In this scene Governor Kane places a call to the CEO of Phillip Morris to discuss an idea he's been kicking around. All of the major tobacco companies have left the United States and have relocated to the Middle American states in order to avoid the usurious taxes, the never-ending legal settlements and the ever-growing list of burdensome regulations:
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Ben
spoke with Calderone for a while longer, working their way through the
presumptive military chess game that they were facing. When the meeting ended,
Ben spent some time considering his next move. He had a long list of people he
needed to consult with—legislative leaders, cabinet administrators within his
administration, the other governors and Kim, of course. But in the end, as with
all difficult calls, any decision would be his to make. He picked up the phone
and called Phillip Morris; moments later he was on the line with Jeffrey
Johnson, the Chairman and CEO.
“Governor,” Johnson
said. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Ben allowed about
thirty seconds for small talk before asking his first question. “How many
smokers are there in the U.S.?”
“The number’s been
holding pretty steady at about twenty-percent of the population, call it 61
million. That’s including our free states, so figure 60 million outside of our
borders.”
“That’s a lot of
people.”
“The industry’s been
demonized for so long most people—smokers included—never give much thought to how
many of them there are out there. That number has dropped considerably over the
years as a percentage of overall population, but the actual number of smokers
hasn’t changed as much as you might think. Back in 1960, about 40-percent of
the population smoked. But the population back then was only, say, 180 million,
so there were 72 million smokers, verses the 61 million today. But that number
is still roughly equivalent to the combined populations of California, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania.”
“I never thought of it
that way,” Ben said. “You would think that they’d have more political clout
with those kinds of numbers. Why do they let themselves get pushed around by
the health Nazis the way they’ve been? I don’t think I’ve ever heard of smokers
pushing back against the regulations, restrictions and taxes aimed at them.”
“Guilt, I imagine.
They’ve got grotesque, graphic warnings on each and every pack directed at
them, and television and print ad campaigns have been haranguing them at every
turn, for decades. And keep in mind that most of those regulations,
restrictions and taxes were never proposed as being against smokers, they were always pitched as being for the benefit of non-smokers. Add that
to constant reminders about how smokers are a burden to the health care system,
and are accused of killing their children and neighbors with secondhand smoke,
and you make it difficult for the average smoker to stand up in his or her own
defense without looking like a selfish, anti-social, self-destructive serial killer.”
“So everyone just
swallows their guilt, pays their tobacco taxes, and smokes their cigarettes in
exile, out in the snow or under a narrow awning in the rain.”
“Welcome to my world.”
“I was always
surprised that the industry didn’t push back harder against the state and
federal government, especially with those sorts of numbers behind you.”
“The truth is they
never really bit into our income much, so we settled for a seat at the table
whenever they were ready to cook up a new batch of regulations. The taxes and
fines were meaningless—they just got passed on to the customers, so they never
affected our bottom line. The sad reality was that the industry long ago got
into bed with the government and got comfortable with it. When I took the helm
three years ago, I started looking west to what you folks were doing and
thought: why not us? Then the new administration took office and started making
noises about extending the Tobacco Agreement beyond its original terms. At that
point I started talking to my counterparts in the other companies and—you know
the rest. Here we are.”
“So how’s business?
Are you able to move your product into the states without too much of a problem?”
“We’re stumbling
along. We fly the product up through Canada and then to warehouse distribution centers
either in Mexico or the Bahamas. We’ve been given a “special dispensation”
from the new black market restrictions—they can’t afford to give up the sales
taxes they collect on cigarettes. Rumor has it they’re going to increase the
federal tobacco tax to try to fill the gap left by our missing settlement and
income tax payments. They’re cracking down like crazy on a whole array of other
black market products—retailers are being heavily fined and even threatened
with felony convictions if they’re caught with anything originating out of the free state region.”
“I know. It’s really
getting ugly out there. So how come you’re warehousing the product outside the U.S. if they’ve given you a green light to do
business there?”
“We don’t trust the administration;
it’s as simple as that. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to wake up one
morning to a phone call telling me that the government had seized our
warehouses for one fabricated reason or another. Remember, we’re the devil
incarnate to begin with, and they honestly feel that they were robbed when we left the states to come work here. So we
sell the product to wholesale distributors in the states, deliver only what’s
been paid in advance and let them worry about it. It’s the same way we operate
with third world military juntas. We keep our assets out of their reach and
essentially just dump the product on the beach and let them do what they want
with it.”
“This is a really sad
conversation, isn’t it?”
“You bet. The tobacco
industry was here before the founding of the country. It breaks my heart to see
what’s happening—both to the industry and
to the country. Thank God for you, Governor.”
“Thanks, but I wasn’t
fishing for the compliment. Let me ask you something—how big a hit would you
take if you suspended all cigarette shipments to the U.S. market? Just cut ‘em off, out of the blue.”
“Believe it or not,
we’ve considered it. I think I told you the first time we met that we could
sell everything we produce here overseas. Financially, we’d come out ahead,
because the American made products are so popular we can position them as
premium brands and price them accordingly. Why do you ask?”
“You might recall that
during my televised address I promised everybody that, one way or another, I’d
turn this embargo back on Washington. I can’t think of any one better way of
doing that then cutting off tens of millions of smokers cold turkey. I really
hate to drag Joe Six Pack into this mess, but it’s time everyone had a little
skin in the game. Plus it allows me to piss off 60 million or so already maltreated
second-class citizens and dump them on Washington’s doorstep. I have to tell you, the idea
has some appeal to me.”
“Let me kick it around
a little, talk to a few people. If we were to stay out of the market for too
long it would probably cost us fifty-percent or more of our customer base as
people who wanted to quit took advantage of the situation and gave up the habit
for good. But we might be able to arrange some manufacturing delays or product
recalls or something along those lines that would result in nationwide product
shortages for a few weeks or a month or so. Would that do?”
“I’m glad I don’t
smoke anymore.”
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