Page Partners : British American Tobacco – The Second Black Lung

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British American Tobacco does not sell fucking cigarettes. It sells slow, agonising death wrapped in slick marketing and a bullshit slogan called “A Better Tomorrow™”. Michael Page – recruitment industry cancer recruiting for the cancer industry – publicly runs British American Tobacco client profile pages in Thailand and Malaysia. Imperial was the first lung. BAT is the second black one. Page provides the poisoned intake pipe. BAT provides the smoke. TCAP brings the torch and a very simple question: why the fuck is PageGroup polishing the recruitment shop window for another global cancer factory?

The Second Black Lung

The first cancer hit was Imperial Brands.

Now here comes British American Tobacco.

Not a rumour. Not Grok smoke. Not some half-cut guess dragged out of an AI ashtray. Michael Page publicly hosts British American Tobacco client profile pages on its own country sites. Thailand. Malaysia. Page’s own infrastructure. Page’s own client branding. Page’s own receipt.

The BAT profile describes British American Tobacco Malaysia as “the clear market leader with approximately 60% market share”. It names Dunhill, Kent and Pall Mall. It places BAT across tobacco buying, processing, manufacturing, marketing and distribution.

That is not a recruiter brushing past a dodgy logo in the corridor.

That is Page standing in the cancer aisle with a lanyard, a smile and a fucking clipboard.

Imperial was one lung.

BAT is the other one turning black.

The Page Connection

Michael Page is not hiding this in a ditch.

It is not whispering BAT’s name into a burner phone behind the bins. It is giving British American Tobacco public client profile treatment like this is just another respectable corporate handshake.

Dunhill. Kent. Pall Mall. Leaf buying. Processing. Manufacturing. Marketing. Distribution.

That is the whole tobacco chain dressed up for recruitment consumption.

PageGroup can call it a client profile. Employer branding. Talent attraction. Market leadership. Career opportunity. Fine. TCAP calls it what it is: a recruitment brochure for the lung-rot supply chain.

Same filthy pattern as Imperial.

Same corporate perfume sprayed over a corpse pile.

Same ashtray with the lipstick wiped off.

The Ethics Are The Fucking Point

Nobody forced Page to do this.

Nobody dragged Michael Page into the tobacco sector by the ankles and made it publish shiny BAT pages while someone cried into the ethics policy.

Page chose the business. Page saw British American Tobacco and apparently did not think: maybe this is a bit fucking grim. It thought: client profile.

That is the rot in recruitment-land. The client is just a client. The vacancy is just a vacancy. The candidate is just a placement. The invoice is just an invoice. Everybody washes their hands and pretends the sink is not full of tar.

Bollocks.

The product matters. The industry matters. The harm matters. When the client sells a product carrying government health warnings and a global death toll, the recruiter does not get to hide behind clean fonts and LinkedIn breath mints.

So here is the question for PageGroup.

Does the ethics policy screen out anything, or is it just a fucking price list dressed up in nice fonts?

Because from here, it looks less like values and more like a till drawer with a conscience-shaped hole in it.

The Cancer Sector, Not The Cure

Let’s cut the corporate horseshit.

Page is not recruiting for cancer research. It is not recruiting for palliative care. It is not recruiting for the exhausted nurse changing another bed sheet while someone’s lungs give up.

It is recruiting near the other end of the ward.

Tobacco kills more than 8 million people every year. Cigarette smoke contains thousands of chemicals, dozens of them known to cause cancer.

Lungs. Throat. Bladder. Pancreas. Blood. Body. Family. Funeral.

That is the real organisational chart.

BAT is not building “A Better Tomorrow™”. It is building a bigger body count in branded packaging, then hiring clever little corporate polishers to make the rot look modern.

And Michael Page is happy to keep the intake pipe warm.

A Better Tomorrow, My Arse

BAT’s slogan is “A Better Tomorrow™”.

Of course it is.

Every dirty machine eventually hires enough brand people to paint a sunrise on the sewer lid.

Tobacco companies do this better than most. Responsibility. Transformation. Sustainability. Harm reduction. Consumer choice. Multi-category futures. Stakeholders. Purpose.

Lovely words.

A lace napkin over an ashtray full of teeth.

The product remains the product. The warning label is still there. The disease still cashes the cheque. The smoke does not become oxygen because the annual report learned how to smile.

“A Better Tomorrow™” is not a vision.

It is a punchline written on a hospital wall.

North Korea In The Ashtray

Then there is the North Korea file.

In 2023, British American Tobacco and BAT Marketing Singapore agreed to pay more than $629 million to US authorities over North Korea tobacco-sales charges. BAT Marketing Singapore pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit bank fraud and violate sanctions. BAT entered a deferred prosecution agreement.

That was not some minor paperwork fart in a badly lit office. It was tobacco sales, North Korea, sanctions, bank fraud, front companies and hundreds of millions of dollars sitting in the same filthy ashtray.

Then in 2026, Reuters reported that BAT faced a UK shareholder lawsuit over alleged failure to properly disclose those sanctions breaches to the market. Allegations, not findings. Filed, not proven.

Still a hell of a thing to find behind the “A Better Tomorrow™” bunting.

A better tomorrow for whom? The sanctions lawyers? The crisis comms team? The poor bastard asked to turn this into a careers page?

The Supply Chain Stink

The Malawi child labour lawsuit sits in the same smoke.

It was filed against BAT and Imperial. The allegations included profiting from child labour, forced labour, exploitation and dangerous conditions on tobacco farms. BAT and Imperial denied the allegations.

Good. Let the denial sit there.

TCAP is not pretending a denial is a conviction. But the stench of the allegation matters when Michael Page wants to stand near BAT in a clean shirt and call it recruitment.

Because tobacco does not arrive from a magic cupboard. It has farms, workers, supply chains, intermediaries, margins, hands, children if the allegations are right, and denials because of course.

Then Page turns up with a client profile and expects everyone to admire the wallpaper.

The Vape Costume Change

When the old death sticks get too radioactive, the industry reaches for a new outfit.

Vapes. Pouches. Heated products. Next-generation products. Reduced-risk language. Harm-reduction theatre.

Same circus. Cleaner charger cable.

BAT’s Vuse business has been hit with a US class-action lawsuit over “carbon neutral” claims. The lawsuit alleges consumers were misled by environmental claims tied to carbon credits. Allegation, not finding.

Still, it fits the smell.

Not just smoke now. Green smoke. A little climate sticker slapped on the same addiction economy and shoved towards the next generation like a minty little Trojan horse.

Harm reduction may be a real public health debate.

Tobacco-company marketing is not a public health seminar.

It is a sales funnel wearing a lab coat.

Page’s Recruitment Filter

Michael Page’s BAT profile matters because recruitment is not neutral.

Recruiters feed companies. They find the people. Sell the roles. Polish the employer story. Warm the pipeline. Move the bodies through the process.

A tobacco company needs sales, marketing, finance, HR, legal, operations, procurement, distribution, management and compliance. The polite office bloodstream that keeps the product moving from plant to packet to lung.

Page does not have to write “come help the cancer machine breathe”.

Recruiter language does that job more quietly.

Career opportunity. Leadership. Growth. International brand. Market leader. Stakeholders. Distribution. Consumer preferences.

That is the ugly bit.

The cancer factory does not just need smokers.

It needs staff.

And Page appears perfectly happy helping keep the staffing story alive.

The Candidate Question

PageGroup is already under TCAP scrutiny because of my own Page experience: disability discrimination issues, DSAR mess, redactions, joinder games, ET3 silence and the usual corporate panic attack when a disabled claimant refuses to shut up.

So yes, the BAT relationship makes the stomach turn harder.

Because if Page is comfortable advertising British American Tobacco as a client, what exactly does Page’s ethical filter catch?

Does it catch anything?

Or does it just screen for availability, salary expectation, sales polish and willingness to sit inside the machine without vomiting on the lanyard?

This is not an allegation that Page screened candidates unlawfully for BAT. It is worse than that in one way. It is a simpler question.

When the client is a tobacco giant with a death toll, sanctions history, child labour allegations in its supply chain orbit and greenwashing litigation around its vape claims, does anyone at PageGroup say “maybe not”?

Or is the answer always: send the CVs, raise the invoice, wash hands, repeat?

The Question For Page

Why the fuck did you take the BAT business?

Why are you hosting public client profiles for them in Thailand and Malaysia?

Why are you so eager to keep polishing the intake pipe for one of the biggest cancer factories humanity has ever produced?

Did anyone ask about the North Korea sanctions breaches? Did anyone ask about the tobacco death toll? Did anyone ask about the Malawi allegations? Did anyone ask about the Vuse carbon neutral lawsuit?

Did anyone ask whether “A Better Tomorrow™” sounds less like a slogan and more like a sick joke carved into the side of an oxygen tank?

Or did Page just smell the money and roll over like good little recruitment whores?

The warning label on every packet is already a fucking autopsy report.

And Page still took the business.

Again.

Both Lungs

Imperial was the first cancer hit. BAT is the second black lung.

That is the shape of it now. PageGroup can pretend these are isolated client relationships: one tobacco logo here, another tobacco logo there, a little recruitment profile, a little corporate brochure, a little “market leader” language wrapped around a product that kills people by design.

TCAP is not buying the packet.

TCAP is looking at the X-ray.

Imperial on one side. BAT on the other.

Both lungs smoked.

And Michael Page’s fingerprints are on the intake pipe.

The Closing Drag

Michael Page can keep the client profile.

British American Tobacco. Dunhill. Kent. Pall Mall. Leaf buying. Processing. Manufacturing. Marketing. Distribution.

All very professional.

But TCAP is not reading it like a recruiter.

TCAP is reading it like a warning label.

Page saw a client.

TCAP saw the second black lung.

A recruitment firm already under scrutiny for disability discrimination is publicly carrying client profile pages for a company whose core product category kills millions, whose North Korea tobacco-sales conduct led to a massive US settlement, and whose corporate future is still wrapped in the same old smoke-machine bullshit.

That is not respectable.

That is not neutral.

That is not just business.

That is the poisoned intake pipe.

And TCAP has just found the fucking vent.

Unredacted.

Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project

Sources

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