Slam the Can for Dare to Care a Hoax for Smokes

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The Weber Shandwick PR firm created "Slam the Can for Dare to Care," a basketball-themed food drive designed to put a charitable face on the Brown & Williamson tobacco company. "The 16 B&W employees donating the largest number of canned goods during the two-and-a-half week collection period participated in a series of wacky basketball contests at a downtown shopping mall, with the winner receiving two tickets to the NCAA championship games," Shandwick stated in The Holmes Report, a PR industry trade publication. Shandwick declared the program an "unqualified success. ... In 2000, donations totaled more than 77,000 cans." If you do the math, that works out to roughly one can of food for every four people in the United States who died of a tobacco-related illness that year.