Mission Australia has this week released a media statement “Drugs a growing concern for young Australians“.
Mission Australia’s concerns about young people and drugs are no doubt genuine, but would be much more credible if they were not themselves associated with leading drug-peddlers.
The Mission Australia Annual Report for 2007 lists British American Tobacco Australia among its “Major Supporters”. Reciprocally, BATA, in its 2007 “Social Report”, refers to its Association with Mission Australia on no less than four pages.
In their generosity, BAT Australia have even “provided bins and ashtrays amounting to nearly $15,000 to several Mission Australia adult accommodation services”.
There is also a touching featured quote from a Mission Australia spokesperson about how “the BAT Australia volunteers (have) become an important part of our Christmas celebrations”.
Cigarettes are lethal when used precisely as intended. Tobacco is by far our largest cause of drug deaths. BATA are among the world’s most successful drug peddlers. Their products kill literally millions of people around the world. They, like other tobacco companies, have a long history of marketing their products ruthlessly to adults and young people alike.
If Mission Australia want their concerns about drug use to be taken seriously, the first thing they should do is cut their ties with tobacco companies, rather than being part of their promotional activities.
Some years ago, there was a bit of a push for Australian public health advocates to adopt the US approach of marginalising the tobacco industry in a bid to thwart the industry’s unshakeable attempts at corporate respectability. (This is something that the public may not care two figs about, but it makes a difference to the poli’s.) Perhaps it might not be possible for the Preventative Health Task Force to be exactly up-front about developing a strategy to discredit and marginaise what we are continually told is a ‘legal industry’, but the fact is that the ‘drug pusher’ label has never stuck in a big way, and the industry has not been demonised in Australia the way it has been in the US. Can we please come up with some effective stuff to put the industry on the ropes so that charities, universities, and anyone else who needs support wouldn’t dream of taking the industry’s dirty money?
Wonderful. Under the guise of charity & good works, Mission Australia now poisons both the bodies bodies (with fags) and minds (with religion) of vulnerable young people.
It’s foul that either is acceptable, or that such “charity” is necessary in a civilised society.
BATA is to be commended for it’s charity to Mission Australia, it has saved the Mission from the expense buying the necessary ashtrays.
Oil companies are similarly to be commended for public spirited actions on climate change, and the environment; who can forget Exxon’s hard work in Alaska.