Wednesday, November 05, 2014
Margaret Thatcher as Tobacco Industry Consultant
Seven (7) new papers and reports using tobacco industry documents have been added to the
Tobacco Documents Bibliography.
Publications include a case study of the DSM's tobacco use disorder, community norms surrounding tobacco sales, and an analysis of the retail impact of raising the tobacco sales age to 21.
Bibliography Highlight:
Petticrew M, Krishnaratne S.
The Fag Lady, revisited: Margaret Thatcher's efforts on behalf of the tobacco industry. Public Health 2014(0).
The authors investigate former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's roll as consultant for the tobacco industry following her resignation from office. The documents in the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library offer the opportunity to not only explore her work for Philip Morris on issues including advertising bans, lowering of tobacco tariffs in EEC countries, reducing tobacco taxes, and anti-tobacco programs, but to more broadly assess how the industry seeks to influence and use elected and former public officials. Studies have shown the tobacco industry places great value on former senior politicians, specifically their 'insider knowledge' which can be employed to gain access to and influence other policymakers on industry's behalf.
A few key documents from LTDL:
"When she was in power of the UK, she became somewhat more reasonable in the latter part of her term towards excise
taxes on cigarettes. Excise tax in Australia has been a big problem for us, especially states license fees. There may be a change in the federal government there in the next twelve months, and it would be helpful if she thought she could influence a new Liberal (means conservative) government to exercise restraint on excise taxes given her experience in the UK." (PM, 1992)
"The most detailed advice on how to use Mrs. Thatcher was in relation to Czechoslovakia, to help persuade Czech ministers against selling off Tabak S.A., the state-run tobacco monopoly...This being our number 1 priority, we feel that Mrs. Thatcher could be of help in talking mainly to Mr. Klaus, the present Minister of Finance, and to other politicians in Czechoslovakia, to assure that Tabak S.A. not be broken up and sold off by individual factory, as has been suggested by some of our competitors." (PM 1991)
Mrs. Thatcher's travel and report for Philip Morris
on China in 1992 (PM 1992)
"Philip Morris is pleased to pledge an annual contribution of $250,000 to the Margaret Thatcher Foundation for a three-year period...The specific projects to be funded in whole or in part by our contribution will be the subject of discussion between Philip Morris and officers of the Foundation, and application of our contribution to any specific project will require prior approval by Philip Morris." (PM 1992)
Wednesday, September 03, 2014
Tobacco Documents Research - Graphic Health Warning Labels in India
Four (4) new papers and reports using tobacco industry documents have been added to the
Tobacco Documents Bibliography. Publications include an analysis of health preemption and trade agreements, transparency as a remedy for industry fraud, graphic health warning labels in India, and the tobacco industry in Poland.
Bibliography Highlight:
Sankaran S, Hiilamo H, Glantz SA. Implementation of graphic health warning labels on tobacco products in India: the interplay between the cigarette and the bidi industries. Tobacco Control 2014 Jun 20. The authors examine the interaction between cigarette companies, domestic bidi companies and public health groups that eventually led to rotating graphic health warning labels on cigarettes, bidis and smokeless tobacco in December 2011. India illustrates how lobbying by multinational tobacco companies and producers of local forms of tobacco blocked these warning labels for years, and how tobacco control advocates finally overcame this barrier through innovative use of public interest litigation and the Right to Information Act.
A few key documents from LTDL:Letter from BAT's regional operations director to the British High Commission in New Delhi asking the British government to urge India to allow tobacco companies to implement voluntary health warning labels and marketing restrictions instead of binding legal requirements (BAT 1994)
In 1996, the cigarette companies proposed a voluntary code
to the Ministry of Commerce that included health warning labels and mild marketing restrictions.
In 1999, the Tobacco Institute of India, the cigarette companies’ lobbying organization, made the same proposal to the Ministry of Commerce. Neither voluntary code specified the size or content of the warnings.
 |
| (BAT 1999) |
 |
| (BAT 1996) |
Monday, August 18, 2014
New Dutch Tobacco Industry Documents
Over 1100 documents were added to the
Dutch Tobacco Industry Special Collection (previously known as the Joop Bouma collection). These are documents obtained from the Dutch Government through two large Freedom of Information Act requests in 2000 and in 2011 and given to the Library by Joop Bouma and Maastricht University. The documents expose influence-peddling in the government and media by cigarette companies, as well as behind-the-scenes deals surrounding the tobacco industry in the Netherlands, the largest cigarette exporter in the European Union. See the June 2013 Maastricht University
press release for further information on the analysis of the documents. Most documents are in Dutch.
In addition,
19,675 documents were added to the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library including:
- Health Warning Labels (see previous blog post) - 1288 records
Sunday, August 17, 2014
New Collection of Graphic and Pictorial Health Warning Labels posted to LTDL
A project of the University of Waterloo's
Tobacco Labelling Resource Centre, the
Health Warning Labels collection contains images of health warning labels from a variety of countries, including pictorial warnings that have been implemented on packs and a number of images that have been developed for pilot testing and market research. Within the collection, you can also search by country (For example -
ct:Australia) as well as by description text to narrow down your results.
Watch UCSF Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education's Stan Glantz talk about the importance of health warning labels and the evidence of their efficacy - "
What the Tobacco Companies Didn't Warn you About"
Friday, July 25, 2014
Two New Collections Added to LTDL
The
Legacy Tobacco Documents Library has added two new collections:
Trinkets & Trash Marketing - 8012 documents
- A project of Rutgers School of Public Health, the Trinkets & Trash Marketing collection contains images of current and historic tobacco products and marketing materials such as advertisements, direct mailings, emails, sweepstakes, and coupon promotions.
- See the Trinkets & Trash website for more info on this amazing database of materials.
- Note: Each record in this collection will link out to the corresponding record on the Trinkets & Trash website for a larger image and more information.
State of Washington Secondhand Smoke - 1517 documents
- Contains documents from the 1998 lawsuit 'Aviation West Corp. v. Washington State Dept. of Labor and Industries' obtained through a public records request made by Lisa Bero.
- In 1993, the State of Washington's Department of Labor and Industry filed proposed indoor air quality regulations. One of the proposed regulations was aimed at eliminating secondhand smoke exposures (referred to in the documents as environmental tobacco smoke (ETS)) in private workplaces. Five major cigarette manufacturers (B&W, American Tobacco, Lorillard, Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds) and three Washington businesses brought a suit against the State arguing the regulation on smoking in private workplaces was invalidly enacted. Both trial and appellate courts upheld the regulation.
Thursday, July 03, 2014
5000 New Tobacco Documents Added
New tobacco documents were added to the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library today! The breakdown is as follows:
- 2009 American Tobacco documents
- 1589 Philip Morris documents
- 798 RJ Reynolds documents
- 596 Brown & Williamson documents
- 1 Lorillard document
Monday, June 30, 2014
New Documents Research - Big Tobacco and Marijuana
Seven (7) new papers and reports using tobacco industry documents have been added to the
Tobacco Documents Bibliography.
Publications include an analysis of reverse engineering reports in internal documents and a report on how the tobacco industry made cigarettes more addictive.
Bibliography Highlight:
Barry R, Hiilamo H, & Glantz SA.
Waiting for the Opportune Moment: The Tobacco Industry and Marijuana Legalization. Milbank Quarterly 2014; 92(2): 207-242.
Since at least the 1970s, tobacco companies have been interested in marijuana and marijuana legalization as both a potential and a rival product. As public opinion shifted and governments began relaxing laws pertaining to marijuana criminalization, the tobacco companies modified their corporate planning strategies to prepare for future consumer demand.
A few key documents from LTDL:
"From all I can gather from the literature, from the press, and just living among young people, I can predict that marihuana smoking will have grown to immense proportions within a decade and will probably be legalized. The company that will bring out the first marihuana smoking devices, be it a cigarette or some other form, will capture the market and be in a better position than its competitors to satisfy the legal public demand for such products. I want to suggest, therefore, that you institute immediately a research program on all phases of marihuana." (PM, 1969)
"We are in the business of relaxing people who are tense and providing a pick up for people who are bored or depressed. The human needs that our product fills will not go away. Thus, the only real threat to our business is that society will find other means of satisfying these needs. . ."
(PM 1970)
"Smoking such [a marijuana] cigarette is a natural expansion of current smoking habits which, if a more tolerant attitude were ever taken to cannabis, would be a change in habit comparable to moving over to cigars. . . The proposed research can be started off very simply, it is just to do for “cannabis-loaded” cigarettes what has already been done for normal cigarettes . . . The starting point must be to learn how to produce in quantity cigarettes loaded uniformly with a known amount of either ground cannabis or dried and cut cannabis rag." (BAT 1970)
[Future Scenario:] "Consumption of tobacco falls drastically immediately following marijuana legalization as people experiment with the drug. Subsequent to the novelty effect, tobacco consumption again rises to near prelegalized marijuana levels. Two marijuana-containing products are highly probable: a straight marijuana cigarette and a marijuana-tobacco blend. The increase in the demand for tobacco due to the marijuana-tobacco blend counteracts the effect of the small decrease in the whole cigarette consumption." (BW 1978)
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