Daily Doc: PM, Mar 29, 1985: Philip Morris considers smear tactics
Daily Doc: Philip Morris considers smear tactics
Title: TRF Perspective of PM International on Smoking and Health Issues (Text of the discussion document used at the meeting of top management)
PM, Mar 29, 1985
Bates #: 2060563949/3957
July 10, 2000
Philip Morris Tobacco Company's (PM) top management contemplated using smear tactics to deter the most effective public health advocates. A quote from this document targets John Banhaf, the attorney who successfully applied the Fairness Doctrine to get the first anti-smoking ads on TV in the late 1960s. In exploring ways they could cool the zeal of tobacco control advocates, this PM document states:
"Possibly, too, we can discredit our critics. John Banzhaf for example, is alleged to be involved in the porno industry. Can't we use this somehow? If we start to dig around, we will certainly find anomalies which we can exploit..."Another idea was to commission the writing of a book on the "anti-industry industry" to show the public how much money tobacco control advocates are making off their pursuits (!)
But perhaps most prophetic statement (in light of the current punitive damages phase of the Engle trial in Florida) is the line saying that they have
"to work to establish a mind-set in the public at large that bankrupting huge industries such as tobacco is unthinkable....It just has to be possible to demonstrate that large industries cannot be made to disappear without extremely grave consequences..."
CITATION
Title: TRF Perspective of PM International on Smoking and Health Issues (Text of the discussion document used at the meeting of top management)
Type of Document: Report
Author: N/A (found in the area of the office of Cathy Ellis at Philip Morris) Recipient: N/A
Date: 19850329
Site: Philip Morris document site http://www.pmdocs.com/
Page Count 9
Bates No. 2060563949/3957
URL: http://www.pmdocs.com/getallimg.asp?DOCID=2060563949/3957
Found Using Search Criteria: "Murdoch and Banhaf"
QUOTES
Fourth, we must attack the anti-smoking groups and zealots more confidently than we have in the past. If we can cool their zeal just a bit, not only might smoking as a subject become less of an issue, but also smokers might begin to feel less embattled.
Here perhaps we could commission a book on the "anti-industry industry" and show that our attackers actually make money out of their activities, a situation quite at variance with their image today.
Possibly, too, we can discredit our critics. John Banzhaf for example, is alleged to be involved in the porno industry. Can't we use this somehow? If we start to dig around, we will certainly find anomalies which we can exploit....
...Maybe...one possible way in which we could help...is to enlist third party support since product liability is presumably a wider issue than just tobacco. The pharmaceutical industry, the chemical industry, the nuclear power industry, and the food industry are all examples of threatened industries and there are probably others. Shouldn't we be able to weave a coalition of threatened industries?...
...We should also begin to work to establish a mind-set in the public at large that bankrupting huge industries such as tobacco is unthinkable...At stake in our industry, and in others which are threatened, is employment for millions and government revenues of billions. Why can't we begin to get articles placed and books written which develop scenarios for when the unthinkable happens?...It just has to be possible to demonstrate that large industries cannot be made to disappear without extremely grave consequences...
Let's begin now to work to establish this mind set.
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