World No Tobacco Day 2012

Handsel Art

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

13 April 2012

contact J.R. Few

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World No Tobacco Day 2012

In 2003 the World Health Organization (WHO) adopted the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), recognizing tobacco as the leading global cause of death and disease. To date there are 170 parties to the treaty focusing on key tobacco prevention strategies including: adopting tax increases to reduce prevalence, banning tobacco advertising, creating tobacco free spaces, placing prominent warnings on packaging, and combating tobacco smuggling. Responding to a growing tobacco pandemic, the FCTC represents the world’s first global health treaty and affirms the right of all people to the highest standard of health. That has not prevented the tobacco industry from aggressively trying to undermine the efforts of the FCTC. The WHO has selected “Tobacco Industry Interference” in the FCTC as the theme for this year’s World No Tobacco Day, May 31_st.

In this country, 50 years of the tobacco industry’s sophisticated efforts opposing the public health gained a federal court conviction for racketeering and fraud in 2006. Today, the growth market for tobacco extends beyond our borders but industry efforts are no less deceitful and manipulative. Front groups and public relation firms have promoted the same pseudo-science regarding secondhand smoke and tobacco globally. Internal documents have shown the industry makes extensive use of media to manipulate research and public opinion to oppose tobacco taxes, marketing reform, and tobacco free space all over the world. One of the most infamous evidences of industry interference was a 1999 paper, commissioned by Philip Morris, stating that in Czechoslovakia smoking was actually beneficial because a decreased lifespan saved pension funding.

Litigation continues to be one of the tobacco industry’s strengths. In countries from Uruguay to Germany, tobacco industry lawyers have hindered and thwarted challenges to tobacco prevalence. Graphic warnings in the U.S., plain packaging in Australia, and regulating displays in the U.K. are all being challenged in their respective courts.

Perhaps the most heinous industry tactic is the infiltration and manipulation of otherwise well intentioned advocate groups. Youth tobacco education programs, funded by the tobacco industry, employed all over the world, show little success in preventing initiation and can actually enhance tobacco use. Project Sunrise, revealed by industry documents, exposes a plan to collaborate with, and manipulate, public health groups, legislation, and individuals to compromise and weaken tobacco free efforts.

The lengths to which the tobacco industry will go is perhaps limitless. The message of World No Tobacco Day 2012 is that challenging tobacco necessitates that public health advocates understand a paradigm shift recognizing a profit driven pandemic unlike any the world has ever known.

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The Subtleties and Sophistication of Tobacco PR

This morning i opened up my daily Google Alert on Tobacco and happened to catch the headline, “Tobacco could help save lives, UC Davis team says”. Following up on this I read the press release concerning the UC Davis Big Bang business plan competition winners who had been awarded $15K for their proposal to use the tobacco plant as a source for vaccines. One of the members of the winning team is quoted, "I think this is an opportunity where tobacco can be used in a good sense."

Now this caught my eye for a couple of reasons. One is because I knew Davis, CA had a historical reputation for a tobacco free environment. In 1993 Davis had the only 100% smoke free policy in the nation and even today has extensive outdoor protections from secondhand smoke.

The second reason I was suspicious is because I knew that there was a bizarre use of Arkansas Master Settlement monies at the Arkansas Biosciences Institute. The MSA was the $246 billion settlement with the tobacco companies and the states for the harm caused by tobacco related disease. This has proven to have been a huge victory for the tobacco companies for the simple reason that nowhere in the agreement is it stipulated how this money is spent. Today states have only dedicated about 2.3% of MSA and tax revenue monies for tobacco control. Arkansans, however, stand alone with the Initiated Act 1 of 2000 dedicating their MSA payments toward primarily health related issues. Among these issues is the Arkansas Biosciences Institute created from 23% of the MSA to “focus on agriculture and basic and clinical scientific research that will lead to health improvement, especially in the area of tobacco-related diseases.” Now a state of the art research facility is a fantastic thing for a place like Arkansas. But early in 2004 Dr. Carole Cramer was hired as the Executive Director. Dr. Cramer’s expertise is the genetic engineering of the tobacco plant. This takes some mental agility to see that as an area of tobacco-related disease, but this is Arkansas.

So knowing of this tobacco industry coup and the smoke free distinction Davis enjoys I went to see just who could have influenced the Big Bang award. The major sponsor of the award is DLA Piper, a global law firm that represents anyone from the French gaming industry to, you guessed it, the tobacco industry. Arkansans may recall that DLA Piper senior Policy advisor Dick Armey recently came into the state to campaign against the proposed tobacco tax to fund our state's trauma system.

So now, is anyone else leery here?

The tobacco industry has a ready history of deceit and manipulation of public opinion toward tobacco and a degree of sophistication and cunning that almost baffles the imagination. This is just one more example.

Eradicate the Tobacco Industry?

The group Airspace ASH has been doing one of these informal online polls, "Should the tobacco industry be eradicated?" My reply of course is Absolutely! Or if I may restrain my enthusiasm suggest that removing the opportunity for massive profit could accomplish the same. The tobacco industry is an historical anomaly. No industry receives such freedom from regulation and none causes as much inherent disease, death, and correlate health care cost. None. None accidentally. None incidentally. None.

Yet the tobacco industry retains blue chip status in stock markets around the globe.

The challenge to tobacco must include opposition to the bizarre economics of permissive tobacco policies subsidizing the rogue capitalism and complexity of nicotine addiction. That is why incremental approaches to de-normalizing tobacco, (taxes, tobacco free space, market reform) are considered effective. Prohibition is not effective prevention. But prohibiting means of profitably marketing nicotine may well be. Hence, the increments.

In an age of transnational corporations it is perhaps oversimplified to call for the eradication of the tobacco industry. They have a tendency to morph and are as aggressive as the most pernicious cancer in pursuing profit. But it is most certainly a worthy goal to remove the profit for which these corporations exist. It is this predatory profit that drives the pandemic.

I do take issue with those that suggest more accessible nicotine is an appropriate response. One need not eradicate tobacco to de-normalize the popularity of nicotine addiction. But it may well be possible to regulate nicotine delivery, access, marketing, etc. to the point where tobacco use is much less desirable or socially acceptable.

Tobacco corporations are archetypical in their amorality. As we slowly inch our way toward a tobacco free society in more developed nations they open new markets on the Pacific Rim and in Africa. Talking about snus and nicotine vapor is counterproductive when transnational corporations are recruiting share croppers and new markets in the rest of the world. We will be successful in our challenge to tobacco someday but it will not be expedited by ignoring the global accommodation and predation for which the tobacco industry continues to distinguish itself.