Tobacco is a heavily pesticide-dependent crop. Because pesticides involve human safety and health issues, they are regulated nationally and internationally; however, little is known about how tobacco companies respond to regulatory pressures regarding pesticides. This study analyzes internal tobacco industry documents to describe industry activities aimed at influencing pesticide regulations. We use a case study approach based on examination of approximately 2,000 internal company documents and 3,885 pages of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests. The cases involve methoprene, the ethylene bisdithiocarbamates, and phosphine. We show how the tobacco industry successfully altered the outcome in two cases by hiring ex-agency scientists to write reports favorable to industry positions regarding pesticide regulations for national (Environmental Protection Agency) and international (World Health Organization) regulatory bodies. We also show how the industry worked to forestall tobacco pesticide regulation by attempting to self-regulate in Europe, and how Philip Morris encouraged a pesticide manufacturer to apply for higher tolerance levels in Malaysia and Europe while keeping tobacco industry interest a secret from government regulators. This study suggests that the tobacco industry is capable of exerting considerable influence over the pesticide regulatory process and that increased scrutiny of this process and protection of the public interest in pesticide regulation may be warranted.
ABSTRACT Objective: To determine how the tobacco industry has worked behind the scenes in the state of Colorado to influence the public and defeat public health efforts to control tobacco. Methods: Information for this study was gathered through examination of internal tobacco industry documents, Colorado Secretary of State records, local campaign contribution records, published articles, interviews, reports, web sites and telephone calls. Results: The tobacco industry has been pervasively involved in fighting public health efforts to reduce tobacco use in Colorado since the early 1980s. Up until the early 1990s, the industry's involvement was apparent. Shortly thereafter, significant efforts were made to conceal its opposition in Colorado. The industry has primarily applied its resources to defeat tobacco tax increases, derail efforts to limit public smoking and preserve smoking as a socially acceptable behavior. Tactics include influencing and co-opting state legislative processes, strategic utilization of philanthropy, sponsorships and advertising to fight public health efforts, working to divert funding away from existing tobacco education and prevention programs, camouflaging corporate involvement , engagement of paid consultants and front groups, and extensive media and local policy involvement. Conclusions: The tobacco industry has fought public health efforts to regulate tobacco at both the state and local levels in Colorado for more than two decades. Involvement in opposing public health initiatives has grown, but at the same time become less clear to the public. Industry opposition has been highly organized and well funded, and is increasingly carried out on the local level by third parties rather than the industry itself. The industry's efforts have slowed the progression of public health efforts to address tobacco issues in Colorado, primarily through derailing efforts to enact clean indoor air laws and blocking increases in state tobacco taxes.
A large body of evidence demonstrates that tobacco companies use a wide range of tactics to interfere with tobacco control. Such strategies include direct and indirect political lobbying and campaign contributions, financing of research, attempting to affect the course of regulatory and policy machinery and engaging in social responsibility initiatives as part of public relations campaigns. Although more and more is known about tobacco industry tactics, a systematic, comprehensive guide is needed to assist regulators and policy-makers in combating those practices. Guidelines and recommendations exist for countering and monitoring industry marketing, and recommendations have been issued to refuse industry funding of certain activities, but no broad policy has been published to assist government officials, policy-makers and nongovernmental organizations in their interactions with the tobacco industry. The WHO Tobacco Free Initiative (TFI), the department in WHO with the mandate to control the global tobacco epidemic, monitors the activities of the tobacco industry in accordance with World Health Assembly resolution 54.18, which urges Member States to be aware of affiliations between the tobacco industry and members of their delegations, and urges WHO and Member States to be alert to any efforts by the tobacco industry to continue its subversive practice and to assure the integrity of health policy development in any WHO meeting and in national governments. As a continuing response to this mandate, TFI convened a group of experts to discuss tobacco industry interference in tobacco control and the public health policies and initiatives of WHO and its Member States. The meeting took place at the offices of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) in Washington DC, United States of America, on 29–30 October 2007. Before the meeting, participants received a background paper commissioned by TFI, which served as the basis for discussions. The experts were asked to draw up a list of topics and concepts that should be included in policies to counter attempts by the tobacco industry to interfere with tobacco control. The list facilitated discussions on gaps in scientific evidence and the challenge of finding means for countering the wide range of types of interference (e.g. political, economic and scientific). This list also provided examples of proactive ways of eliminating tobacco companies' influence, including: policies refusing partnerships with tobacco companies; policies refusing tobacco company funding of research and programmes; rejecting self-regulatory or voluntary policies in tobacco control; encouraging divestment from tobacco investments; and promoting social indexing that excludes tobacco and businesses models that can be used to counter industry philanthropy. The meeting participants agreed that the results of the discussions should be incorporated into a document, to broaden understanding in the global public health community of the tobacco industry's influence on tobacco control. This document is therefore a synthesis of the evidencebased discussions, revisions and suggestions of the experts and is presented in a format that can readily be used by policy-makers and is based on the best available evidence on tobacco industry attempts to interfere with tobacco control and public health. The document begins by stating that effective tobacco control and the commercial success of the tobacco industry are fundamentally incompatible and that, accordingly, the tobacco industry can be expected to seek to avoid, prevent, weaken and delay effective policies and programmes, which are against its interests. Equally, tobacco control, in seeking to maximize the decline in tobacco related disease and in the tobacco use that causes such disease, must be vigilant in monitoring the wide range of tobacco industry actions to undermine effective tobacco control. Part I describes the means used by the tobacco industry and its allies to thwart effective tobacco control and summarizes the industry's history of undermining tobacco control, through direct lobbying and the use of third parties, academics and researchers. Part II describes the means used to monitor industry efforts to interfere with tobacco control. TFI aims for this document to provide the Contracting Parties to the WHO FCTC, and other WHO Member States, background and contextual information that may assist with the implementation of the WHO FCTC Article 5.3 Guidelines which were adopted at the third session of Conference of Parties (COP) in Durban, South Africa in November 2008 to counter tobacco industry interference with tobacco control.
Tobacco is a heavily pesticide-dependent crop. Because pesticides involve human safety and health issues, they are regulated nationally and internationally; however, little is known about how tobacco companies respond to regulatory pressures regarding pesticides. In this study we analyzed internal tobacco industry documents to describe industry activities aimed at influencing pesticide regulations. We used a case study approach based on examination of approximately 2,000 internal company documents and 3,885 pages of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests. The cases involved methoprene, the ethylene bisdithiocarbamates, and phosphine. We show how the tobacco industry successfully altered the outcome in two cases by hiring ex-agency scientists to write reports favorable to industry positions regarding pesticide regulations for national (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) and international (World Health Organization) regulatory bodies. We also show how the industry worked to forestall tobacco pesticide regulation by attempting to self-regulate in Europe, and how Philip Morris encouraged a pesticide manufacturer to apply for higher tolerance levels in Malaysia and Europe while keeping tobacco industry interest a secret from government regulators. This study suggests that the tobacco industry is able to exert considerable influence over the pesticide regulatory process and that increased scrutiny of this process and protection of the public interest in pesticide regulation may be warranted.
Tobacco production in Zimbabwe is very largely export orientated and an extremely sophisticated infra-structure for the marketing, processing and export of tobacco has been developed. Details of the contribution by the various sectors of the industry are given in this booklet
In November 1998, a coalition of state negotiators and five tobacco companies reached an agreement in which the cigarette makers would pay out the biggest financial settlement in history, $206 billion over the next 25 years to 46 states, to compensate for the medical treatment of patients suffering from tobacco-related health problems. Critics of the settlement say the tobacco companies are getting off the hook too easily, and that the deal's public health provisions are unacceptably riddled with loopholes. But the attorneys general who negotiated the settlement defended it as a good deal-but clearly not as a panacea. Ultimately, they feel, Congress should pass legislation to provide essential reforms, including full Food and Drug Administration authority over tobacco.
Illicit trade in tobacco products undermines public health and lead to significant tax losses for Governments. From around 2001, attempts to hold international tobacco manufacturers liable for tobacco products originating from within their supply chains led them to conclude far-reaching Cooperation Agreements with the European Union (EU) and its Member States. These agreements resulted in significant reductions in illicit trade in their products in Europe, but market dynamics caused the products of these manufacturers to be replaced by other illicit products. The Framework WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) and its subsequent Protocol on Illicit Trade (ITP), had a significant impact on the approach of the multilateral system and of national governments towards cooperation with the legal tobacco industry, while it at the same time proposed a range of new measures to address illicit trade. This caused the EU to review its Agreements with the tobacco industry and for the EU to conclude that they had addressed their intended purpose and that the way forward was to solely rely on new measures adopted as part of the 2014 EU Tobacco Products Directive (TPD). These developments raise significant questions about the way forward: What is the history and what are the learnings from the Industry Agreements? Are their benefits fully addressed by the 2014 TPD? Is there still scope for cooperating with the legal tobacco industry and what are the challenges to be overcome in this area? ; The present study was funded by PMI IMPACT, a grant award initiative of Philip Morris International (PMI). In the performance of its research, the author maintained full independence from PMI. The views and opinions expressed in this document are those of Grantee and do not necessarily reflect the views of PMI. Responsibility for the information and views expressed in this study lies entirely with the author. Neither PMI, nor any of its affiliates, nor person acting on their behalf may be held responsible for any use which may ...
In the 1990s several American states passed term limits on legislators with the stated intention of reducing the influence of wealthy industries on career legislators. Although term limits in the United States do not have a direct relationship to public health, the tobacco industry anticipated that term limits could have indirect effects by either limiting or expanding industry influence. We detail the strategy of the tobacco industry in the wake of term limits using internal tobacco company documents and a database of campaign contributions made to legislators in term limited states between 1988 and 2002. Despite some expectations that term limits would limit tobacco industry access to state legislators, term limits appear to have had the opposite effect.
OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the processes and outcomes of tobacco litigation in Argentina and to analyse the strategies of the tobacco industry to oppose litigation using tobacco industry documents. METHODS: A systematic search of tobacco industry documents on the internet dating from 1978 to 2002. Law library searches using Argentinean official and unofficial reports systems were combined with computerised online searches. RESULTS: There have been at least 15 failed litigation cases in Argentina and the tobacco industry presented a concerted defence in every claim regardless of cost. We categorised 11 cases as product liability and nicotine addiction, two as health care reimbursement, and two as criminal law and secondhand smoke. Industry strategies included hiring legal consultants from prestigious international and Argentinean law firms and developing litigation prevention programmes. Industry monitored legal academic meetings, controlled the development of new product liability legislation, obtained favourable opinions from experts, and closely observed the development of litigation in Argentina. CONCLUSION: The strategies used by the industry have been successful in preventing recovery for tobacco injuries through litigation. Argentinean health advocates and lawyers need to be aware of the roles and strategies of the tobacco industry in order to develop effective litigation in Argentina.
Background: The Czech Republic has one of the poorest tobacco control records in Europe. This paper examines transnational tobacco companies' (TTCs') efforts to influence policy there, paying particular attention to excise policies, as high taxes are one of the most effective means of reducing tobacco consumption, and tax structures are an important aspect of TTC competitiveness. Methods and Findings: TTC documents dating from 1989 to 2004/5 were retrieved from the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library website, analysed using a socio-historical approach, and triangulated with key informant interviews and secondary data. The documents demonstrate significant industry influence over tobacco control policy. Philip Morris (PM) ignored, overturned, and weakened various attempts to restrict tobacco advertising, promoting voluntary approaches as an alternative to binding legislation. PM and British American Tobacco (BAT) lobbied separately on tobacco tax structures, each seeking to implement the structure that benefitted its own brand portfolio over that of its competitors, and enjoying success in turn. On excise levels, the different companies took a far more collaborative approach, seeking to keep tobacco taxes low and specifically to prevent any large tax increases. Collective lobbying, using a variety of arguments, was successful in delaying the tax increases required via European Union accession. Contrary to industry arguments, data show that cigarettes became more affordable post-accession and that TTCs have taken advantage of low excise duties by raising prices. Interview data suggest that TTCs enjoy high-level political support and continue to actively attempt to influence policy. Conclusion: There is clear evidence of past and ongoing TTC influence over tobacco advertising and excise policy. We conclude that this helps explain the country's weak tobacco control record. The findings suggest there is significant scope for tobacco tax increases in the Czech Republic and that large (rather than small, incremental) increases are most effective in reducing smoking. Please see later in the article for the Editors' Summary.
Background: The Czech Republic has one of the poorest tobacco control records in Europe. This paper examines transnational tobacco companies' (TTCs') efforts to influence policy there, paying particular attention to excise policies, as high taxes are one of the most effective means of reducing tobacco consumption, and tax structures are an important aspect of TTC competitiveness. Methods and Findings: TTC documents dating from 1989 to 2004/5 were retrieved from the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library website, analysed using a socio-historical approach, and triangulated with key informant interviews and secondary data. The documents demonstrate significant industry influence over tobacco control policy. Philip Morris (PM) ignored, overturned, and weakened various attempts to restrict tobacco advertising, promoting voluntary approaches as an alternative to binding legislation. PM and British American Tobacco (BAT) lobbied separately on tobacco tax structures, each seeking to implement the structure that benefitted its own brand portfolio over that of its competitors, and enjoying success in turn. On excise levels, the different companies took a far more collaborative approach, seeking to keep tobacco taxes low and specifically to prevent any large tax increases. Collective lobbying, using a variety of arguments, was successful in delaying the tax increases required via European Union accession. Contrary to industry arguments, data show that cigarettes became more affordable post-accession and that TTCs have taken advantage of low excise duties by raising prices. Interview data suggest that TTCs enjoy high-level political support and continue to actively attempt to influence policy. Conclusion: There is clear evidence of past and ongoing TTC influence over tobacco advertising and excise policy. We conclude that this helps explain the country's weak tobacco control record. The findings suggest there is significant scope for tobacco tax increases in the Czech Republic and that large (rather than small, incremental) increases are most effective in reducing smoking.
