Email
Password
(Forgot Password?)
Gray Robertson has been called the "Building Doctor."
The 52-year-old British-born chemist and indoor pollution consultant is a much-quoted authority on "sick building syndrome" . . .
Robertson's views reflect those of the tobacco industry, which has long employed him as a consultant.
But Robertson, in town Monday to drum up business for Healthy Business International, his Fairfax, Va.-based consulting firm, sought to downplay his ties to the cigarette makers and at one point denied that he'd been an industry consultant. . . .
The tobacco industry for years has sought to put sick building syndrome on the issues map as a way of deflecting attacks on public smoking. And Robertson has long been part of that strategy, according to documents obtained by The Times. . . .
Asked at the end of his briefing if he had received tobacco funding, Robertson initially said he had merely inspected a few tobacco company buildings, as he had for dozens of clients.
In response to follow-up questions, he added that he done a small amount of tobacco-funded research and had twice testified for the industry--once before Congress, once before the National Academy of Sciences--and had disclosed that he was appearing at the industry's request. He denied being a tobacco industry consultant.
When he was shown the Tobacco Institute documents during a subsequent interview, Robertson responded: "If I've made appearances for people . . . I don't necessarily say I'm their consultant." . . .
Robertson said the Tobacco Institute had no involvement in his current West Coast tour. . . . The seminars are being sponsored by Envirosense, a coalition of a dozen businesses, including the world's biggest tobacco firm, Philip Morris.
Jump to full article »
These remarkable minutes are from a 1988 meeting of cigarette manufacturers from the U.S., United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, Canada and Japan who met to discuss global strategies for dealing with the industry's greatest threat: the secondhand smoke issue.
The minutes contain a fascinating discussion wherein a representative of the German cigarette industry, Dr. Franz Adlkofer, departs from the industry's established route of promoting global deceit on the secondhand smoke issue and urges the industry representatives to adopt a more responsible course:
During the meeting, Dr. Adlkofer questioned the industry's continuing creation of it's own "marketable science." In a stunning departure from typical industry plotting, Dr. Adlkofer stated that what the industry was really seeking was "good public relations material, not good science."
Dr. Adlkofer further said that "real science" would be "essential if the industry was to prevail on the ETS issue."
Furthermore, Adlkofer "refused to endorse a situation in which scientific research is guided by public relations needs."
Adlkofer questioned the wisdom of the industry's present course on the ETS (environmental tobacco smoke) issue and urged the industry instead to concentrate on identifying a threshold level for risk of ETS exposure.
This controversial suggestion caused "widespread disagreement" among the meeting's participants. . . .
Don Hoel summarized this session by noting that the reports demonstrated the need for "marketable research," which he defined as "good science that is communicable to persons who will benefit from it."
III. SCIENTIFIC INFORMATIONAND MEDIA OBJECTIVES AND ACTIVITIES
Don Hoel introduced this session by reiterating that the sgientific and public affairs elements of the industry must work together if the ETS issue is to be successfully addressed. Only through cooperation can the industry adequately deal with changes in public attitude.
Edward L. Sweda, Jr., Senior Staff Attorney for the Tobacco Products Liability Project at Northeastern University School of Law attended the punitive damages hearing. He notes that, "the jury was clearly repulsed by the reprehensible conduct of Brown and Williamson, the Tobacco Institute, and the Council for Tobacco Research. They sent a clear message to the entire tobacco industry that conduct which values profits over the lives of consumers will not be tolerated in our society."
Mark Gottlieb, also a staff attorney with TPLP, added that, "this historic verdict combined with an appellate ruling in New York last month that makes it significantly easier for plaintiffs to present evidence of industry wrongdoing to juries in these cases will likely result in a marked increase in tobacco litigation in New York state in 2004 and the foreseeable future. This verdict also comes during the week the the tobacco industry is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the publication of a full page newspaper ad that ran in more than 400 papers promising to thoroughly investigate claims that smoking harms health. Today's verdict may have cut those celebrations a bit short."
The purpose of this plan is to amend the restaurant provisions of the New York City Smoke-Free Air Act. The proposed amendment (see section 6) has been cleared by Covington & Burling and agreed to by the member companies.
The foundation of this plan is to educate the New York City Council about the hardships suffered by restaurants in complying with the law. This will be accomplished by using grassroots mobilization with supporting economic impact information and public relations. . .
The United Restaurant and Tavern Association of Now York State was a tremendous ally during the legislative battle. They have agreed to spearhead continuing efforts to provide reasonable accommodation. The Association intends to present their case -the severe restaurant smoking provisions are not necessary and have a detrimental economic impact -- to elected officials in a reasonable, well-argued manner.
Many restaurant owners expressed their frustration about what they perceived as a "one-sided" legislative hearing process. However, many came to see that their activity was affective, that without their involvement, the outcome could have been more severe.
Now, and for the next ten months, these restauranteurs (sic) must keep their views before their City Council members. These restaurants must build on the base developed during the legislative debate.
Part of this effort is making individual restauranteurs (sic) feel part of a united effort to protect their businesses. Each owner needs to understand that they are in the majority and that their combined influence is important. A newsletter will be developed by the United Restaurant and Tavern Association of New York State to provide a forum to involve individual restaurants owners as part of the large, active group.
The Empire State group has been around for a while, changing its name as suits the occasion. Aliases of the organization include: the New York Tavern and Restaurant Association, the Manhattan Tavern and Restaurant Association and the United Restaurant, Hotel and Tavern Association.
While the names may change, the group's ties with the tobacco industry have remained strong over the years. Back in 1994, in testimony opposing New York City's smokefree ordinance, Executive Director Scott Wexler admitted that his group obtained money from the Tobacco Institute to pay for a number of ads, including a full page ad in the New York Times.
Thanks to the dedicated efforts of tobacco control advocates in New York and public access to once-secret tobacco industry internal documents, new revelations about the Empire State group have surfaced. The New York Times recently reported that in 1995 the Tobacco Institute funneled $443,072 in lobbying money through the Empire State Restaurant and Tavern Association to wage its 1995 clean indoor air preemption campaign.
Charles Loring Waite, 80, a Navy physician who retired as a rear admiral in 1976, died March 19 at Easton (Md.) Memorial Hospital. He had cancer.
Adm. Waite served 35 years in the Navy before retiring as deputy surgeon general in the Navy's Bureau of Medicine and Surgery. . .
For five years after his Navy retirement, Adm. Waite was a medical consultant to the Tobacco Institute in Washington. In the mid-1980s
This document is a proposal to the Tobacco Institute from a California consultant which discusses a plan to help the industry defeat cigarette tax proposal in California in 1982-83. The consultant discusses mobilizing Libertarians on behalf of the tobacco industry, a technique that the industry has been using increasingly in the late 1990's and into early 2000's:
"Assuming the cooperation of leadership in the Libertarian Party, we can stimulate at least a modest letter writing program among Libertarian activists throughout the state. We recommend some financial assistance directly to the Party to help offset the cost of mailings to their members requesting action on the legislation in question. It would also be wise to employ a key Libertarian leader as a consultant to this effort..."
The proposal also discusses how the industry could clandestinely persuade citizens who are anti-tax (but who may also oppose tobacco on the grounds of their religion) to vote against the proposed tax . . .
The key to success among this group is to stay away from the specific issue of taxes on tobacco products. Many of these persons are fundamental Christians or members of the Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints. Discussing the tobacco aspect of the proposal would be counterproductive.
Therefore, a mailing to this group would attack the waste in government today and the need to cut existing excesses, rather than continue the tax-and-spend syndrome of the past. It would also give examples of how some excise taxes are particularly cruel on the elderly, etc."
This [1985] one-page, Minnesota-selected document is a memo to Fred Panzer (Vice President of Issues Management at the Tobacco Institute) from a Tobacco Institute public relations consultant cautioning him about the proper use of economists as spokespersons for the tobacco industry. The consultant explains that the use of economists allows the industry to shift the debate about a piece of tobacco control legislation away from the health issue ("which the TI cannot win") and toward a discussion of economics and public policy":
"Indeed, the economists can be most useful to the industry in shifting the debate on a piece of legislation away from the health argument (which TI cannot win) and toward a discussion of economics and public policy. This can only be accomplished, however, if the economists are representing some local interest other than the tobacco manufacturers."
This memo is useful a demonstration of why the industry and its supporters frequently use the tactic of shifting the debate over tobacco issues away from the topic of health and onto economic and public policy issues.
In the late 1970s, health authorities began calculating how much tobacco use costs society in lost productivity, increased health care costs, absenteeism, etc. This was called the "social costs" theory and it was used sucessfully to advocate for effective tobacco control measures. This internal tobacco industry speech about the social costs of smoking was given in May of 1979, apparently before members of ICOSI (the International Committee on Smoking Issues, a group which consisted of the major tobacco manufacturers worldwide, and which was created to deal with the global decline in social acceptability of smoking). The speech was prepared by George Berman, who was affiliated with Philip Morris and the Tobacco Institute. In 1979, a George Berman (whose signature is very similar to that on Philip Morris documents) was listed as President of Devon Management Resources, Inc., which apparently acted as a consultant to Philip Morris. In the speech, Berman explains the industry's strategy of avoiding a discussion of the social costs of smoking by outlining a four-pronged attack on the theory itself. Berman states,
"It would be pointless to just dispute these arguments with similar data, to attack their numbers with our numbers. Instead, our strategy is to attack the concepts of social cost analysis...If we can undermine the concepts, then we do not have to enter into public debate over specific numbers. . . "Our attack consists of four major themes: 1. These social cost concepts are bad economics. 2. They do not fit into a philosophy of personal freedom and civil liberty. 3. Smoking benefits society and its members in many complex ways. 4. Anti-smoking programs and groups are harmful to our society."
On April 16 I met with the following people at Philip Morris to discuss strategies for opposing the current NYC Council bill providing for, among other things, legally mandatory counter-advertising in a 3 to 1 ratio:
We began by discussing the need to formulate a complementary strategy in approaching both the NYC Council and the MTA, which is under pressure to ban tobacco ads in the transit system. Once again, and in each case here, it is Joe Cherner and SmokeFree Educational Services that is supplying this pressure. . .
Sharon Portenoy agreed to get back to me Tuesday with a status report, which would give PM time to provide the Council with data intended to convey (I) the financial value to the City of tobacco ads, and (2) the problems associated with enforcing a 3 to 1 ratio plan.
This lengthy (81 page) R.J. Reynolds (RJR) internal briefing manual discusses tobacco industry stands on issues such as secondhand smoke, advertising, fire-safe cigarettes, sponsorship, corporate contributions, and initiative and referenda. It also offers industry strategies on these issues. . .
Page 70 (Bates page 507591859) addresses the particularly chilling subject of death certificates.
RJR actually argues that including information about tobacco use on death certificates "...is contrary to sound public health policy" and puts forth the thin argument that such questions are "likely to undermine efforts to achieve national uniformity in death certificate information by scrambling rather than clarifying the national data."
The industry's strategy to fight the ability to list tobacco use on death certificates follows:
Former U.S. Rep. Charlie Whitley, who served five terms in Congress, died Sunday night after several weeks of declining health. He was 75.
Whitley, a Democrat who represented North Carolina's 3rd District, was first elected in 1976 after working as an aide to Rep. David Henderson from 1961 until Henderson's retirement in 1976.
Whitley retired from Congress in 1986 and worked for nine years as a special consultant with the Tobacco Institute.
A hallmark of plaintiffs' brief is its repeated attempt to evade substantive issues by mechanically raising baseless procedural arguments -- "waiver," "harmless error," "invited error," "law of the case." As a further diversion, plaintiffs' brief begins with a 70-page "statement of facts" that misrepresents the record, improperly seeks to prejudice defendants in the eyes of the Court, and presents supposed "facts" that plaintiffs never tied to the claims of any identifiable class member. (Pl. Br. at 11-81.)1 In any event, the errors raised here are essentially legal, not factual, in nature.
Defendants therefore will address the legal issues that actually determine this appeal.
This is a TI analysis of Newsweek's 4 page article on the nonsmokers' rights movement, which was published in the June 6, 1983 issue. The TI closely monitored this article for months. In apparent appeasement, Newsweek shortened the article, removed the item from Cover Story status, moved it to the back of the magazine and deleted 3 sidebars (one on health effects, one on political donations/industry lobbying, and one asserting a poor business prognosis). Despite these measures, the TI felt, "the article contains sufficient errors and indicatons of superficiality and poor research so as to leave an anti-smoking bias in readers' minds."
Advertising income suffered dearly. Issues of Newsweek before after after the June 6 issue carried 7-10 pages of cigarette ads, but this issue carried none. . .
Whether the ad removal was voluntary or not, we can probably accept White's estimate of a $1 Million revenue loss due to the article's publication. Other magazines, before and since, suffered similar or worse fates for publishing the wrong stories (most notably, Reader's Digest (1957), Mother Jones (1979), US News and World Report (1994) and Time (1994).
The Newsweek item itself gives us an interesting snapshot of the state of tobacco control, 1984.
This 1988 report from the Tobacco Institute reveals industry strategies for attacking national efforts to protect the public from exposure to secondhand smoke. One bizarre and rather paternalistic strategy was designed to cast people who didn't like the smell of secondhand smoke as anti-social by forming "A coalition named the National Institute of Conflict Education (N.I.C.E.)" that would "demonstrate that overreaction to annoyances, particularly to smoking, is anti-social and unacceptable behavior." The plan included recruiting a celebrity spokesperson to represent the N.I.C.E. group, and to send him on tour to publicly tout pre-determined "research results" designed to benefit the industry:
The paper also discusses how to implement the industry's costly "ventilation" strategy with hospitality businesses: