Comments on Shareholder Proposal #4:
Get Out of Traditional Tobacco Business by 2010
2007 Altria Shareholders Meeting

CAROL MCGRUDER: Good morning, Chairman Camilleri and Altria shareholders. My name is Carol McGruder, and I'm from California. And I'm in support of this proposal. I am here to bear witness for the 45,000 African-American lives lost every year to tobacco-related illness. And I am here to be a voice for people of African decent the world over.

In November of last year, Philip Morris/Altria and other tobacco companies pumped over $70 million to defeat California's Proposition 86. Proposition 86 would have added an additional $2.65 tax to each pack of cigarettes sold in the State of California. This proposition was endorsed by the American Lung Association, the American Heart Association and the American Cancer Association.

While Philip Morris used many strategies to defeat this proposition, a proposition, which would have saved hundreds of thousands of lives in California, the strategies that our community found particularly reprehensible and disingenuous where the co-application of our leadership organizations, particularly the California State Conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Youth of the Regressive Tax argument.

This regressive tax argument pretends to be a friend of poor and low-income smokers, arguing that excise taxes are an unfair burden that will cause them to spend a relatively higher proportion of their income on cigarettes than people who are more affluent. I submit to you that cigarettes are not a necessity like food or lodging or transportation, but they are highly addictive and deadly substances.

And yes, low-income smokers are sensitive to price, which research has proven that when the cost of cigarettes goes up, smoking prevalence goes down, more so for poor and low-income smokers. If you want to help low-income African-American smokers, please stop marketing your deadly products to them. If you want to help communities of color, stop co-opting our leadership organizations and creating divisions in our communities.

And we are also morally opposed to the construction of the Philip Morris plant currently underway in Senegal, West Africa. We know that the lure of industry and jobs to developing countries is a powerful Trojan horse --.

LOUIS CAMILLERI: [inaudible]

CAROL MCGRUDER: And we know from bitter experience that we'll never be able to compensate for their man-made plague of death and illness that will surely follow. It is criminal that as many African countries --.

LOUIS CAMILLERI: [inaudible]

CAROL MCGRUDER: Deal with the elements of poverty, AIDS, political instability and war, refugees, you will be there to profit and work with little disruption. We lend our voice to the struggle of our brothers and sisters in Africa as they work to protect their youth from your aggressive marketing strategies.

And we know that American parents don't want their children to smoke. We would ask you that the lives African youth have the same intrinsic value as those of our children. Stop outsourcing death. Thank you.

LOUIS CAMILLERI: [inaudible]