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An international campaigner against tobacco, currently visiting New Zealand, says calling the industry evil is an understatement.
Dr Jeffrey Wigand, who is in the country to advise a Maori Affairs select committee inquiry, was the tobacco industry executive who blew the whistle on a massive corporate cover-up and his story inspired the movie The Insider, starring Russel Crowe.
Asked on TV ONE's Breakfast programme if "evil" was a fair label for big tobacco, he said: "I would say that's an understatement. If you were to categorise their morality or ethical content it's in the negative numbers. They will do anything to maximise profit at the expense of others."
Wigand says the tobacco industry had its chance to come clean about the highly addictive nature of tobacco in the 1950s.
"But they chose to fill that environment with what I would say is obfuscation, misinformation and continue to rationalise its utility when knowing in the inside, and I was privileged as a corporate officer to hear the language inside, which is 'hook 'em young, hook 'em for life'."
He is still vigorously campaigning against cigarettes, saying he thinks his efforts have made some difference in bringing the topic into the spotlight but the fight still has a long way to go because of its link to politics.
"Every time a packet of cigarettes get sold the government gets a little bit but the big lion share of the profit goes to the tobacco industry," he said.
He claims this relationship makes campaigning to government to close down tobacco companies difficult.
"If tobacco was invented today I think that (campaigning to government) would be a rational and a very perfect approach to controlling tobacco. Unfortunately it's been around for centuries.
"What we have to do is undo the insulation they've had because of the enormous industry. And they have bought many favours through politicians, through government," Wigand said.
The political arena is only one front of campaigning. As former head of tobacco research and development, Wigand was charged with coming up with new ways to target the public.
"I mean light and mild, menthol - a trick on the public. The new smokeless tobacco product to defeat smokeless environments that are coming out in the United States and the world. Electronic cigarettes - these are all the new ways of capturing people by saying 'let's keep the addiction going' so that when you get off the plane, or get out of your board meeting, you can go and have your regular product ."
And in targeting the public, no-one is out of bounds for the companies, he says.
"The industry must have, and will continue to have people that are underage. They need children, children are easy to manipulate. They go after lower socio-economic categories, like the African-American. And now the third world is their new panacea because the developed countries are starting to tighten the regulatory framework."
