Stalinist cigarettes made by RJR Reynolds

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: Soviet Government owned tobacco companies were hardly capable of marketing tobacco to consumers. : USAID helped create a company called Crimson Capital (composed of Harvard Alumni) (http://www.crimsoncapital.org/) which first privatized Czech tobacco. This was done under USAID contracts. During the era of hyperinflation, all tobacco growing land in Ukraine could have been bought for probably ten million dollars. That was not done. Tobacco privatization was quick and efficient. An addictive product has a loyal following. During the end of the Soviet era there was a lack of cigarette products as the system collapsed. There were some civil disturbances as a result of tobacco shortages. In time of war tobacco can be more valuable than money though not as valuable as gold. : Western tobacco companies bought this land and Ukraine now has many tobacco farms and modern factories. : I do not have statistics to prove that Ukrainians smoke more than they did in the Soviet era. But there is no doubt that western companies are much better at marketing than old Soviet government manufacturers were. : Western cigarettes are "better blended" and so people are more likely to smoke more of them. So they may be "safer" per cigarette but are not safer in toto. : Western tobacco companies have used Ukraine for smuggling tobacco into and out of Ukraine to the EU. This has provided capital for criminal elements. : The Russian Orthodox Church (MP) got into the marketing of tobacco since it could avoid all sorts of taxes and was a convenient shipper. : People must remember until the nineteen nineties it was the duty of ambassadors and their business legations to promote American tobacco abroad. President Clinton ended that. But it did not become formal law until the USA somewhat reluctantly ratified an international WHO created tobacco accord. : I believe that to this day American tobacco companies are not liable for damage to health that they do abroad. That is all the liabilities that American tobacco companies incurred in the USA are not relevant to what happens abroad. That means a person with cancer from smoking Marlboros in Ukraine cannot sue in an American court for damages. : I am not certain that western tobacco companies have stopped marketing to children in Ukraine. I have also read that at one time (perhaps still true) fifty percent of all advertising in Ukraine was done by tobacco. : Belomorkanal was a Stalinist project in the nineteen thirties to build a canal in the far north of Russia. All sorts of prisoners were brought there. In memory of this "heroic project" the Soviet government made a Belomorkanal papiros. That brand is now American owned and made by RJR Reynolds tobacco according to Dr. RD Hurt of the Mayo Clinic. Belomorkanal was part of the Gulag. : www.iisg.nl/collections/belomorkanal : www.iisg.nl/collections/belomorkanal/cigarettes.html : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bielamorkanal : Thousands prisoners, many of them Ukrainian died there: : http://www.khpg.org/index.phpid=976392745&r=2&s=2000&n=9 : http://khpg.org/index.php?id=1098780045 : from the Hurt article in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings October 1995: : *Figure 5. Front and back of Belomorkanal cigarette package. RJR insignia on back.* : Conclusion of Dr. Hurt of the Mayo Clinic: "What, then, do Stalin and Western tobacco companies have in common? Both have central roles in the death and suffering of countless numbers of Russians--Stalin in the past, Western tobacco companies in the future." : Ukrainian Americans are generally much more concerned with commemorating the deaths of those who already died so they pay much more attention to those who died under Stalin than preventing deaths that will occur in the future. : As a doctor I feel my responsibility is to prevent deaths. : Bohdan A. Oryshkevich