Leo Sun
Altria (NYSE:MO), the maker of Marlboro and the top tobacco company in America, recently claimed that the Food and Drug Administration’s plan to lower nicotine levels in cigarettes would cost the country nearly a million jobs. That’s a pretty bold claim given that Altria only employed about 8,300 people at the end of 2017.
Altria claims that the FDA’s proposed measures, which could cut nicotine levels in certain cigarettes by up to 97%, would wipe out 589,000 retail jobs, 317,000 “indirect” jobs, 34,000 “other” jobs, and about 11,000 tobacco grower jobs — for a grand total of 951,000 lost jobs. Altria claims that those losses would raise the country’s unemployment rate from 3.9% to 4.5%.