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LANDMAN: Working to Make A Difference (In Their Favor): The Arts Dollars of Philip Morris  

Cigarette maker Altria/Philip Morris (PM) recently announced that it is moving its New York headquarters to Richmond, Virginia, and that it will end its corporate sponsorship of the arts in New York. Predictably, New York arts organizations are crying over the loss of cigarette dollars. These organizations sadly believe that their acceptance of PM dollars has been benign. In truth, these organizations have helped PM advance its credibility and legitimacy with policymakers, and have done tremendous harm to the country. . . .

Arts sponsorship is nothing more than a branch of PM's "third party strategy," a massive, decades-long public relations plot to gain political support from diverse groups that under normal circumstances would never come to the aid of a tobacco company. The third party technique is described in a transcript of a 1984 PM Corporate Affairs World Conference,

...the whole question of getting third-party assistance and enlisting this whole third-party concept in our defense structure is to give us clout, to give us power, to give us credibility, to give us leverage, to give us access where we don't ordinarily have access ourselves...

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