Environmentalist smokers confront their contradictions

Echoing a book published by Olivier Milleron, the Reporterre website questions environmental activist smokers about their relationship with a tobacco industry that is terribly harmful to the environment.

Environmental activists' actions often target multinational companies, but very rarely those in the tobacco industry. "Why don't the green movements take up this issue more?" asks the news site Reporterre in an article about the tobacco industry, turning to environmental activists who smoke[1].

The environmental weight of the tobacco market

THE environmental consequences The tobacco industry's impacts are, however, widely documented. Massive deforestation, depletion of water resources, significant use of pesticides in agriculture and hydrocarbons in the transport of goods, use of paper and plastics in the manufacture of cigarettes and their packets, release of chemical pollutants, considerable waste from cigarette butts and packaging, the list of environmental impacts is long. These consequences are added to the health costs and their own impacts. The World Health Organization (WHO) has also placed the World No Tobacco Day under the banner of the environment, in order to raise awareness of this little-known aspect of the tobacco market.

These numerous environmental impacts do not, however, prevent many environmental activists from smoking, even though a large number of them have already changed their lifestyle in other ways: giving up meat and carbon-based means of transport, eating organic food, a more sober lifestyle that respects resources, etc. "For tobacco, it's more complicated: it's not a practice like the others, it's an addiction," says one of the environmental activists interviewed. The argument of nicotine addiction weighs even more in the case of electronic cigarettes, whose environmental cost is particularly high due to the use of batteries, plastics, metals and chemicals, and their consumption of electricity.

The political argument to compensate for that of health reasons

"It is more strategic for us to attack Total than the tobacco industry," confesses another activist. It is precisely to question this strategy that cardiologist Olivier Milleron has just published a book that challenges left-wing activists about their smoking[2]. Noting that his smoking friends are not very sensitive to health arguments, Milleron preferred to play on political arguments. He thus recalls the history of the tobacco trade, originally linked to colonization and slavery. He also highlights the "strategy of doubt", developed in the 1950s by cigarette manufacturers and since taken up by the oil and agrochemical industries, and underlines its many environmental consequences.

However, the questioning of their addictive practice does not spare environmental activist smokers, who sometimes feel torn between their convictions and their health behaviors. "After a while, I started to feel bad about smoking: on the one hand, I was forbidding myself a lot of things, and on the other, I continued to buy cigarettes even though it was financing the worst capitalists in the world.", confides another activist. Since awareness is one of the first steps in helping smokers quit smoking, it remains to be hoped that this argument will bear fruit. The simple application of the polluter pays principle would be an effective first response to the environmental damage caused by the tobacco industry.

Keywords: Environment, environmentalists, Milleron, smokers, tobacco

M.F.

[1] Quentel A, Tobacco pollutes: environmentalists and smokers testify, Reporterre, published September 7, 2022, consulted September 9, 2022.

[2] Milleron O, Why smoking is right-wing, Paris, Textuel, 2022.