http://www.tobacco.org/newsfeed/category/secret_documents.rss Latest top tobacco news headlines en-us http://www.corporatepolicy.org/issues/wlf.htm http://tobacco.org/news/260554.html The Washington Legal Foundation is a national non-profit legal foundation based in Washington, DC. The group not only litigates but does extensive communications and public relations work. . . . "I like to think of us as a small business version of the American Civil Liberties Union," WLF Chairman Dan Popeo told one reporter. "Only our stress is on economic civil liberties." But public interest advocates who have opposed WLF say they are one of many mouthpieces that work to "legitimize predatory, rogue industries" like Big Tobacco. (Internal Philip Morris documents describe WLF as "A close ally...for many years." WLF has issued legal backgrounders such as this one suggesting that government efforts to educate the public on the hazards of smoking were tantamount to communism. Daniel Troy, the Bush administration's FDA counsel, has written Legal Backgrounders for WLF like this one claiming that ordinances enacted in New York, Baltimore and Cincinnati to restrict tobacco and/or alcohol advertisements are unconstitutional. (In 1994 the WLF issued another legal backgrounder that argues that there is no need for additional federal tobacco regulations, and that public health advocates are neo-prohibitionists.) A cursory glance at WLF's website reveals that while its immediate clients may be small businesses or individuals, the interests served by WLF are clearly large corporations and the legal horsepower behind the group their partners at the large corporate law firms. Center for Corporate Policy Sat, 01 Mar 2008 05:00:00 GMT http://tobaccodocuments.org/pm_ex/about.php http://tobacco.org/news/260109.html This is a set of both the offered and accepted U.S. and Joint trial exhibits from U.S. v. PM. TDO: Tobacco Documents Online Thu, 21 Feb 2008 05:00:00 GMT http://www.prwatch.org/node/6219 http://tobacco.org/news/259992.html As Australian-born media magnate Rupert Murdoch gets ever closer to adding the coveted Wall Street Journal to his media empire, it is instructive to examine how Murdoch's ownership and corporate relationships have affected media coverage in the past. Information on this can be found in tobacco industry documents. Murdoch has long maintained a relationship with cigarette maker Philip Morris (PM). PM has put untold dollars into advertising in Murdoch's publications . . . PM cultivated a close relationship with Murdoch, and it has served PM's interests admirably. An internal PM issue presentation titled The Persepective of PM International of Smoking and Health Issues, states PM's intent to exploit its relationship with Murdoch: A number of media proprietors ... are sympathetic to our position -- Rupert Murdoch and Malcolm Forbes are two good examples. The media like the money they make from our advertisements and they are an ally that we can and should exploit. Another PM internal report shows that information that could negatively affect the tobacco industry was routinely withheld from Murdoch-owned newspapers: . . . Murdoch left PM's board in 2001, but little has changed. . . . Murdoch must have been aware in 1991, when he dutifully served on PM's "Social Responsibility Committee," that PM's products kill massive numbers of its customers. After all, by then the U.S. Surgeon General had already issued fully 22 official reports detailing the hazardous health effects and addictiveness of smoking. Either Murdoch's idea of "social responsibility" is out of step with rest of the world or he just doesn't care much about human life. Probably both. Is this the kind of person the Bancroft family wants owning the Wall Street Journal? PR Watch editor@prwatch.org (Anne Landman's blog) Thu, 05 Jul 2007 04:00:00 GMT http://www.prwatch.org/node/6527 http://tobacco.org/news/259987.html 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... PR Watch editor@prwatch.org (Submitted by Anne Landman on Wed, 10/10/2007 - 17:59.) Wed, 10 Oct 2007 04:00:00 GMT http://www.prwatch.org/node/7004 http://tobacco.org/news/259984.html A February 9 Los Angeles Times article about University of California, Los Angeles professor Edythe London taking a $6 million grant from Philip Morris to study the brains of child smokers and monkeys addicted to nicotine once again raises questions about the appropriateness of university researchers accepting tobacco industry funding. Philip Morris denied that they have a stake in this particular project, but the denial had little credibility since the company no doubt will benefit from understanding more about youth smoking and nicotine addiction. After all, the future of their business depends on these two topics. Still, we wonder why any person curious enough to be engaged in scientific research isn't also curious enough to find out what's in it for Philip Morris before they accept the funds? These days, the answer is as close as your computer. Edythe London and UCLA may not have wanted to know (and after all, $6 million in grant money could stop a lot of people from wanting to know a lot of things), but I wanted to find out what worries Philip Morris so much that they pour such sums of money and tremendous effort into building relationships with prominent academics and universities, so I searched the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library using terms like "academic freedom," "ethics in research," and "data integrity," all terms found in tobacco industry documents that discuss the importance of academic funding. . . . These, and many other documents like them, show clearly that when academics refuse tobacco industry money, it strikes deeply at the core of the tobacco business in many highly significant ways: It impedes the ability of tobacco companies to produce any science at all in their favor, and get it accepted by the mainstream scientific community. It makes it difficult for them to hire and keep employees. It turns tobacco companies, and their scientists, into pariahs in scientific circles. Such rejection results in a loss of credibility that in turn reduces the industry's power to influence legislators and regulators; it makes it harder for tobacco companies to get offered a seat at the table in governmental and nongovernmental negotiations about regulating their products; it also reduces their ability recruit influential third parties--like scientists or academic consultants--to speak for the industry in these times when the industry can't credibly speak for itself. It even impacts tobacco companies' ability to preserve the social acceptability of smoking and market their cigarettes. That's a lot of very bad negatives. No wonder Philip Morris spends millions wooing academic institutions and scientists, and no wonder the sums PM gives are high enough to blind these scientists and institutions as to their effects. The consequences of PM losing their connections to acadamia are dire. These few internal documents alone, found in the course of one day, show that the damage done to the tobacco industry when academics and scientists reject their money is incalculable. Rejecting tobacco industry funding appears to be one of the most powerful public health actions that an individual or institution involved in research can possibly take. PR Watch editor@prwatch.org (Anne Landman's blog) Mon, 18 Feb 2008 05:00:00 GMT http://www.newscientist.com/channel/being-human/drugs-alcohol/mg19726434.500-big-brains-payrolled-by-big-tobacco.html http://tobacco.org/news/259711.html IT IS well known that when the dangers of smoking became increasingly obvious in the 1950s, tobacco companies funded scientific research aimed at downplaying the risks. Now, a little-known strand of that campaign, aimed at giving an intellectual gloss to pro-smoking arguments, has been detailed for the first time. In an attempt to win hearts and minds, the tobacco companies bankrolled a network of economists, philosophers and sociologists. Documents newly scrutinised by academics reveal that members of the network generated extensive media coverage and numerous academic articles - with almost no mention that the work had been paid for by cigarette manufacturers. "The industry realised it had to affect public opinion," says Anne Landman, an independent tobacco policy expert based in Colorado, who carried out the research with colleagues at the University of California at San Francisco. New Scientist Wed, 13 Feb 2008 05:00:00 GMT http://www.heraldonline.com/opinions/vop/story/352740.html http://tobacco.org/news/259657.html In a guest editorial on Jan. 26, Carson Taylor attacks "anti-smoking zealots" who rely on "junk science" to press for laws protecting the public from secondhand smoke. He doesn't identify these zealots, but I will. They include the surgeon general, EPA, Center for Disease Control, National Institute of Health, WHO and virtually every other public health organization on the planet. Even Phillip Morris USA officially admits the risk. . . . Now they indirectly fund outside groups such as "Citizens Against Government Interference" and "My Smokers' Rights," to do the dirty work for them. Internal tobacco industry documents, made public by a lawsuit, reveal the strategy. "Our overriding objective is to discredit the EPA report. . . . The Internet is full of sites claiming the moon landing was a hoax, Elvis is still alive and there is a conspiracy, hatched by public health officials around the world, to attack secondhand smoke with "junk science." As for me, I'm siding with the surgeon general Rock Hill Herald Sat, 09 Feb 2008 05:00:00 GMT http://schizophreniabulletin.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/sbm117v2 http://tobacco.org/news/259467.html Rates of tobacco use among individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia have been estimated as high as 80%. . . . Documents indicate the tobacco industry monitored or directly funded research supporting the idea that individuals with schizophrenia were less susceptible to the harms of tobacco and that they needed tobacco as self-medication. The tobacco industry promoted smoking in psychiatric settings by providing cigarettes and supporting efforts to block hospital smoking bans. The tobacco industry engaged in a variety of direct and indirect efforts that likely contributed to the slowed decline in smoking prevalence in schizophrenia via slowing nicotine dependence treatment development for this population and slowing the rate of policy implementation vis-à-vis smoking bans on psychiatric units. Schizophrenia Bulletin Mon, 10 Dec 2007 05:00:00 GMT http://www.globalizationandhealth.com/content/pdf/1744-8603-4-2.pdf http://tobacco.org/news/258225.html Tobacco Documentation Centre TDC was founded in 1992 by PM, BAT, RJR, Rothmans, Gallaher and Reemtsma [190]. In 1997, its name was changed to the International Tobacco Documentation Centre, although it continues to use the acronym TDC [191]. It was run by former INFOTAB staff and housed in the former INFOTAB offices in London (INFOTAB had moved into these offices, which were “somewhat difficult to find … by design” [192] in 1988) [193, 194]. But for BAT and PM, TDC was not simply a new INFOTAB. They favored “a very clear and simple definition” of TDC as “an information gathering and dissemination outfit” [193], rather than returning to “business as usual” with a scaled- down INFOTAB, which would send “the wrong signals …both to the outside world and internally” [195]. BAT’s desire to send the right “signals” may have reflected conspiracy charges being leveled at its American subsidiary, Brown and Williamson (BW), in five pending lawsuits in Texas [196]. A “Conspiracy Notebook” assembled by BW/BAT legal consultants noted that INFOTAB might be cited by plaintiffs as evidence that the industry acted in concert to deceive the public about the dangers of smoking [196]. TDC’s functions, therefore, were to be limited to collecting and distributing to members publicly available tobacco-related information [190]. . . . ATS was established by PM, BAT, RJR, Rothmans, Gallaher and Reemtsma in 1992 to continue INFOTAB’s coordination of the International Tobacco Growers Association’s (ITGA) lobbying activities [217, pp. 227, 230, 297]. ATS staff consisted solely of INFOTAB’s Martin Oldman, who appears to have worked with ITGA since 1988, when INFOTAB undertook the transformation of the “largely ineffectual trade association” (established in 1984) into a powerful agricultural lobby to advance tobacco manufacturers’ arguments regarding the economic importance of tobacco, particularly in developing nations . . . ICOSI began as a conspiracy among seven tobacco company chief executives to promote internationally the fiction of a “controversy” regarding smoking and disease [15]. It quickly developed into a multi-million dollar global organization with a new name, expanding membership, and a broader mandate. Relying on a network of centralized staff, member company senior personnel, consultants, lawyers, and NMAs, ICOSI’s successor, INFOTAB, operated as an anti-WHO. Its mission was to systematically thwart public health by globalizing “doubt” not only about smoking and disease, but also about the economic costs of tobacco, the social costs of smoking, the motivations of tobacco control advocates, the relationship between smoking and advertising, and the need for smoking restrictions. Where it succeeded, INFOTAB unquestionably facilitated the spread of the global tobacco disease epidemic. ? INFOTAB also created and served as the nucleus of a world tobacco community. Globalization and Health Thu, 17 Jan 2008 05:00:00 GMT http://www.globalizationandhealth.com/content/4/1/2 http://tobacco.org/news/258223.html Conclusions The massive scale and scope of this industry effort illustrate how corporate interests, when threatened by the globalization of public health, sidestep competitive concerns to coordinate their activities. The global network of national and regional manufacturing associations created and nurtured by INFOTAB remains active, particularly in relation to the recently negotiated global health treaty, the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. Policymakers should be aware that although these associations claim to represent only national or regional interests, they are allied to and coordinated with a confederation of transnational tobacco companies seeking to protect profits by undermining public health. Globalization and Health info@biomedcentral.com (Patricia A McDaniel , Gina Intinarelli and Ruth E Malone) Thu, 17 Jan 2008 05:00:00 GMT http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080116202027.htm http://tobacco.org/news/258222.html ScienceDaily (Jan. 17, 2008) -- Global public health efforts to reduce smoking are at odds with the interests of the tobacco industry. According to a new case study competing tobacco companies co-operate via a global network of national and regional manufacturing associations to undermine public health measures to counter smoking. Patricia McDaniel, Gina Intinarelli and Ruth Malone from the University of California, San Francisco dug deep into documentary data from tobacco industry documents archives. Their case study, which maps globally tobacco industry-linked groups known as "issues management organizations," draws upon previously secret tobacco industry documents and details some of the strategies these bodies used. The International Committee on Smoking Issues (ICOSI) was formed in 1977 by seven tobacco company chief executives to create common anti-tobacco control strategies and build a global network of regional and national manufacturing associations. Later renamed INFOTAB, multinational companies built the organization rapidly: by 1984, it had 69 members operating in 57 countries. According to the authors, INFOTAB material, including position papers and "action kits" helped members challenge local tobacco control measures and maintain tobacco-friendly environments. In 1992 INFOTAB was replaced by two smaller organizations: The Tobacco Documentation Centre, which continues to operate, distributes smoking-related information and industry argumentation to members, some produced by cross-company committees. Agro-Tobacco Services, and now Hallmark Marketing Services, assists the INFOTAB-backed and industry supported International Tobacco Growers Association in promoting tobacco's economic importance in developing nations. "Policymakers should be aware that although these associations claim to represent only national or regional interests, they are allied to and coordinated with a confederation of trans-national tobacco companies seeking to protect profits by undermining public health," says Ruth Malone. "Cigarette manufacturers and their attorneys played the biggest role. Under their explicit direction, INFOTAB set policies and crafted strategies that ensured that the global tobacco community spoke and acted as one." ScienceDaily Magazine editor@sciencedaily.com (recording the shape of snowflakes seen under a magnifying) Thu, 17 Jan 2008 05:00:00 GMT http://www.journalgazette.net/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080114/LOCAL1006/801140367/1002/LOCAL http://tobacco.org/news/258063.html Want to know whether smoking is bad for you? Just ask Big Tobacco. The "overwhelming medical consensus" shows that smoking causes lung cancer, heart disease and many other health conditions, said Bill Phelps of Richmond, Va.-based Philip Morris USA. "The risks of smoking are well-known," echoed David Howard, a spokesman for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. in Winston-Salem, N.C., adding that there's no safe cigarette. . . . Since a landmark 1998 industry settlement involving 46 states, including Indiana, tobacco companies have amplified their warnings about the products they sell and provided information on how to quit. But smoking-cessation advocates think the billions of advertising dollars the industry spends send a decidedly different message to potential consumers, especially to low-income populations. "This particular demographic is targeted very heavily by the tobacco industry with their marketing and promotions," said Karla Sneegas, executive director of Indiana Tobacco Prevention and Cessation. A 2004 report in the journal Tobacco Control cites Philip Morris documents that detail advertisements in the 1990s aimed at women making less than $30,000 a year. The same study documents R.J. Reynolds' intention to similarly target working-class women. Case studies in St. Louis and Boston published in the journal show a higher concentration of tobacco advertising and greater concentration of stores in poorer districts. Cessation officials like Sneegas say that's just the tip of the iceberg. Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette mschroeder@jg.net (Michael Schroeder The Journal Gazette) Mon, 14 Jan 2008 05:00:00 GMT http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7183018.stm http://tobacco.org/news/258045.html Nigeria's government is suing three international tobacco firms for $44bn (�22bn) - the first such case in the developing world - due to start in the capital, Abuja. It says tobacco manufacturers are putting unacceptable pressure on the country's health services, and companies are targeting younger and younger people in an attempt to replace former smokers in Europe and America. British American Tobacco (BAT), Philip Morris and International Tobacco Ltd, deny the claims and say they are socially responsible companies who do not target children. They question the massive sums demanded by the government and say the case "has no merit". But government lawyers are convinced they have a strong case. E-mails between tobacco firm employees to be shown to the court in the capital Abuja will reveal deliberate attempts to increase the number of "young and underage" smokers and attempts to influence lawmakers to keep tobacco sales unregulated, they say. Documents we have refer to ways of increasing the number of 'YAUS' [Young And Underage Smokers] in Nigeria BBC Online Sun, 13 Jan 2008 05:00:00 GMT http://www.sueddeutsche.de/kultur/artikel/751/150380/ http://tobacco.org/news/257625.html For decades the tobacco industry masks systematically the risks of smoking: German killer machines are responsible for the death of millions of smokers. Süddeutsche Zeitung kultur-online@sueddeutsche.de (Robert N. Proctor) Germany Wed, 02 Jan 2008 05:00:00 GMT http://www.sunherald.com/205/story/272819.html http://tobacco.org/news/257538.html in our experience taxation depresses it much more severely. Our concern for taxation is, therefore, central to our thinking... ." - Internal document from Phillip Morris That statement, released in 1985, sheds light on the tobacco industry's strategy for the continued growth of cigarette sales. . . . Big Tobacco is also aware of the health and economic benefits for Mississippi if the cigarette tax is increased by $1. Their studies reveal the same figures as those stated above. They know the more cigarettes cost, the less people smoke - especially kids. For over 20 years, Mississippi's cigarette taxation policy has benefitted only the tobacco industry. Lawmakers will once again have an opportunity to change this policy in 2008. The decision before them is whose side are they on: Big Tobacco or Mississippi's kids. Call your legislator and tell him/her to support the children of Mississippi by passing a $1 per pack cigarette tax increase. Biloxi Sun Herald Wed, 02 Jan 2008 05:00:00 GMT