Category: Tobacco

Corporations, Economics, Ethics, Health care, Human rights, Lies, Marketing, politics, Secrecy, Tobacco, Women

Under Mitt Romney, Bain Made Millions on Tobacco

by Anne Landman • October 9, 2012 • 0 Comments

Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney’s former company, Bain Capital, may refuse to make public the clients it has served, but now previously-secret tobacco industry documents reveal Bain & Company worked closely with cigarette makers British American Tobacco, Philip Morris and Gallaher, to help them expand their markets and become more profitable at the expense of global public health. Bain helped British American Tobacco (BAT) crack open the cigarette market in Russia and transform it into a lucrative business at a time when American tobacco companies were under pressure at home and smoking rates in the U.S. were decreasing. By 1993, during the time when Bain worked with cigarette makers, the dangers of smoking were well established. The 1964 Surgeon General’s report had announced that cigarettes caused cancer. In 1988 the U.S. government warned that nicotine was addictive in a similar manner as heroin and cocaine. In 1989 the Surgeon General announced that most people begin smoking as children and one in every six Americans was dying from smoking. In 1993 the EPA rated secondhand tobacco smoke a Group A Human Carcinogen — the same rating the agency gives to asbestos, radon gas and vinyl chloride. Romney took over Bain in 1990 and stayed until 1995, when this crucial public health information about smoking was public. When Romney took over Bain, the company was in financial distress and seeking new clients. One of the first new clients Bain signed during that time was Philip Morris (PM). Little more than a month after Romney took over, Bain signed a six month contract with Philip Morris estimated to be worth $1 million.

How Corporations Influence the Media

by Anne Landman • September 15, 2012 • 0 Comments

How do corporations influence entire media markets? A 1995 Philip Morris (PM) document shows one way in which corporations work to influence the larger media to manipulate larger public opinion. The previously-secret document shows that PM hired a Denver-based public relations agency to implement an ambitious and comprehensive plan aimed at influencing Colorado media outlets and thus shift public opinion more in the company’s favor.

The document, titled “PM Media Action Network – Media Plan for Colorado,” was written by public relations firm Russell, Karsch & Hagen, based in Denver. It states:

“[We] will begin to reshape public opinion through the media…” and “…[W]e are confident we can continue to shift the media’s view, and, ultimately the view of the general public…toward issues affecting the industry.”

In keeping with PM’s internal adversarial view of public health efforts to reduce smoking, Russel, Karsch planned to develop a “War Book” of “key issues and message points we believe will be effective in Colorado.”

Finally, A Law Firm that Helps the Beleaguered Working Class

by Anne Landman • August 25, 2012 • 0 Comments

Sharon Y. Eubanks, who helped start new law firm that advocates for regular working people. She headed up the United States’ 1999 legal case against the major tobacco companies.

An entirely new kind of law firm has opened up in Washington, D.C. and New York City. Its stated mission is to take the side of average working people against the big dogs: the corporate polluters, discriminatory employers and unsafe manufacturers whose policies, behaviors, products and activities make life difficult for the rest of us. The new, high-powered public interest law firm specializes in fighting for beleaguered, regular working-class clients and on the way getting court rulings that will benefit entire communities. The group, Advocates for Justice Chartered Attorneys (AFJ), is made up of activist-minded attorneys who have extensive experience litigating against big corporations in specialty areas like labor and employment, consumer rights, environmental justice and civil rights. “Our mission is to ensure that high-quality legal representation is not limited to the wealthy, but is available to those who need it most. We represent regular, working people who suffer the bulk of our country’s legal problems,” says Sharon Y. Eubanks, one of the firm’s founding attorneys. Ms. Eubanks is an example of the high caliber of attorneys at AFJ — she served as lead counsel for the United States in the largest civil Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) enforcement action ever filed, United States v. Philip Morris USA, et al., also known as the federal tobacco litigation. Other attorneys at AFJ are Arthur Z. Schwartz, Cate Edwards, Richard Soto and Tracey Kiernan. AFJ’s website is afjlaw.com. In one of the firm’s current cases, AFJ is representing 170 parents and community members in a civil rights action against a school district in New York. The suit alleges that the school district violated the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights by intentionally segregating white students into private schools, while cutting funds to the primarily black and Hispanic student population of the public schools. AFJ Law in D.C. is located at 11 Dupont Circle, Washington, D.C. 20036. The group also has an office on Broadway in New York City. If you need help or want a consultation, contact information is on the firms’ web site.

Advertising, Ethics, Ethnic/Minority, Health, Human rights, LGBT issues, Marketing, Tobacco

RJR’s “Project SCUM” Targeted Gays, the Homeless, Immigrants and Youth

by Anne Landman • June 15, 2012 • 1 Comment

Front page of RJR’s “Project Scum” document

This post is part of our ongoing series exploring the millions of previously-secret tobacco industry documents now available on the Internet. – Ed.

“Project SCUM” was R.J. Reynolds’ plan to increase sales of Camel cigarettes in the San Francisco area by marketing them to gay people in the Castro district, “rebellious, Generation X” -ers, people of “international influence” and “street people,” by introducing Camel cigarettes into less-traditional retail outlets like “head shops.” SCUM was an acronym that stood for “Sub-Culture Urban Marketing.” RJR’s rationale for the project was a higher incidence of smoking and drug use in these subcultures. There are several versions of the “Project SCUM” document, ranging in dates from 1995-97. Each offers revealing marginalia (handwritten markings on the page). For example, in one document, handwritten in next to a bulleted list of consumer subcultures are the words “Gay/Castro” and “Tenderloin,” referring to gay areas of San Francisco. Next to a list that discusses the rationale for the program, a line says “higher incidents of smoking in subcultures” and has the phrase “and drugs” handwritten in. On yet another copy, the phrase “and drugs” is crossed out, revealing RJR’s ambivalence about their exploitation of the drug culture. A later copy of the document’s title page has the word “SCUM” crossed out and the word “Sourdough” handwritten in, as though RJR realized too late the derogatory name they had slapped on their customers. See a copy of RJR’s Project Scum document here.

Front groups, Grassroots advocacy, Health, Lobbying, Safety, Tobacco

Colorado Restaurant Association Does Tobacco Industry’s Bidding Again

by Anne Landman • June 9, 2012 • 2 Comments

Pete Meersman, of the Colorado Restaurant Association

Citizens of Lakewood, Colorado, this spring pushed to enact a stricter smoking ordinance in their city, but met resistance from the Colorado Restaurant Association (CRA), a longtime ally of the tobacco industry. Citizens wanted to make outdoor dining areas, all parks and recreation areas and sidewalks around hospitals smoke free. They also recommended prohibiting smoking inside tobacco retail businesses, to protect employees from exposure to secondhand smoke. In 2001 (pdf), Philip Morris created a front group called the “Colorado Indoor Air Coalition” (CIAC) to promote the notion that providing adequate ventilation in restaurants was the only solution to the problem of secondhand smoke — a tobacco industry strategy to block workplaces from going 100 percent smoke-free. One of the organizations helping Philip Morris head up the CIAC was the Colorado Restaurant Association. So it was no surprise that in 2012, Pete Meersman of the Colorado Restaurant Association appeared at Lakewood City Council meetings to lobby against the changes citizens sought, saying “The anti-smoking people will not be satisfied until no one smokes.” Opponents argued that the new, stricter smoking rules would be unfair to businesses that made capital outlays to meet the older smoking law, like installing more powerful ventilation systems or creating separate patios for non-smokers. But an ever-increasing amount of data now show that heart attacks fall precipitously when effective smoking restrictions are enacted. In Greeley, Colorado, one study (pdf) showed that heart attacks fell 27 percent after a tough new smoking ordinance was passed in 2003. A similar study in Pueblo, Colorado found approximately the same reduction in heart attack admissions to hospitals after a smoking ban went into effect. In the end, though, the City of Lakewood caved to tobacco industry arguments and enacted a watered-down ordinance that failed to include many of the new provisions citizens sought, showing Big Tobacco is still a powerful force on the local level in Colorado, aided by its ally, the Colorado Restaurant Association.

Corporations, Ethics, Health, politics, Secrecy, Tobacco

Big Tobacco’s Effort to Exploit Terrorism to Get Legal Cover

by Anne Landman • June 6, 2012 • 0 Comments

Tobacco companies knew in 1953 that cigarettes caused cancer, but have long fought the inclusion of health warning labels on cigarettes, including this updated one.

This three-page document dated November 15, 2001, from Philip Morris’ online corporate document collection, argues that the federal government would be better off diverting funds from the U.S. Department of Justice’s 1999 lawsuit against the tobacco industry to concentrate on the fight against terrorism. The strategy leverages the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S. as a reason to stop the government’s investigation into the major American tobacco companies’ decades-long conspiracy to defraud the American people about the links between smoking and disease. On November 29, 2001 (just days after this document was written) the investigative organization Center for Public Integrity revealed that then-House Majority Whip and tobacco industry ally Tom DeLay (R-Texas) had done the bidding of the tobacco companies by quietly inserting a clause into the Financial Anti-Terrorism Act of 2001 (a bill rushed through Congress in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks) shielding U.S. tobacco companies from foreign lawsuits that alleged cigarette smuggling and money laundering.

Big Tobacco’s Ties to Funding of Prop. 29 Opposition Exposed

by Anne Landman • June 2, 2012 • 0 Comments

An NBC investigative team has exposed historical and financial ties between many of the supposedly independent groups actively opposing Proposition 29, a measure to increase California’s tobacco tax by $1.00 per pack, and the tobacco industry. Collectively, groups against the measure have spent $46.7 million so far — over four times more than the amount spent by groups supporting the measure. Much of the money to oppose the measure came from cigarette makers Reynolds American and Philip Morris, laundered through groups that are seemingly independent from the industry, like Americans for Tax Reform, the Small Business Action Committee and the California Taxpayers’ Association. Tobacco industry documents now available on the Internet reveal these groups have historically received significant financial support from Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds and the Tobacco Institute. Political analyst Larry Gerston commented, “These kinds of transfers of money increasingly take place under a very dark shadow.” The strategy of burying tobacco industry involvement in ballot measure campaigns is revealed in a 1998 proposal by a political consulting group that worked for the Tobacco Institute on another cigarette tax fight.

R.J. Reynolds’ “Salem Black Initiative,” 1989

by Anne Landman • May 25, 2012 • 0 Comments

This 1989 R.J. Reynolds marketing report summarizes a company brainstorming session to find ways to increase sales of Salem cigarettes to African Americans. It exemplifies how marketers view a target audience and try to appeal to them, in this case to market an addictive and deadly product. The report concludes that “the best way to reach minority consumers is through their local communities.” It says,

“…the brand’s support must be seen as being backed by other blacks — not as a big white company’s tactic to sell to blacks. If Salem can become a positive contributing factor to blacks’ economic and personal well-being, it could ultimately be ‘unpatriotic to smoke anything else.”

RJR's 2004 Kool Mixx campaign featured images of rappers, DJs and dancers on cigarette packs and in ads.

The marketers say “Salem should be seen as a friend,” and suggest ways to play up the positive aspects of [young adult] black smokers and their lifestyle, listing words and fashion items from the African American community at the time:

“…fresh” “fade” (kill) “bank” (money) “hooked”(together) “chillin'” “def” (cold, funky, hard, it’s happening) “stylin'” “dis” (disrespectful) – lots of bracelets – 2-3 holes in ear (African influence) – nose studs – fades, parts, braids – thrashed jeans – micro spandex shorts – side snap warm-up suits…”

Tobacco Companies Work in Secret to Defeat California’s Proposition 29

by Anne Landman • May 24, 2012 • 0 Comments

A pitched battle is on over California’s Proposition 29, a measure on the statewide ballot to raise the cigarette tax by one dollar to fund smoking cessation and research on tobacco-related diseases. If enacted, the measure would increase California’s per-pack cigarette tax to $1.87 per pack. According to Maplight, the biggest donors favoring the tax are the American Cancer Society ($7.42 million), the Lance Armstrong Foundation ($1.5 million), the American Heart Association ($546,256), the American Lung Association ($412,086) and Michael R. Bloomberg ($500,000). Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Steve Jobs, kicked in $25,000 to support Prop. 29. But those amounts pale in comparison to the tidal wave of money tobacco companies and their allies are pouring into defeating the measure. Philip Morris (Altria) alone has given just over $24 million, Reynolds American, Inc. has put in $9.57 million, and U.S. Smokeless (also owned by Altria) has put in $1.5 million. The California Republican Party contributed $1.14 million to defeat the tax. As usual, tobacco companies are trying to hide their role in the campaign by refusing to speak to journalists, running ads without their fingerprints on them and fighting the campaign through a front group, “Californians Against Out-of-Control Taxes and Spending,” which is aligned with right wing, pro-business groups funded by millionaires and billionaires like Americans for Prosperity, FreedomWorks, the Chamber of Commerce and the Petroleum Marketers Association. Californians Against Out-of-Control Taxes and Spending doesn’t even list tobacco companies among the “No” campaign’s endorsers on the group’s website — as if tobacco companies weren’t involved.

Bizarre Ideas to Sell More Smokes from Philip Morris

by Anne Landman • May 11, 2012 • 0 Comments

This 1987 Philip Morris brainstorming document is full of bizarre ideas for how to make cigarettes more appealing and marketable to consumers, and how to design cigarettes to help counter the social stigma of smoking. Ideas include making cigarettes that deodorize a room, control appetite, alter consciousness, administer an aphrodisiac, mimic certain drugs, emit insect repellant, control cholesterol intake, serve as a laxative, renew energy, and even –amazingly enough — cure cancer (although ironically this last one was one of the very few ideas that was later crossed off the list).

Page 3 contains a brief discussion of how to lure quitters back to smoking: “Someone suggested talking with quitters to discover how we might recover these consumers…” The document also discusses ways to “turn the tables” on the Surgeon General by making a “healthy cigarette,” and ways to make the pack more attractive and useful. Ideas include making the pack into a smoke detector, an alarm clock, a calculator, a “handy mirror,” a “breatholyzer”, or use microchips to make packs that play tunes, or tell smokers how many cigarettes remain in the pack. Another idea was for a “jolt” cigarette that offered extra-high nicotine. Other ideas included cigarettes that enhance athletic performance and increase lung capacity, or slow formation of wrinkles, a “taco-dorito”- flavored cigarette and a carbonated cigarette that would make the mouth all tingly.

Memo Exposes Huge PR Campaign to Attack Wind and Solar Industries

by Anne Landman • May 10, 2012 • 0 Comments

A group of energy industry-affiliated, right-wing groups is readying a massive PR plan to try and turn American public opinion against the renewable energy industries. The UK Guardian obtained a confidential draft memo written by Illinois anti-wind power attorney Rich Porter that outlines a massive PR campaign to change public opinion towards wind and solar power among “citizens at large.” The goals of the campaign, according to Porter’s memo, are to “A) Cause the targeted audience to change its opinion and action” based on anti-wind messaging, “B) Provide credible counter message to the (wind) industry, C) Disrupt [wind] industry message with countermeasures, D) Cause subversion in message of [wind] industry so that it effectively becomes so bad no one wants to admit in public they are for it (much like wind has done to coal, by turning green to black and clean to dirty.) Ultimate Goal: Change policy direction based on message.” The memo suggests teaming up with established groups like Americans for Prosperity, the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Heartland Institute, the Brookings Institute, the Cato Institute and other climate change deniers. It also suggests developing derogatory names for wind energy, like calling it “puff power” and “breeze energy.”

ALEC: Big Tobacco’s “Third-Party” Ally

by Anne Landman • May 9, 2012 • 0 Comments

Tina A. Walls, former Philip Morris VP of State Government Affairs

Tobacco industry documents reveal that the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has abetted the failure of state legislatures to take meaningful steps to rein in the devastation caused by tobacco use. In a previously-secret, 1993 internal Philip Morris (PM) presentation called Grasstops Government Relations, Tina A. Walls, then Vice President of State Government affairs at PM, describes the company’s strategies to influence legislators, and demonstrates how ALEC works with corporations to bolster that influence. As she shows Philip Morris employees a chart she calls “The Influence Wheel,” Walls describes how PM’s Government Affairs department analyzes every part of a legislator’s world and misses no opportunity to exert influence. Walls tells the audience how PM provides legislators with trips to “promotional and cultural events” in nice places, and as an example cites a trip ALEC facilitated in which a group of American legislators traveled to Brussels, Belgium. Walls wrote,

“We make sure legislators are aware of, and invited to, promotional and cultural events funded by Philip Morris. {CITE ALEC 1992 TRIP TO BRUSSELS AS AN EXAMPLE}”

Walls also discusses PM’s strategy to keep itself out of the media by using third parties to “carry its baggage,” and describes how PM uses third parties allies like ALEC to dodge issues:

“…we try to keep Philip Morris out of the media on issues like taxation, smoking bans and marketing restrictions. Instead, we try to provide the media with statements in support of our positions from third party sources, which carry more credibility than our company and have no apparent vested interest…”

Read more →

Advertising, Economics, Ethics, Front groups, Health, Lobbying, Media, politics, Tobacco

Female, African-American Doctor Backs Tobacco Industry in New Ad

by Anne Landman • May 8, 2012 • 0 Comments

The tobacco industry’s front group, “Californians Against Out-of-Control Taxes and Spending,” is spending millions to run a 30-second TV ad opposing Proposition 29, a ballot measure to increase in the state’s cigarette tax. The ad features an unlikely ally: a female, African-American doctor named LaDonna Porter, M.D. Prop. 29 would increase California’s 87-cent per pack cigarette tax by an additional $1.00 to fund cancer research, smoking reduction programs and enforcement of tobacco-related laws. In the ad, Porter, stands in an examination room wearing a white lab coat and says she’s against smoking, but she finds Proposition 29 flawed. “Not one penny” of the funds generated by the measure will go towards new funding for cancer treatment, Porter says, and she raises the specter that the money could be spent out of state. The ad is consistent with the tobacco industry’s longtime strategy of getting doctors to endorse their products and back their favored policies. Still, it has generated outrage. The African American Tobacco Control Leadership Council in Oakland, California sent a scathing open letter to Dr. Porter expressing shock and outrage that she is working for Big Tobacco. It’s not the first time Dr. Porter has worked for Big Tobacco. In 2006, as LaDonna White, she starred in a tobacco industry-backed ad opposing Proposition 86, yet another measure to increase taxes on cigarettes and chewing tobacco. Dr. Porter has also lent her credibility to the pharmaceutical industry to fight an initiative that would have put a dent in drug companies’ profits.

How to Search Online Tobacco Industry Documents

by Anne Landman • May 2, 2012 • 0 Comments

A video by Marty Otañez, Assistant Professor, Anthropology Department, University of Colorado, Denver

Smoking Gun from Marty Otañez on Vimeo.

Watch another episode in a series of episodes on the practices of tobacco companies. The series of short videos highlights tobacco industry documents research using the online Legacy Tobacco Documents Library (http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu) and British American Tobacco Documents Archive (http://bat.library.ucsf.edu)

Anne Landman, special guest

Marty Otañez, Assistant Professor, Anthropology Department, University of Colorado, Denver
www.sidewalkradio.net
www.dscoalition.org
www.fairtradetobacco.org

Children, Corporations, Corruption, Environment, Ethics, Health, Safety, Tobacco

Philip Morris and Monsanto Sued over Birth Defects in Tobacco Farmers’ Children

by Anne Landman • April 15, 2012 • 1 Comment

Screen shot from Monsanto's website

Tobacco farmers in Argentina filed a lawsuit (pdf) against Monsanto and Philip Morris for requiring them to use herbicides and pesticides that caused a high rate of severe birth defects among their children. The farmers charge that Philip Morris and the subsidiary companies that bought their crops required the farmers to stop growing their native tobacco grow a new kind of tobacco instead that Philip Morris uses in its cigarette formulation for the North and South American markets. The new tobacco they had to grow required more pesticides, and the farmers had to use excessive amounts of Monsanto’s glyphosate-based herbicide Roundup — but the defendant companies did not warn them about the dangers of the herbicide, or provide the farmers with safety information about the chemical or any protective gear to wear when applying it.

Transnational Tobacco Companies Target Poor Countries

by Anne Landman • April 6, 2012 • 0 Comments

Thai child smoking (Photo from Thailand-th.net)

A new study reveals PR strategies transnational tobacco companies use behind the scenes to derail, delay and undermine public health policies in low- and middle-income countries. The authors uncovered six core strategies tobacco companies use in Thailand to interfere in tobacco control policymakin: (1) doing business with “two faces,” (2) working to influence people in high places, (3) “buying” advocates inside grassroots organizations, (4) putting up deceptive fronts, (5) using intimidation, and (6) undermining controls on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship. The companies often apply several of the strategies simultaneously. Public health advocates in poorer countries have successfully counteracted these strategies by remaining vigilant to spot them, excluding tobacco companies from policymaking, restricting cigarette sales, keeping up pressure on the companies and working to assure adequate resources are dedicated to enforcing tobacco control regulations. The entire text of the article is available free in PDF form here.

Source: International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, March 27, 2012 (pdf)

Corporations, Ethics, Health, Tobacco

Philip Morris Exec: Public Health Authorities are “Muesli-Eating, Stool-Watching Joggers”

by Anne Landman • April 4, 2012 • 0 Comments

In a January, 1988 speech to Philip Morris’ (PM) Australian sales force titled “The Challenge of Change,” John Dollisson, then head of Philip Morris Corporate Affairs Australia, describes the company as “at war” with public health advocates. On Page 13, he describes the sales force as one of “our most effective weapons” in that war. Dollisson displays blatant contempt for public health authorities when he calls them “Meusli-eating, stool-watching joggers who know what is best for all of us.”[Page 2] Dollisson discloses the strategies PM has employed to defeat public health efforts in Australia: funding lawsuits against the government, supporting a “spontaneous” smokers’ rights group, finding ways around state advertising bans, running their own ad campaigns during national “quit smoking” campaigns, using strategic sports sponsorships to deliver audiences to favored politicians, forming a “business/liberty group” to “defend freedoms and question the legitimacy of anti-business groups,” giving away gold “Benson & Hedges” pens actually worth $10 that customers “perceive” as being worth $50-60, and much more.

Vivid Anti-Smoking Ads Prompt Flood of Quitline Calls

by Anne Landman • April 3, 2012 • 0 Comments

On March 19, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) started a new print and television ad campaign called “Tips from Former Smokers” that features real people offering tips on how to live with diseases caused by smoking or secondhand smoke. Ads show survivors of oral and throat cancer, strokes, amputations and heart attacks. The former smokers give tips like how to bathe, shave and get dressed with their conditions. The ads show amputees putting on their prosthetic limbs, and heart attack and lung cancer survivors show their surgical scars. The ads also show other grisly results of smoking that most people rarely or never get to see. The campaign has more than doubled calls to CDC’s quit line. From March 12 – March 18, the period just prior to the start of the ad campaign, the quit line got 14,437 calls. Between March 19 and March 25 — after the ads started running — the quit line got 34,413 calls. The ads are tagged with the number 1-800-QUIT-NOW, a toll-free number where smokers can get free quitting information and support. Visits to CDC’s quit-smoking website, www.smokefree.gov, have tripled since the campaign began.

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