New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg and gadabout billionaire Bill Gates are teaming up to raise the cost of cigarettes in poor countries, as well as pay the salaries of lobbyists and organizations that work to make smoke-free environments and put warnings on cigarette packages. It's a brand new sort of international health policy work—public health initiatives achieved through raising taxes in poor countries! A very cunning ploy, billionaires.
The Bloomberg Initiative to Reduce Tobacco Use last year gave money to religious leaders in Bangladesh to promote "tobacco control," to the Thailand Ministry of Public Health to create "100 percent smokefree environments," and plenty of NGOs but also GOs. If Bloomberg and Gates give me a grant of $1,500 so I can buy some Chantix and a big package of hot dogs and take a week off work to be a total bitch in privacy, then I'll stop smoking too.