The Smoke You Don't See: Uncovering Tobacco Industry Scientific Strategies Aimed Against Environmental Tobacco Smoke Policies

Muggli, Monique E.; Forster, Jean L.; Hurt, R. Douglas; Repace, James L.

doi:10.2105/ajph.91.9.1419

Cited by 135 publications

(77 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…This study reveals that, beyond previously-discovered industry projects aimed at altering the biomedical scientific landscape about tobacco (Hanauer, Slade, Barnes, Bero, & Glantz, 1995;Muggli, Forster, Hurt et al, 2001), weakening and defeating secondhand smoke policies globally (Assunta, Fields, Knight, & Chapman, 2004;Barnoya & Glantz, 2002), recruiting journalists to generate news articles supporting industry positions (Muggli, Hurt, & Becker, 2004), and influencing the amount of smoking in movies (Mekemson & Glantz, 2002), by the late 1970s the transnational tobacco companies had embarked on a highly coordinated program using the knowledge and power of social scientists to construct an alternate cultural repertoire (Swidler, 1986) of smoking to slow the decline in social acceptability of smoking worldwide. The books the industry commissioned were strategically designed and timed to counteract important public health pronouncements about tobacco, such as data describing the cost of smoking to employers and governments (Kristein, 1983;Luce & Schweitzer, 1977;Weis, 1981) and the 1988 Surgeon General's report characterizing nicotine as addictive (National Center For Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, 1988).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 83%

“…The tobacco industry used its resources to influence intellectual elites' knowledge construction to slow the declining social acceptability of smoking, including developing a network of biomedical scientists secretly managed by industry lawyers to develop an alternative body of scientific and popular literature supporting its contention that secondhand smoke was not dangerous Barnoya & Glantz, 2002;Dyer, 1998;Muggli, Forster, Hurt, & Repace, 2001). Just as the industry developed networks of nominally independent biomedical scientists, it developed networks of social scientists to produce a competing body of literature in an attempt to influence the construction of knowledge regarding smoking and transform the culture to see smoking as a social benefit, rather than the dominant ideology that smoking is a health hazard.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Tobacco industry sociological programs to influence public beliefs about smoking

Landman

Cortese

Glantz

2008

Social Science & Medicine

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The multinational tobacco companies responded to arguments about the social costs of smoking and hazards of secondhand smoke by quietly implementing the Social Costs/Social Values project (1979)(1980)(1981)(1982)(1983)(1984)(1985)(1986)(1987)(1988)(1989), which relied upon the knowledge and authoritative power of social scientists to construct an alternate cultural repertoire of smoking. Social scientists created and disseminated non-health based, pro-tobacco arguments without fully acknowledging their relationship with the industry. After the U.S. Surgeon General concluded that nicotine was addictive in 1988, the industry responded by forming "Associates for Research in the Science of Enjoyment" (c.1988-1999), whose members toured the world promoting the health benefits of the use of legal substances, including tobacco, for stress relief and relaxation, without acknowledging the industry's role. In this paper we draw on previously secret tobacco industry documents, now available on the internet to show how both of these programs utilized academic sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, psychologists, philosophers and economists, and allowed the industry to develop and widely disseminate friendly research through credible channels. Strategies included creating favorable surveys and opinions, infusing them into the lay press and media through press releases, articles and conferences, publishing, promoting and disseminating books, commissioning and placing favorable book reviews, providing media training for book authors and organizing media tours. These programs allowed the tobacco industry to affect public and academic discourse on the social acceptability of smoking.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 83%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tobacco industry sociological programs to influence public beliefs about smoking

Landman

Cortese

Glantz

2008

Social Science & Medicine

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“…However, such disclosure guidelines have been demonstrated repeatedly not to be effective with the tobacco industry, which seeks actively to minimize its role. 9,69 Clinicians, parents, and public health officials may be the most vulnerable to the conclusions in Sullivan's article that SHS does not appear to be an important risk factor for SIDS. The national SIDS prevention campaign ("Back to Sleep"), sponsored by a coalition including the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the American Academy of Pediatrics, 70,71 has focused mainly on the infant's sleep position.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Changing Conclusions on Secondhand Smoke in a Sudden Infant Death Syndrome Review Funded by the Tobacco Industry

2005

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ABSTRACT. Background. Prenatal and postnatal exposure to tobacco smoke adversely affects maternal and child health. Secondhand smoke (SHS) has been linked causally with sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) in major health reports. In 1992, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) first noted an association between SHS and SIDS, and both prenatal exposure and postnatal SHS exposure were listed as independent risk factors for SIDS in a 1997 California EPA report (republished in 1999 by the National Cancer Institute) and a 2004 US Surgeon General report.The tobacco industry has used scientific consultants to attack the evidence that SHS causes disease, most often lung cancer. Little is known about the industry's strategies to contest the evidence on maternal and child health. In 2001, a review was published on SIDS that acknowledged funding from the Philip Morris (PM) tobacco company. Tobacco industry documents related to this review were examined to identify the company's influence on the content and conclusions of this review.Methods. Tobacco industry documents include 40 million pages of internal memos and reports made available to the public as a result of litigation settlements against the tobacco industry in the United States. Between November 2003 and January 2004, we searched tobacco industry document Internet sites from the University of California Legacy Tobacco Documents Library and the Tobacco Documents Online website. Key terms included "SIDS" and names of key persons. Two authors conducted independent searches with similar key terms, reviewed the documents, and agreed on relevancy through consensus. Thirty documents were identified as relevant. Two drafts (an early version and a final version) of an industry-funded review article on SIDS were identified, and 2 authors independently compared these drafts with the final publication. Formal comments by PM executives made in response to the first draft were also reviewed. We used Science Citation Index in July 2004 to determine citation patterns for the referenced SIDS reviews.Results. PM executives feared that SHS and maternal and child health issues would create a powerful and emotional impetus for smoke-free areas in the home, public areas, and the workplace. In response to the 1992 US EPA report on SHS, the Science and Technology Department of PM's Switzerland subsidiary, Fabriques de Tabac Reunies, searched for "independent" consultants to publish articles addressing SHS. The first industry-funded article was a literature review focusing on smoking and SIDS, conducted by consultant Peter Lee and co-author Allison Thornton, which stated that the association between parental smoking and SIDS could have been attributable to the failure to control fully for confounders. That first review has only been cited once, in the subsequent industry-funded review.In 1997, PM commissioned a consultant, Frank Sullivan, to write a review, with coauthor Susan Barlow, of all possible risk factors for SIDS. The first draft concluded that prenatal and postnatal smokin...

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“…As with research on active smoking, the industry withheld findings and publicly denied that secondhand smoking was harmful (2). Tobacco industry-funded research related to secondhand smoking and indoor air was disseminated through scientific symposia, sponsored publications, the media, and directly to policy makers (2,17,42).…”

Section: Secondhand Smokementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The industry's program of creating controversy was accomplished primarily through extensive and coordinated funding of scientific consultants around the world and the Center for Indoor Air Research (2,9,17,42). The Center for Indoor Air Research (CIAR) was formed by three tobacco companies in 1988.…”

Section: Secondhand Smokementioning

confidence: 99%

Implications of the Tobacco Industry Documents for Public Health and Policy

Bero

2003

Annu. Rev. Public Health

226

189

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Key Words tobacco control, tobacco industry document, tobacco smoke pollution, corporate ethics s Abstract The release of previously secret internal tobacco industry documents has given the public health community unprecedented insight into the industry's motives, strategies, tactics, and data. The documents provide information that is not available from any other source and describe the history of industry activities over the past 50 years. The documents show that the tobacco industry has been engaged in deceiving policy makers and the public for decades. This paper begins with a brief history of the tobacco industry documents and describes the methodological challenges related to locating and analyzing an enormous number of poorly indexed documents. It provides an overview of selected important findings of document research conducted to date, including analyses of industry documents on nicotine and addiction, product design, marketing and promotion, passive smoke, and internal activities. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of tobacco document research for public health and the application of such research to fields other than tobacco control.

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The Smoke You Don't See: Uncovering Tobacco Industry Scientific Strategies Aimed Against Environmental Tobacco Smoke Policies

Abstract: There is a need for further international monitoring of industry-produced science and for significant improvements in tobacco document accessibility.

Cited by 135 publications

References 12 publications

Tobacco industry sociological programs to influence public beliefs about smoking

Tobacco industry sociological programs to influence public beliefs about smoking

Changing Conclusions on Secondhand Smoke in a Sudden Infant Death Syndrome Review Funded by the Tobacco Industry

Implications of the Tobacco Industry Documents for Public Health and Policy

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