Career Center’s support of tobacco is shameful

By Sophie Mintier

Each spring, thousands of ambitious UCLA students flock to
recruiting fairs hosted by the Career Center in hopes of finding
internships and jobs for the coming summer and beyond.

These recruiting fairs bring nonprofit organizations, government
agencies, small companies and big corporations alike to campus.
Some of these recruiters are corporate sponsors of the Career
Center, paying large sums of money to gain access to UCLA students
in search of employment. Among the largest and most powerful of
these is Phillip Morris U.S.A., which contributes thousands of
dollars to the Career Center as one of its Executive Partners.

Today, Kraft and Nabisco ““ two members of Philip
Morris’ “family of companies” ““ will be
recruiting prospective employees when the Career Center hosts the
Career Roundup in Ackerman Grand Ballroom.

After a campaign by the Council for Responsible Public
Investment, the UC Regents last year voted not to invest in
tobacco-related stock. By making this commitment, the Regents
demonstrated that they did not want to benefit from the actions of
tobacco companies.

However, UCLA’s Career Center continues to support the
tobacco industry and its shameful practices by accepting money from
Philip Morris U.S.A. as a corporate sponsor and allowing them to
recruit on campus. At the career fairs, Philip Morris U.S.A.
““ whether present as itself or in the form of Kraft and
Nabisco ““ recruits students to bring their talents and
ambition to the company, thereby making students active
participants in upholding the harmful, exploitative tobacco
industry.

The school-sanctioned presence of Philip Morris Corporation on
campus is troubling for a number of reasons. As the world’s
leading producer of tobacco, the corporation is the major power
player in an industry that kills millions of people a year. In rich
countries, smoking-related illnesses cause more deaths than AIDS,
alcohol, drug abuse, car crashes, murders, suicides and fires
combined. In developing countries where the dangers of tobacco are
not as widely known, death and illness from smoking is rapidly
increasing as the number of smokers continues to grow. But Philip
Morris is associated with more than ruinous health effects of
smoking; it also plays a role in perpetuating environmental
degradation and poverty in developing countries.

In the United States, tobacco companies like Philip Morris are
now subject to bans on advertising on television and radio, and
limits on what they can show in print ads. In many poorer
countries, though, the companies are free from such regulations,
and consequently can pursue much more aggressive marketing tactics.
Thanks to the efforts of transnational tobacco companies, smoking
““ and its accompanying illnesses ““ is rapidly spreading
among those populations that can least afford to pay for the
harmful effects of this addiction.

Using persuasive advertising that associates smoking with
glamour, youthfulness, and excitement, Western tobacco companies
capitalize on the lack of widespread knowledge in these countries
about tobacco’s adverse health effects. When these factors
succeed in attracting new customers in developing countries, poor
people who may struggle to feed themselves now have the additional
economic burden of paying for their addiction. And the long-term
health effects of smoking will create a far greater economic
strain.

Additionally, tobacco has devastating effects on the environment
and those whose lives depend on cultivating the crop. Every year,
nearly half a million acres of forest are cleared for tobacco
farming, mostly in developing countries. Since tobacco can’t
be grown in the same fields year after year due to buildup of
parasites, new lands must be cleared constantly. Cutting down trees
makes soil vulnerable to wind and rain, eroding its nutrients and
fertility and ruining it for future cultivation of food crops.

Furthermore, tobacco plants requires heavy use of pesticides to
protect it from disease and pests. Farmers who produce tobacco
aren’t informed of the necessary safety procedures for
handling the pesticides and suffer health effects as a result.

We must not continue to be complicit in perpetuating a system of
global injustice by welcoming Philip Morris, the undisputed leader
of the exploitative tobacco empire, to our campus. The university
should make responsible investment a priority, whether at the level
of the UC Regents or the UCLA Career Center, by refusing to be
associated in any way with a company that profits at the expense of
human health, social justice and the environment.