April 24, 2026 03:17 PM UTC

Gabe Evans Celebrates (Big Tobacco) Jobs

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• by: Colorado Pols

In Rep. Gabe Evans’ official non-campaign “franked” newsletter to constituents this week, he left a bit of a puzzle for recipients to solve:

I recently toured a new PMI facility in Aurora that is expected to bring significant job opportunities to our state.

This facility alone is projected to create around 500 direct jobs and support another 1,000 indirect jobs, generating a major economic impact across Colorado — including right here in the Eighth District.

As we work to bring more manufacturing back to the United States, we need to make sure we have the workforce, training, and policies in place to support long-term growth.

All of which sounds pretty good, and only a few people who received this message are likely to ask the follow-up question, “Who is PMI again?” Some readers may be curious, though, since Evans doesn’t say anywhere in the newsletter what exactly PMI is, and you can’t make out anything from the photo other than the company is named PMI and whatever they’re doing involves hard hats.

But as it turns out, PMI is the acronym for (wait for it) Philip Morris International, known across the globe as the tobacco giant who spent generations and untold billions of dollars hooking your grandparents, probably your parents, and maybe you personally on their products which have been scientifically proven to kill Americans by the thousands ever year. The “new PMI facility” Evans toured is the company’s new $600 million factory to produce Zyn nicotine pouches–the latest delivery system for the psychoactive drug at the heart of tobacco addiction.

With this in mind, we can certainly understand why Evans would want to obscure the name and purpose of the facility he toured, even though the jobs it will bring to the area are undeniable. For families who have lost loved ones to preventable tobacco-related diseases, PMI enjoys a similar moral standing as opioid manufacturers or the lawyers who wrote the Pinto memo. It can easily be argued that the economic benefits of having a PMI facility in town are offset with interest by the billions of taxpayer dollars spent on tobacco-related illness every year.

Just another situation where the full truth would make for a bad newsletter, so Gabe Evans didn’t tell it.