Duncan Bannatyne, famous in the UK for his dour attitude and sarcasm as one of the Dragons in the UK television show Dragon's Den recently put out  ‘Bannatyne takes on Big Tobacco' on the BBC. 

In Dragon's Den Bannatyne is one of a bench of investor judges at whom entrepreneurs pitch business ideas with the aim of securing investment and partnerships. In Bannatyne takes on Big Tobacco, his energies are spent instead on a most laudable personal activism against a particular type of business, Big Tobacco in Africa.  The BBC programme in the link is available only to UK residents and YouTube has a very short preview here.  If you find you are still unsatisfied, there's this article on the Guardian blog.

Whilst it is true that Duncan Bannatyne is not a documentary film-maker and that his account does indeed 'lack teeth', the premise of the argument and the investment he has made to get his message out is laudable.

Naturally, British American Tobacco (BAT), the bogey-man of Bannatyne's rant has released a  statement on just how biased and unfair his programme is.

Tackling the BAT release point by point

British American Tobacco asserts that the BBC documentary was not a fair, impartial or balanced portrayal as required by the BBC charter.

"By the producers' own admission, it was "a personal view", putting across very strong opinions, subjective views and judgements made by one individual, a TV personality called Duncan Bannatyne, who has a campaigning anti-tobacco stance,"

Yes, this is true but, that is not to say that it doesn't serve the interest of a public agenda - the public agenda which the BBC serves because of its stakeholder's, the public - who not only own the broadcaster but who also fund it through their TV licence payments. In particular, the case can be made that the BBC should also aim to promote public good. Smokers are an increasingly small minority in the UK and a vigorous health campaign by the government has been stigmatizing smoking as socially unacceptable, especially because of the great cost to the public health service. It is also clear that one year on from the onset of the smoking ban here, Bannantyne's 'personal view as an activist' carries with it great moral weight. Just such activism as is displayed in the documentary led to the ban and subsequently to the more than 400,000 smokers who gave up the habit in its first year.

That Bannantyne needs to balance the smoking industry's bias, effectively its sales pitch and lobbying, with an equally strong counter-bias in his anti-smoking campaign, highlights the difficulty of the battle for objectivity in this debate. It also highlights how endemic the belief that smoking is merely  'a personal choice' and not an addiction, has become in society.

"Our marketing is not aimed at ‘selling smoking',

This is patently untrue, pure spin and semantics. When your marketing is aimed at selling more cigarettes, to say that you are not selling smoking when you are selling cigarettes is like saying you are selling dynamite but not explosions. What else could one do with a cigarette?

"BAT does not sell single cigarettes,"

Fine, they don't do so directly, and we can agree on this. Still, BAT fails to address Bannantyne's criticism of BAT branded posters that advertise and display a pricing structure for single cigarette sticks.

  "We try to educate retailers about the law and that they should never sell to children".

This is precisely the problem, this effort, this trying, cannot be quantified, what is clear from Bannatyne's journey and his interviews of people in Mauritius, Nigeria and Malawi is that children make a sizeable number of the tobacco company's clients. Trying is not enough any more - you either have ethical codes and follow through with them by not supplying cigarettes to countries who don't have sufficient laws and structures in place to protect the youth, or else you are tacitly supporting the sale of cigarettes to children. There is no such thing in such crucial matters as trying, it is a simple question of either/or.

The sale of single cigarettes in countries where it is done, is not illegal.

In the globalised business world, every corporation is itself responsible for the conduct of its subsidiaries, wherever they are. The absence of sanctions against certain codes, or weak enforcement mechanisms are not shields against a company's obligations to uphold such ethical codes as it promulgates as core to its business. If the BAT's internal marketing regulations and codes of conduct prohibit the sale of single cigarettes, it is unethical of the company to hide behind legal extenuations. Precedents on this and other aspects of a corporation's, even a multi-national one's, social responsibility were already set with regard to sweatshops and child labour.

More than these obvious failings, the BAT press release does not address a number of additional aspects that were highlighted in the film, including: its pamphlets depicting cigarettes as progressive and aspirational; the fact that brand awareness without advertising has taken root through other marketing initiatives; and the fact that advertising posters displayed prices on them. These of course directly contradicts any statements that they are not selling single cigarettes.

To inhibit this exploitation of the Third World, it is necessary that public awareness of the issue is promoted. This is not without challenges, much like the campaign pointing out the health risks associated with smoking, pushing for an informed public with regard to the negative impacts of smoking on children abroad is likely to generate a wave of antipathy.  'Smokers' it seems don't have a rational attitude to the chain of effects their addiction has on vulnerable people around the world. Bannatyne's documentary, specially prepared for the British market looks to make that chain evident and it should be shocking, even to smokers.

The bottom line is, cigarette smoking costs lives and it is up to governments and people to find a way to incentivise the tobacco industry to drop the crop and invest its money in ventures for the progression of human activity, not its destruction. Skimming through the Corporate Social Responsibility Report of BAT is looking through a universe of contradictions - how can promoting smoking be sustainable and responsible when it contributes to large-scale premature death and has potentially dangerous effects on human evolution?

"Like Duncan Bannatyne, we really do not want children to smoke, but sadly, we don't think this programme ever really got to grips with effective ways to prevent this from happening," BAT concludes.

BAT shareholders, some of whom Bannatyne confronted in his documentary should seek to agitate for their corporation's evolution away from tobacco and cigrattes.  They cannot continue to turn a blind eye to the effects of the trade that yields them their dividenda, not even if the tobacco industry persists in messaging against the known effects of tobacco, branding it a matter of 'personal choice'.

There is not much of a choice when you are brainwashed as an impressionable child into taking up smoking; you don't have a choice anymore if you actually believe your life will hang in the balance without the cigarette, if you believe that social acceptability hinges on your taking up the habit. There is little choice when confronting psychological trauma that requires sustained and prolongued insight to change.

It's time for the industry to take responsibility, reorganise their efforts and decide to make money in a responsible fashion. It created the market and profitted massively from it. It can also undo the market over time: don't abdicate, innovate.