Current Position
The tobacco industry generally refers to the companies involved in the manufacture of cigarettes, cigars, snuff, chewing and pipe tobacco. The largest tobacco company in the world by volume is China National Tobacco Co.. Following extensive merger and acquisition activity in the 1990s and 2000s, international markets are dominated by five firms, in alphabetical order: Altria, British American Tobacco (represented in the U.S. market by a 42% stake in Reynolds American, Inc.), Imperial Tobacco, Japan Tobacco, and Philip Morris International. Altria was formerly called the Philip Morris Cos, and it still owns the Philip Morris tobacco business in the United States, but Philip Morris International has been fully independent since 2008. In most countries these companies either have long established dominance, or have purchased the major domestic producer or producers, often a former state monopoly. The United States has one other substantial independent firm, Lorillard. India has its own major player, ITC Limited. There are a small number of surviving state monopolies, and some small independent firms.
Tobacco advertising is becoming increasingly restricted around the world.
Read more about this topic: Tobacco Industry
Famous quotes containing the words current and/or position:
“I perceived that to express those impressions, to write that essential book, which is the only true one, a great writer does not, in the current meaning of the word, invent it, but, since it exists already in each one of us, interprets it. The duty and the task of a writer are those of an interpreter.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“The teacher must derive not only the capacity, but the desire, to observe natural phenomena. In our system, she must become a passive, much more than an active, influence, and her passivity shall be composed of anxious scientific curiosity and of absolute respect for the phenomenon which she wishes to observe. The teacher must understand and feel her position of observer: the activity must lie in the phenomenon.”
—Maria Montessori (1870–1952)