… that proves something! This piece published by the National Post (Canada) is a typical example of good and logical reasoning proceeding from a tragically wrong assumption.
The reasons why pension plans all over the world invest in tobacco is obvious: tobacco is a stable stock that yields predicable returns — and in itself, that is proof that the anti-smoking campaigns have failed. If they were successful, tobacco stocks would be worthless, because there would be no customers buying the product. Instead, in these troubled economic times, tobacco stocks are more than ever a reliable financial anchor that every investor should look into.
The wrong assumption is visible in the title of the piece: “Why is the Canada Pension Plan Investing in one of Canada’s Biggest Killers?” Clearly, the issue raised b the piece is moral. Just read this:
According to Health Canada’s Web site: "Every 11 minutes, a Canadian dies from tobacco use. Every 10 minutes, two Canadian teenagers start smoking cigarettes; one of them will lose her life because of it. Yearly, more than a thousand Canadians who never even smoked die — from exposure to tobacco smoke. Thousands more are diagnosed with illnesses related to tobacco use. Year in and year out, more than 37,000 Canadians perish — because of tobacco." … Pretty grim stuff.
The question: “Should the pension plan invest in such an industry, designed to kill people?” becomes the moral dilemma but there is no dilemma if we compare the assumption with reality.
The reality is that Health Canada is a sick unrepentant liar that knowingly cons the population with figures and statements that it cannot prove. The lies are big. Health Canada (and Tobacco Control in general) in fact cannot prove scientifically that even one of those persons has died, or will die, because of the use of, or exposure to, tobacco.
Ask any honest scientist who is not on the payroll of Big Tobacco, Big Pharma, or Big State Health, and he will tell you (probably privately because he is afraid of consequences and intimidation!) that there is no way to demonstrate the unique causality of smokers’ or "passive" smokers’ deaths or diseases, not even in one case, at any time, in the entire universe. Tobacco mortality is as big a con job as is that of man-made global warming. It is not science, it is ideology dressed as science. That is a fact — not an assumption.
This is the problem embedded in this and many other pieces, a problem as roaring as a lion, yet which most folks refuse to recognize: it is institutional corruption. Simply stated, we have a branch of the state that is knowingly and premeditatedly conning citizens into thinking that opinions, which are based on daft "consensus" regarding non-scientifically demonstrated beliefs and ideology, are scientific facts which can be measured in deaths and dollars. In reality “tobacco-related” deaths are simply incommensurable.
If this fact is pondered and understood, then the moral dilemma about investments has absolutely no reason to exist, and the pension systems would do the absolute right and responsible thing by investing in tobacco — to make sure that they have (differently than "tobacco-related" deaths) perfectly measurable dollars to pass on to those who have been forced to contribute to those pension plans for their old age.
The ethical anxieties should be turned where they belong, and we should read articles carrying titles to the effect of: “Why is Health Canada Investing in One of Canada’s Biggest Scientific Frauds?”, or, “Why Should Citizens Tolerate The Cons That Run Health Canada?”
THAT is the REAL moral dilemma that nobody, apparently, has the courage to face: institutional corruption motivated by self-serving, fanatical ideology.
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