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Tobacco: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

LastWeekTonight · 22.6M views · 2015-02-16 · 18:11

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Overview

A Last Week Tonight segment on how tobacco companies sustain profits by pushing sales overseas. It covers suits against countries like Australia over plain packaging through trade-deal arbitration.

On Hacker News

HN uses it in TPP and trade-deal threads as a clear example of ISDS being used by corporations against governments.

Recommended by 6 HN people across 6 months · HN mentions 2015–2021

Topics

Media, journalism & propagandaLaw, policing & justiceMicroeconomics & behavioral economics
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tobaccoisdstppplain packagingjohn oliver

What people said

dailyrorschach · 2015-07 · Strong recommendation

A great deal of the Chamber's funding comes from Tobacco companies. In fact there are conference rooms named for them. If you haven't seen Last Week Tonight's take on the international bad behavior of the Tobacco companies I really encourage you to check it out. It's about 18min long, but well worth it: [VIDEO] They've responded to a shrinking market in the US and other highly developed nations, by doubling down on their efforts to sell to everyone in the rest of the world. And woe to the country with a smaller GDP than Phillip Morris who decides to try to put restrictions on a pack of smokes.

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hkarthik · 2015-03 · Strong recommendation

There was a great John Oliver segment on the tobacco industry and how it's evolved to become even more profitable worldwide than it ever was in the US. Highly recommended to watch it. [VIDEO]

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staz · 2018-08 · Recommendation

Most countries in the EU are taking steps to combat this and the number of smokers is steadily diminishing, even if too slowly. I'm more worried about the non smoker countries which the tobacco companies are seeing as new territories to conquer. John Oliver did a good segment about that two years ago [VIDEO]

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Sources

Video by LastWeekTonight, played through YouTube.

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