Elsevier

The Lancet

Volume 359, Issue 9314, 13 April 2002, Pages 1323-1330
The Lancet

Public Health
Tobacco industry strategies for influencing European Community tobacco advertising legislation

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(02)08275-2Get rights and content

Summary

Restrictions on tobacco company advertising and sponsorship are effective parts of tobacco control programmes worldwide. Through Council Directive 98/43/EC, the European Community (EC) sought to end all tobacco advertising and sponsorship in EC member states by 2006. Initially proposed in 1989, the directive was adopted in 1998, and was annulled by the European Court of Justice in 2000 following a protracted lobbying campaign against the directive by a number of interested organisations including European tobacco companies. A new advertising directive was proposed in May, 2001. We reviewed online collections of tobacco industry documents from US tobacco companies made public under the US Master Settlement Agreement of 1998. Documents reviewed dated from 1978 to 1994 and came from Philip Morris, R J Reynolds, and Brown and Williamson (British American Tobacco) collections. We also obtained approximately 15 000 pages of paper records related to British American Tobacco from its documents' depository in Guildford, UK. This information was supplemented with information in the published literature and consultations with European tobacco control experts. The tobacco industry lobbied against Directive 98/43/EC at the level of EC member state governments as well as on a pan-European level. The industry sought to prevent passage of the directive within the EC legislature, to substitute industry-authored proposals in place of the original directive, and if necessary to use litigation to prevent implementation of the directive after its passage. The tobacco industry sought to delay, and eventually defeat, the EC directive on tobacco advertising and sponsorship by seeking to enlist the aid of figures at the highest levels of European politics while at times attempting to conceal the industry's role. An understanding of these proposed strategies can help European health advocates to pass and implement effective future tobacco control legislation.

Introduction

Tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable death worldwide,1 accounting for 500 000 deaths in Europe annually.2 Beginning in 1985, the European Community (EC) began to develop legislation to fight tobacco use in Europe3 under the Europe Against Cancer programme. A crucial element of this programme4 was a directive, initially proposed in 1989, ending tobacco advertising and sponsorship in Europe (panel 1). The tobacco industry mounted a major and sustained lobbying campaign against the directive that appears to have contributed to the delay of its adoption for nearly a decade, until 1998,5 and to its annulment by the European Court of Justice in October, 2000.

The World Bank reviewed the evidence regarding the effects of cigarette advertising, concluding that advertising increases cigarette consumption6 and that legislation ending advertising would reduce consumption provided that it is comprehensive, covering all media and uses of brand names and logos.6 Modelling these data for the entire EC, the World Bank concluded that the comprehensive advertising ban proposed by the 1998 EC directive would have reduced overall cigarette consumption within the EC by 7%.6 Such a reduction in cigarette consumption would have immediate shortterm7, 8, 9, 10 and long-term11 benefits for public health.

The tobacco industry's strategies and tactics for opposing controls on advertising in Europe12 were similar to those it used to oppose tobacco control efforts elsewhere.13, 14, 15, 16 As in tobacco industry efforts in the USA,13 Switzerland,14 WHO,16 and the International Agency for Research on Cancer,15 their campaign against the advertising directive attempted to foster alliances with policy makers and third parties. The tobacco industry sought to exercise influence through several EC member states, particularly Germany, as well as the UK, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Greece. Lobbying against the EC directive endeavoured to enlist the support of figures at the highest level of European politics, including German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, British Secretary of State Kenneth Clarke, and European Commissioner Martin Bangemann. Proposed tobacco industry tactics also sought to mask the industry's role in mobilising opposition to the ban.

This report outlines some of the proposed strategies of the tobacco industry in opposing the advertising directive. We analyse these strategies in the context of the legislative and judicial events surrounding the original advertising directive as well as the new draft directive proposed in May, 2001.

The EC, known as the European Economic Community (EEC) until 1992, is the main legislative body of the European Union (EU). The Treaty of Rome (1957) defines the institutions of the modern EC. These are: the European Commission, the Council of Ministers, the European Parliament, and the European Court of Justice. The membership of the EC has enlarged over time, and by 1986 included Belgium, France, West Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, the UK, Denmark, Ireland, Greece, Spain, and Portugal. In 1995, Austria, Finland, and Sweden joined the EU.17 The Treaty of Rome assigns the EC competence to achieve an open internal market among all EC Member States.17 According to Article 95a (known as Article 100a before 1992), the EC is mandated to pursue a high degree of public-health protection within the context of this primary goal.17 As of 2001, EC tobacco control legislation is generally weak. Binding EC tobacco control measures prohibit tobacco advertising and sponsorship on television (Directive 89/552/EEC), standardise tobacco product labelling (Directives 89/622/EEC and 92/41/EEC), set tar maximums for cigarettes (Directive 90/239/EEC), and establish minimum tax levels for tobacco (Directives 95/59/EEC, 92/79/EEC, and 92/12/EEC), but in sum are relatively weak.3 (These three directives will be replaced in September, 2002 by the Tobacco Products Consolidation Directive [Directive 2001/37/EC].) A weak, non-binding resolution of 1989 invites member states to adopt measures ending smoking in public places and on all forms of transport.18

According to the European Commission, all EC Member States have placed some degree of restriction on tobacco advertising and sponsorship.2 The scope of this national legislation ranges widely, from total bans on tobacco advertising as in France (Act 91–32 of 1991), Italy (Act 52 of 1983, DM No 425 of 1991), Portugal (Decrees 421/80 of 1980, 226/83 of 1983, 330/90 of 1990, and 275/98 of 1998), Finland (Act 693 of 1976 with amendments since 1976), and Belgium (Act of 10.12.1997 on tobacco advertising), to systems based largely on industry self-regulation, as in the Netherlands (Tobacco Act, Media Act).2

Section snippets

Methods

We examined tobacco industry documents published on the Internet subsequent to the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement19 between 46 US state attorneys general and the tobacco industry. Among its many provisions, the Master Settlement Agreement requires that the four major tobacco companies operating in the USA make available, through Internet archives, millions of previously confidential internal industry documents.19 Most of our document sources came from the Philip Morris documents' site (//www.pmdocs.com

Industry strategies against the EC advertising ban directive

The Philip Morris EEC corporate affairs agenda for 1991 presents Philip Morris' overall objective regarding the EC directive on tobacco advertising and sponsorship as seeking to “have the directive completely abandoned or alternatively converted into a non-legally binding resolution”22 As a “fallback objective”, Philip Morris sought to have approved an alternative “directive that permits continued advertising in any member state that chooses to authorize it”.22

In an effort to have the directive

Discussion

Internal tobacco industry documents demonstrate a coordinated and effective effort by the tobacco industry to influence proposed EC tobacco advertising restrictions and to make them as weak as possible. Industry interventions included attempts to block the ban through extensive lobbying in a number of EC member states both directly and by lobbying third parties to do so. The tobacco industry also attempted to substitute alternative, industry-sponsored proposals for the EC directive, and planned

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