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Tobacco industry’s human rights makeover: an archival review of British American Tobacco’s human rights rhetorical veneer
  1. Neiloy R Sircar1,
  2. Stella A. Bialous2
  1. 1 Public Health Law Center, Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA
  2. 2 Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, UCSF, San Francisco, California, USA
  1. Correspondence to Neiloy R Sircar, Public Health Law Center, Saint Paul, MN 55105, USA; neil.sircar{at}mitchellhamline.edu

Abstract

Background British American Tobacco (BAT) released an industry-first human rights report in 2020, which extolled the efforts and objectives of the tobacco industry giant for promoting human rights. How BAT came to brand itself as a human rights champion, being a leader in an industry long accused of enabling human rights violations from leaf-to-stub including profiting from a product which inherently violates the right to health, is unknown. Exploring BAT’s evolution through reviewing its materials and Tobacco Industry Documents could shed light on their development and what it means in the tobacco control and human rights context.

Methodology We reviewed publicly available materials from BAT as well as conducted archival research in the Tobacco Industry Documents digital archives at University of California San Francisco. We focused on how and when BAT used terms such as ‘human rights’, ‘right to health’, ‘sustainable development goal’ and ‘harm reduction’ as well as ‘Framework Convention on Tobacco Control’.

Results We reviewed 48 BAT publications and 45 documents from the Tobacco Industry Documents archives. These materials demonstrate both BAT’s increasing utilisation of human rights language as well as BAT’s reuse of the same language, concepts and general rhetoric. BAT has not engaged significantly or meaningfully on the human right to health.

Conclusion BAT’s increasing use of human rights rhetoric does not appear to reflect a shift in the company’s human rights positions, particularly with respect to the right to health of consumers and BAT’s lack of impactful measures to eliminate the harms of its tobacco products.

  • Global health
  • Human rights
  • Tobacco industry
  • Tobacco industry documents

Data availability statement

Data are available in a public, open access repository. The tobacco industry materials we reviewed are publicly available through British American Tobacco (bat.com) or through the Truth Tobacco Industry Documents Archive at UC San Francisco (https://www.industrydocuments.ucsf.edu/tobacco).

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Data availability statement

Data are available in a public, open access repository. The tobacco industry materials we reviewed are publicly available through British American Tobacco (bat.com) or through the Truth Tobacco Industry Documents Archive at UC San Francisco (https://www.industrydocuments.ucsf.edu/tobacco).

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Footnotes

  • Contributors NRS and SAB conceived the idea for this paper together. NRS conducted the initial data collection, research, analysis and drafting. SAB provided substantive review, comment, and revision support to the initial and revised manuscripts as well as the data collection and analysis upon which the manuscript is based. NRS is the guarantor for the work.

  • Funding This work was supported in part by the National Cancer Institute (grant CA-113710).

  • Competing interests None declared.

  • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

  • Supplemental material This content has been supplied by the author(s). It has not been vetted by BMJ Publishing Group Limited (BMJ) and may not have been peer-reviewed. Any opinions or recommendations discussed are solely those of the author(s) and are not endorsed by BMJ. BMJ disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on the content. Where the content includes any translated material, BMJ does not warrant the accuracy and reliability of the translations (including but not limited to local regulations, clinical guidelines, terminology, drug names and drug dosages), and is not responsible for any error and/or omissions arising from translation and adaptation or otherwise.