is still happy to play dirty if it thinks it can gain an advantage. In fact, the cigarette lobby has spent years trying to infiltrate the EU's own version of track and trace, despite several reports showing that the vast majority of illicit stocks which arrive on the continent originate in the manufacturers' factories. The WHO insists all track and trace technologies must be independent of industry, yet the tobacco lobby has tirelessly lobbied officials to use its own system, Codentify. The technology was developed by Philip Morris, and although it was sold and rebranded as Inexto in 2016, purportedly to remove industry involvement, critics believe this is little more than a front group, manned by several former PMI executives.

The manufacturers' cynical tactics – which even include false endorsements from EU officials – have brought accusations of interference from the WHO's FCTC secretariat, who conjure analogies of foxes and chickens to describe the problem of industry involvement.

Despite the criticism, it appears the tactics are working. The EU has already entrusted a crucial data storage function to Swiss firm Dentsu Aegis, whose subsidiary Blue Infinity has worked with several prominent tobacco firms and even developed a traceability system based on Codentify. Now there are fears the industry could land an even bigger role, as several EU members have yet to appoint an ID issuer – one of the very functions for which Codentify was designed. This process is a fraught one: the French IT firm Atos and its sister company, Worldline, act as ID issuers in many member states, either as primary contractor or outsourcer. Atos, which also helped develop Codentify, also acts as the data storage provider for major tobacco firms such as PMI.

Even if the industry succeeds in infiltrating track and trace, it knows it is ultimately fighting a lost battle. Smoking rates will keep falling while regulations tighten, meaning that e-cigarettes are the only way to secure Big Tobacco's long-term future. If the industry wants to recruit talented young people who can ensure its survival over the long term, its only option is to stop killing its customers.