Corporate Accountability joined youth advocates with Mobilize Against Tobacco Lies (MATL) to protest Altria during the tobacco giant’s annual shareholder meeting. The following are remarks made by one of our organizers, Kofi Bulluck.
At the core of this issue is a simple principle: Everyone deserves the right to make informed decisions about what goes in their bodies – no matter how old you are, what you look like, or where you come from.
But Altria and other tobacco corporations lie about their products. They manipulate people into believing nicotine is harmless. And they target young people because they know that if they can get you addicted now, they can make money off of you for life.
This is what the tobacco industry has always done with cigarettes and what it’s now doing with vapes and nicotine pouches. The products may be different, but the playbo
ok remains the same.
While Big Tobacco profits, we pay the price. Last year, in the U.S. alone, smoking cost more than $240 billion in healthcare spending (CDC). Meanwhile, Altria reported nearly $7 billion in net income in 2025. Billions made from products they know are dangerous and deadly. And they keep doing it because they’re getting away with it.
If we want to stop Big Tobacco, we must make them pay the true costs of their business. That’s why people all over the world are coming together to hold the industry liable for the harms it’s caused – and prevent it from doing it again.
Right now, Mobilize Against Tobacco Lies (MATL) youth advocates have said, Altria pulls the strings and we pay the price. But together, we can flip the script and make Big Tobacco Pay.
