Public HealthTobacco industry efforts subverting International Agency for Research on Cancer's second-hand smoke study
Section snippets
Data sources
The tobacco industry documents are among 32 million pages made public as part of the settlement of the 1998 legal case of State of Minnesota and Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Minnesota vs Philip Morris Inc, et al. These documents are deposited in Minneapolis and each tobacco company has a searchable website archive. Search terms included IARC, IEMC, WRA, GEP, TASSC, NHANES (see glossary), “confounders,” and the names of key players. Most of the documents referred to here are on PM's website.* We
Initial fears and organisation
The 1992 US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report4 provided a comprehensive evaluation of secondhand smoke's health effects that stimulated clean indoor air laws in the USA.6 As similar legislation increased worldwide, PM began monitoring research internationally to prevent further restrictions. By 1993, Philip Morris Corporate Services in Brussels expressed concern that the IARC study would become “Europe's EPA”. PM also feared that IARC would produce, for tobacco smoke, one of its
IARC study
In early 1993 PM had asked Covington and Burling “through their consultants, to try and uncover as much information as possible on the current status, etc, of the IARC study” and requested “all those who receive a copy of this memo to use whatever internal and external resources they may have or may know about to help us get more information on the IARC study as quickly as possible”. Covington and Burling, the industry's Washington, DC based law firm, had established a network of sympathetic
Communications strategy
PM planned a variety of programmes to deliver and reinforce the industry's perspective on second-hand smoke, described in the September, 1993 “Action Plan” (panel 4).
The industry implemented these programmes before the IARC study's release. Besides the programmes that were internally conducted, PM used third-party vehicles that recruited other participants and funders and expanded its “sound science” discussion to issues beyond second-hand smoke, masking the industry's role as the initiator or
Government relations strategy
In September, 1993, PM planned to develop a lobbying plan before and after the IARC study's release. PM sought “key international government influence points” in the IARC donor countries for “generating pressure for reorientation/reprioritisation of IARC priorities/budget allocations”, and planned to lobby regulatory bodies and secure preemptive legislation against smoking restrictions. In 1994, PM developed a “briefing book” about the IARC study for the industry's messengers, allies, and
Discussion
The massive effort launched across the tobacco industry against one scientific study is remarkable. Whereas over ten years (1988–98) the IARC study is estimated to have cost $1·5–3·0 million, PM alone budgeted at least $2 million for “IARC” plans for just one year (1994) and proposed $4 million for studies to help discredit IARC's work. The elaborate plans were developed by PM's top management, implemented by an elite task force, and designed to coordinate the international tobacco industry.
Glossary: Abbreviations
- BAT
- British American Tobacco
- CIAR
- Tobacco industry's Center for Indoor Air Research
- EPA
- US Environmental Protection Agency
- ESEF
- European Science and Environment Forum
- ETS
- Environmental tobacco smoke
- GEP
- Good Epidemiological Practices
- IARC
- International Agency for Cancer Research, Lyon, France
- IEMC
- International ETS Management Committee
- NHANES
- National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey
- PM
- Philip Morris tobacco company
- PMCS
- Philip Morris Corporate Services
- RJR
- R J Reynolds tobacco company
- TASSC
- The Advancement of
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