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Editorial
A think tank of JT, by JT and for JT
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  1. Mark A Levin1,
  2. Joanna E Cohen2,
  3. Koki Okamoto3,4,
  4. Manabu Sakuta5
  1. 1 William S. Richardson School of Law, University of Hawaii at Mānoa, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA
  2. 2 Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Institute for Global Tobacco Control, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
  3. 3 Okamoto Sogo Law Office, Tokyo, Japan
  4. 4 Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly, Tokyo, Japan
  5. 5 Department of Neurology, Japanese Red Cross Medical Center, Tokyo, Japan
  1. Correspondence to Prof.  Mark A Levin, William S. Richardson School of Law, University of Hawaii at Mānoa , 2515 Dole St., Honolulu 96822, Hawaii, USA; levin{at}hawaii.edu

https://doi.org/10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2017-054148

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    The report published here on Japan’s Smoking Research Foundation (JSRF)1— an entity funded in substantial part by Japan Tobacco—yields not only history but crucial lessons for tobacco control today. For decades, the JSRF has funded scientific research ostensibly independent from the tobacco industry, yet as the authors note, tobacco industry documents show that ‘it was never meant to be an independent research funding body’, but rather ‘was created to generate and publicize cigarette-friendly science through a seemingly neutral third party front’. This provides valuable insight at a moment when the world has just been introduced to a brand-new organisation, the ‘Foundation for a Smoke-Free World’ (PMI_FSW), backed by enormous funding support from Philip Morris International (PMI). PMI_FSW claims to have ‘an independent research agenda, independent governance, ownership of its data, freedom to publish, and protection against conflict of interest’.2 Iida and Proctor’s analysis of formerly secret documents revealing a deliberate masking of tobacco industry influence in Japan illustrates some of the risks of such a funding model for public health worldwide.

    Tobacco policy in Japan is driven by a triangular power structure of governmental finance officials, politicians (primarily from the leading Liberal Democratic Party) and the tobacco industry itself (including agriculture, foreign and domestic cigarette producers, and numerous partners throughout the economy in media, retail and the like). But this vast enterprise has been largely hidden from public …

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