Tobacco.org

• DAVIS: Smokescreen [Cover Story: FREE!] 

Despite the government's anti-smoking bluster, the big tobacco companies live a charmed life in Britain, especially in the courts. You can't sue them and win. . . .

Five decades after British studies first raised the link between smoking and cancer, smoking is still treated only as a health- policy issue. The law, and the government, have remained silent on the actions of tobacco companies and their executives, even though three of the largest companies in the world - BAT, Imperial Tobacco and Gallaher - are based in Britain.

This month, the government began trumpeting a major consultation exercise to get the public behind anti-smoking legislation banning smoking in public places. Behind the spin is another story, the story of a government and legal establishment unwilling and unable to take on the cigarette-makers. Now, attempts to bring the companies to account privately through the courts have been dealt a severe, possibly fatal, blow. It is a case history of the charmed life still led by tobacco companies in this country. . . .

What is striking about the internal documents held at Guildford, according to Jeff Collin, a lecturer in global heath policy at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, is the bluntness of much of the language. The caution exhibited by executives of other Big Tobacco companies, choosing their words carefully even in internal memos, was apparently not shared by those working for BAT. "They put things on paper that others didn't," he said. Collin believes that BAT bosses felt protected by the British attitude towards litigation and corporate accountability, and by their own well-developed political connections. In a separate case, an Australian court heard that their bluntness even extended to putting down on paper discussions about destroying potentially incriminating documents. Some of these were used in the litigation against BAT, which said it had not broken any laws. Yet, outside the efforts of Collin and others, who are creating a website to provide better public access to the papers, where are the politicians' demands for an investigation? . . .

Although we do not have a Rico statute in this country, we have a plethora of laws on fraud and corruption. Why aren't they used?

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