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.
Tag: Tobacco
Corporations, Health, Lobbying, Tobacco
How to Search Online Tobacco Industry Documents
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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
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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.
Corporations, Front groups, Health, Tobacco
Transnational Tobacco Companies Target Poor Countries
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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)
Education, Health, Tobacco
Vivid Anti-Smoking Ads Prompt Flood of Quitline Calls
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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.
Ethics, Health, Media, Tobacco
Philip Morris: “Get sick children on Oprah”
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In 1993, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officially listed secondhand tobacco smoke as a Group A Human Carcinogen, the same rating the agency gives to asbestos, radon gas and vinyl chloride. The listing was a public relations disaster for the tobacco industry, and their internal documents show how tobacco companies reacted. A 6-page Philip Morris planning document found in the files of Ted Lattanzio (Director of Philip Morris Worldwide Regulatory Affairs), lists strategies and budgets for fighting efforts to ban smoking in workplaces and public places. Page 4 describes a strategy for dealing with public information about how childrens’ health is disproportionately affected by exposure to secondhand smoke:
“Shift the debate on ETS [environmental tobacco smoke] and children to: Are our schools and day care centers making children sick?”
Tactics proposed for making the public believe that schools and day care centers are making children sick (instead of secondhand smoke) include:
“Feed available information to National School Board Association in D.C. Feed information to Oprah, et. al. Get sick children on the shows. Research newspaper clippings of parents who keep children at home because of school environment — pass those on. Why? Shift the debate. Why is EPA not spending research dollars on solving school problem?? I have the research budget for next year — not very much is going to identify or solve the school problem. Get information to EPA Watch.”
Philip Morris’ estimated budget for the effort to blame day care facilities for making children sick was $100,000.
Advertising, Marketing, Media, Tobacco
In-Your-Face Ad Leverages Smoker Frustration to Sell E-Cigarettes
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Ad leverages smokers' frustration to sell e-cigarettes
The maker of the “blu” brand of electronic cigarette is hoping smokers will respond to a particularly aggressive ad campaign that exploits their frustration and anger to sell more of their product. The ad’s headline that says, “Dear Smoking Ban.” Beneath the headline is a photo of an angry older, middle-aged woman flipping her middle finger at the viewer. The ad text links smoking to freedom, a psychological construct long used by the tobacco industry to counteract the understanding that nicotine causes a powerful addiction that robs smokers of control over their tobacco use. The ad text says, “Take back your freedom to smoke anywhere with blu electronic cigarettes. blu produces no smoke and no ash, only vapor, making it the smarter alternative to regular cigarettes. It’s the most satisfying way to tell the smoking bans to kiss off. Okay, maybe the second most satisfying way.” Electronic cigarettes contain nicotine, but since they don’t actually burn tobacco, they don’t contain as much of the hazardous byproducts of burned tobacco.