Thread by @HoarseWisperer

Many, many years ago, I worked for an agency that was invited to meet with RJ Reynolds about potential business.

I would not have been willing to work on the business but went to the first meeting.

It was surreal.

1/

https://twitter.com/cnn/status/1188800090951081984

Before we were even allowed in the building, we were ushered into a room off the lobby where lawyers briefed us on what we could and couldn’t do.

1) No taking notes
2) No internal paper trail
3) No capturing of ideas from brainstorms

...on and on.

It was weird and gross.

2/

Their message was that *anything* written down would someday end up in court.

We were told to not even write down someone had called.

We were shown examples of notes that had been forced into court under subpoena.

3/

One example was notes for a brainstorm where someone had thrown out the idea of nicotine lollipops.

The lawyers cited it as an example of an idea that never went anywhere and “meant nothing” but looked bad on paper.

4/

To me though, it meant someone or some people had been brainstorming ideas about how to widen cigarette makers’ markets and had come up with an idea that made nicotine more kid-friendly.

Adults don’t eat a lot of lollipops.

5/

When fruit-flavored vaping liquids first took off, my first thought was that an unregulated product had found a way to do what cigarette makers could not:

Go after kids.

6/

Cigarette makers appear to have seen the same thing because every major tobacco company now owns a vaping brand.

The company that was once Phillip-Morris now owns Juul.

RJR owns Vuse.

7/

Regardless of your opinions on vaping, it cannot be argued that the very same companies who were once prohibited from marketing to kids now own a backdoor means of hooking kids on nicotine.

That, to me, is very bad.

At minimum, kid-friendly vaping products have to go.

8/8