This is Chapter 17 of my new book, working title “The Industry Playbook: Corporate Cartels, Corruption and Crimes Against Humanity” that is being published online chapter by chapter.

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Legal bribes in the form of political contributions were mentioned in an earlier chapter. That is one form of it. For scientists. it can come in the way of grants. For regulators and lobbyists in the form of employment. And for pretty much anyone, it can come in the form of consultancy deals. That can all be legally done, thus making up a significant part of the industry playbook.

But legal bribes are just one part of it. We can see examples of illegal bribes too. Certainly, with everything we’ve seen Big Tobacco do, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that this is a utilized strategy.

Brandt doesn’t cover this subject much beyond the rumors of the early 20^th century Tobacco Trust bribing state legislators. So for this chapter we turn to 21^st century examples, most of which are done by British American Tobacco (BAT).

“BAT is bribing people, and I’m facilitating it,” said whistleblower Paul Hopkins, who leaked internal documents. “The reality is if…they have to break the rules, they will break the rules.” Hopkins worked for BAT in Kenya for 13 years.

Emails revealed by Hopkins shows that they made payments to members of the WHO’s FCTC, undoubtedly for assistance in undermine the health treaty.

In an article from the BBC they write, “[A]n email from a contractor working for BAT says Mr Kamwenubusa would be able to ‘accommodate any amendments before the president signs’.” That means that the bribe was effectively buying specific wording on policy.

Of course, BAT categorically denies such actions, stating “The truth is that we do not and will not tolerate corruption, no matter where it takes place.” But when you dig deeper BAT even described some payments to three public officials in Rwanda, Burundi and the Comoros Islands as “unlawful bribes” in one document.

The INB is the FCTC’s Intergovernmental Negotiating Body. The TCB is the Tobacco Control Bill. This bribe was for supporting them at the meeting as well as providing the draft of the document.

The BBC lists additional cases. “Former BAT lobbyist Solomon Muyita was fired by BAT in Uganda in 2013 after he was accused of giving cash gifts to 50 people, including seven MPs. He says he was following company orders and is suing BAT for wrongful dismissal. The company says Muyita is lying.”

BAT funded a South African private security company called Forensic Security Services (FSS). They were officially tasked with fighting the black-market cigarette trade. But that is not all they did. Internal documents showed how their staff were instructed to close down three cigarette companies owned by BAT’s competitors. Bribes were dispersed in covering up when illegal surveillance was caught.

“I had to make it clear that they’re going to expect a nice thick envelope of notes,” a whistleblower said. “I would be given a lump sum of money as an operational budget and out of that I would always give a handshake and a nice wodge of cash to the principals just to warm them to the idea.”

This went all the way up to Robert Mugabe, the brutal dictator of Zimbabwe. Documents show that his Zanu-PF party was possibly paid between $300,000 and $500,000 by BAT in 2014.

These documents made their way to the Serious Fraud Office of the UK government where the case was investigated. On January 15^th, 2021 they found that the “evidence in this case did not meet the evidential test for prosecution.”

This is pure conjecture, but is it possible additional bribes were paid to help make that go away?

As corruption is stronger in many countries than the USA, we see this as an added benefit of going worldwide. “These large tobacco merchants used secret payments to improperly win business and curry favor with foreign government officials around the globe,” said Christopher Conte, Associate Director in the SEC’s Division of Enforcement.

The SEC went after two companies. Universal paid $800,000 in bribes to officials of the government-owned Thailand Tobacco Monopoly for securing approximately $11.5 million in sales contracts for its subsidiaries. Alliance One paid $1.2 million for $18.3 in sales contracts.

That was in Thailand. The SEC also alleged bribery in China, Greece, Indonesia, Kyrgyzstan, Malawi and Mazambique.

These bribes don’t just go to politicians. In an even more recent case journalists were similarly influenced or at least attempted to.

Edwin Okoth was working with The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, looking into Kenya’s advertising described in the following chapter. A Kenyan PR agency, Engage BCW, was working for BAT. Here is a text message between Okoth and an employee from Engage.

Engage BCW said that this is against their rules, that their employees undergo anti-bribery training and the employee was suspended.

“Offering a bribe to a journalist isn’t just an attempt to undermine honest reporting and journalistic integrity, the very offer of a bribe is a crime in most jurisdictions,” said Rory Donaldson, programme manager at Transparency International, an anti-corruption charity organization. “Corporations should be aware of the activities of third parties acting on their behalf such as PR agencies. When undertaking internal investigations corporations must ensure the investigation is not a whitewash. Bringing in external investigators can help mitigate this risk.”

These are just a few examples of what has been caught. Imagine all the bribes that they have gotten away with over the years.

Key Takeaways on Bribery

• There are illegal bribes and legal bribes. Both make their way into the industry playbook.
• Bribery works well with the tactic of going worldwide, where in many places corruption is more rampant, and thus bribery is easier to do and get away with.
• Internal documents reveal how British American Tobacco was able to influence politicians drafting the WHO’s treaty on tobacco control.
• Whistleblowers reveal examples and documentation of bribery, while the companies deny any such claims always stating how ethical they are despite the evidence.
• Examples show not just politicians and law enforcement, but also journalists too. Any professional worth influencing is capable of being targeted.

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Please leave any comments or questions below. Feel free to share it with anyone you’d like.

Links to all published chapters of The Industry Playbook can be found here.

You can also support this project with a tip.

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This is Chapter 16 of my new book, working title “The Industry Playbook: Corporate Cartels, Corruption and Crimes Against Humanity” that is being published online chapter by chapter.

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Thus far, this book has mostly focused on the USA. That’s where most of the Big Tobacco companies were based and where so many events took place. But the USA is not isolated from the world, especially as globalization ramped up after World War II.

While legal, scientific and cultural wars did eventually turn the tide against Big Tobacco within the USA, it is important to understand what happened across the world because of this. A not-often discussed strategy of the industry playbook is to take your money and influence elsewhere.

Burson-Marsteller, PR firm for Philip Morris, stated “despite the lingering tobacco liability cases and the drop in cigarette consumption in the United States, the tobacco companies themselves have never been healthier…foreign consumption of American cigarettes continues to grow dramatically.”

Never been healthier! That’s the result of playing this country arbitrage game. Regulation, lawsuits or other events may dampen your abilities in one country. But there are hundreds of countries that are not equal playing fields. What’s more is that the money of big industry often trumps the money of nation states many times over. This gives you further outsized power.

That’s why exports from Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds, and Brown & Williamson went from about 50 billion cigarettes to 220 billion between 1975 to 1994. In 2018, cigarette exports from the USA totaled a value of $1.07 billion US dollars.

A tobacco industry executive honestly explained the overall strategy as such: “Demographically, the population explosion in many underdeveloped countries ensures a large potential market for cigarettes. Culturally, demand will increase with the continuing emancipation of women and the linkage in the minds of many consumers of smoking manufactured cigarettes with modernization, sophistication, wealth, and success—a connection encouraged by much of the advertising for cigarettes throughout the world. Politically, increased cigarettes sales can bring benefits to the government of an underdeveloped country that are hard to resist.”

Indeed, we can see that Big Tobacco sought this sort of influence and control outside the USA using all the other strategies already covered, not just locally but globally. Those benefits to government sometimes took the form of bribes to politicians and other influence peddlers as we’ll explore in a later chapter.

In 1981, Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds and Brown & Williamson joined together to form the Cigarette Export Association (CEA), a non-profit trade association “to improve the competitive position” in foreign markets. The CEA would petition the U.S. Trade Representative to open restricted foreign markets to American cigarettes. It’s no surprise that, pulling political strings with lobbying and funding, they were successful in doing this. And we can see the results of this strategy playing out.

In China, Marlboro was the fourth largest advertiser in 1984. “The rise in smoking in China, where per capita consumption of cigarettes more than doubled between 1965 and 1990, mirrors what happened some forty years earlier in the United States,” wrote Brandt. “The tobacco companies bring a century of marketing savvy, intelligence, and doublespeak to their promotional efforts in these developing nations.”

In other words, the people of these developing nations didn’t stand a chance. The battle-hardened messaging, learning from successes and failures within the states, would be unleashed elsewhere.

That’s what led Surgeon General Koop to say, “I think the most shameful thing this country did was to export disease, disability and death by selling our cigarettes to the world…What the companies did was shocking, but even more appalling was the fact that our government helped make it possible.”

Enter the supranational political body, the World Health Organization. Some of the well-intentioned people there aimed to curb the abuses of Big Tobacco. In 1995, the World Health Assembly, WHO’s governing body, began looking into the possibility of an international treaty regarding tobacco.

Then in May 1996, the World Health Assembly unanimously passed a resolution for the director-general of the WHO to develop a framework convention, a type of treaty for tobacco control.

It wasn’t until 2003 when the 192 member nations of the WHO unanimously adopt the Framework Convention of Tobacco Control (FCTC), which was the WHO’s first ever multilateral treaty.

The WHO to the rescue, except not so much as you might guess by this point. We saw earlier regarding institutions that the WHO was heavily influenced and infiltrated by agents of Big Tobacco. This treaty was no different.

Specifically, Philip Morris hired PR firm Mongoven, Biscoe & Duchin (MBD) to help make sure the FCTC wouldn’t hurt them. Summing up MBD’s strategy Brandt writes that “Philip Morris should remain an engaged participant in the process so as to co-opt and weaken the treaty” and “to inhibit consensus and disrupt the negotiations.”

The final version of the treaty was called “feeble” and “meaningless.” Just one more step in defying and even defining regulation, this time on a global stage. Brandt writes, “While WHO sought to develop transnational regulatory initiatives, the multinational companies insisted that tobacco policies must be handled at the discretion of individual governments.” It’s interesting to see the mirror of “individual” governments responsibilities, much as Big Tobacco talked about individual people’s responsibility. Whatever would ultimately help their bottom line was their talking points.

What are the results of such global action?

Based on recent events, the following line in Brandt’s book really stood out to me. “In this century, in which we have known tobacco’s health effects from the first day, the death toll is predicted to be one billion. This is a pandemic.”

That’s over the course of a century, which means that ten million people every year die from tobacco related diseases.

I know, I know, it was a common tobacco defense that people have individual self-responsibility to smoke or not smoke. Are these kids making a conscious decision?

The marketing, the propaganda, strikes people hard especially at a young age, after all youth is what so much is targeted at. The cultural influence, which is predicated on these things, influences us all. 

The latest stat I could find was over 7.1 million deaths in 2016. A whopping 884,000 not from smoking itself, but secondhand smoke. In many paces over 20% of deaths are a result of tobacco related diseases.

Again, do we have our health priorities straight? Or are such priorities really reflective of industry desires and leverage?

More examples of this country arbitrage game are described in the next few chapters.  

Key Takeaways on Going Worldwide

• While most of the strategies and their effects described in this book focus on the USA, the playbook is used all across the world.
• The influence, power and money of Big Tobacco ultimately outmatched many countries. You’ve seen how much influence they had in the states, just imagine when a company’s revenue is bigger than the GDP of a country.
• Lobbying and political influence was used to make “free” trade possible across borders, supporting the market growth of Big Tobacco.
• Big Tobacco was able to stall, inhibit and disrupt the WHO from developing a powerful multilateral treaty. What they did pass was called “feeble” and “meaningless”.

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Please leave any comments or questions below. Feel free to share it with anyone you’d like.

Links to all published chapters of The Industry Playbook can be found here.

You can also support this project with a tip.

• Paypal
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• Ethereum (or any ERC20 token): 0xfF1EbDf738b9BD28c02Cd9914F4dD7834DCB41dd

This is Chapter 15 of my new book, working title “The Industry Playbook: Corporate Cartels, Corruption and Crimes Against Humanity” that is being published online chapter by chapter.

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Recall all the power of public relations that has been discussed in these various strategies. Now understand that in the USA there are more than four and a half PR people for every reporter. This number has grown over the years, but PR people have outnumbered journalists since 1980.

The majority of those PR people started out as journalists themselves. Why? The pay is better and there are a lot more jobs available. But it was a long road to this position we find ourselves in today. Big Tobacco helped to pave that road.  

One of the biggest plays of public relations is to get stories out to the public. If you can influence what is covered in the news and what is not you can influence the public at large.

This started as early as the 20’s, when Bernays proposed the Tobacco Information Service Bureau, a PR arm for American Tobacco. He launched the “torches of freedom” campaign in order to get women to smoke in public. One of his main goals was getting journalists to cover events, getting photos taken of women smoking cigarettes publicly. This stirred up controversy that he used to get even more press.

Fast forward to 1954 when The Frank Statement to Smokers was released. This was a PR masterstroke as it generated a massive amount of favorable press. Hill & Knowlton ran opinion research after it was released. They found that 65% of coverage of the TIRC was favorable. Only 9% was critical.

No PR campaign ends with a single ad. This was followed by the TIRC paper, A Scientific Perspective on the Cigarette Controversy. This featured eighteen pages of quotes from doctors and scientists doubting the link of cancer and cigarettes. Over 200,000 copies are distributed to doctors and media. That year the TIRC’s budget was almost $1 million which almost exclusively went to Hill & Knowlton for media ads and administrative costs.

What was this money for if not for influencing how journalists covered the topic? Journalists are taught to cover both sides of an argument. Hill & Knowlton, through the TIRC, made sure their side was out there and ever present.

“Every time the TIRC issued a press release, the Hill & Knowlton organization had initiated ‘personal contact,’” wrote Brandt. “The firm systematically documented the courtship of newspapers and magazines where it could urge ‘balance and fairness’ to the industry. Hill & Knowlton staff, for instance, assisted Donald Cooley in preparing an article entitled ‘Smoke Without Fear’ for the July 1954 issue of True Magazine and then distributed more than 350,000 reprints to journalists throughout the country.”

We can see this in 1955 when Edward Murrow covered the tobacco controversy in two consecutive broadcasts at CBS. Hill himself made sure that the coverage was a “balanced one”.

Dick Darrow of Hill & Knowlton directed his staff in 1955 to focus on the “stature-building attention on Dr. Little and his own work.” They made Little, their front man, available to journalists and the media as much as possible.

The PR defense was always ready. They sought to know about scientific findings before they were published so they could attack them as soon as they were released. Carl Thompson explained, “One policy that we have long followed is to let no major unwarranted attack go unanswered. And that we would make every effort to have an answer in the same day—not the next day or next edition. This calls for knowing what is going to come out both in publications and meetings.” Sometimes they even preemptively rebutted new science.

When the defense of “we need more research” began to fade, there were other tactics available. In the last chapter we covered the legal defense of big tobacco. Legal action, including just the threats of lawsuits, were more arrows in the quiver of Big Tobacco to control others including journalists.

ABC’s Day One program featured a whistleblower from R.J. Reynold’s in February of 1994. Philip Morris sued for libel. “This lawsuit was never about libel. It was about intimidation and discouraging other news organizations from covering them,” said Jane Kirtley, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

The Tyndall Report was a journalism newsletter which tracked and analyzed nightly newscasts since 1987. The editor, Andrew Tyndall said, “In the first six months of 1994, before Philip Morris sued ABC for libel, the three broadcast networks devoted 177 minutes to the tobacco story. In the second half of 1994, after the lawsuit was filed that May, the coverage dropped to 43 minutes…There definitely was a chilling effect of the lawsuit.”

While legal action was one tactic, it wasn’t the only one. Another tactic can be used simultaneously for more leverage. This includes threatening to pull advertising. Even though at this time cigarettes weren’t advertising on TV, they still had a card to play. Philip Morris has bought brands such as Kraft Foods and Miller Beer. They were able to threaten to pull advertising on these which amounted to more than $100 million a year.

Journalism pays its bills through advertising. The threat of pulling millions of dollars per year in advertising is a powerful stick that Big Tobacco was absolutely willing to wield.

A memo between tobacco defense lawyers stated, “Through a studied investment of its advertising dollars, the industry both coerced the print media to avoid coverage of anti-smoking stories and enlisted the media’s support in opposition to proposed restrictions on print advertising.”

Ultimately, because of the lawsuit, ABC went on to apologize for their coverage in a carefully worded broadcast. They had to pay between $15 million in legal fees to Philip Morris. “Many saw the apology as an example of powerful corporate interests trumping journalistic practice,” writes Brandt. “It soon became clear that executives at Walt Disney Company, on the verge of acquiring ABC, wanted the case settled before the purchase went into effect.”

These same tactics sometimes proactively killed other news before it aired, as occurred with CBS’ 60 Minutes program featuring another whistleblower, tobacco executive and lead research at Brown & Williamson, Jeffrey Wigand.

The threat of “tortious interference” was enough to get CBS to not air the program, where they could possibly be liable for damages in Wigand breaking his confidentiality agreement. If not for producer Lowell Bergman leaking out the transcript of this interview to other news outlets it may never have seen light of day.

Brown and Williamson also went on the offensive against Wigand. They hired private investigators to dig up any and all dirt they could on him creating a 500-page dossier that included sub-headings such as “Wigand’s Lies About His Residence,” “Wigand’s Lies Under Oath” and “Other Lies By Wigand.”

Many news organizations used this dossier to run what amounted to hit pieces on Wigand’s credibility. Further checking on the stories, as The Wall Street Journal found that “many of the serious allegations against Mr. Wigand are backed by scant or contradictory evidence. Some of the charges — including that he pleaded guilty to shoplifting — are demonstrably untrue.”

Interestingly enough it turns out the CBS Chairman was Laurence Tisch and his son, Andrew Tisch, was CEO of Lorillard tobacco. All of the CEO’s, at that time, were under investigation from the justice department for committing perjury in front of Congress. Whether or not this played any role in CBS’ decision I cannot say for sure, though relationships such as this should be looked at with a skeptical eye.

What was clearer was how money influenced such decisions. Like ABC being sold to Disney, CBS was looking to be acquired by Westinghouse Electric Corporation for a sum of $5.4 billion. The possibilities of a huge lawsuit could be enough to stop the sale. The general counsel for CBS, Ellen Kaden, who argued against airing the program, was set to receive $1.2 million from the sale herself.

The New York Times reported, “Without putting up a fight, CBS has managed to create an ugly precedent. ‘Tortious interference with contract’ has now been added to the legal armory of enemies of the press without so much as a single decision endorsing it.” They also wrote, “The most troubling part of CBS’s decision is that it was made not by news executives but by corporate officers who may have their minds on money rather than public service these days.”

Another tactic useful for influencing journalism is paying high profile people that can make news for you in opinion pieces and such.

British philosopher Roger Scruton criticized the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control put forth by the WHO (which will be explained more in the next chapter), saying “It cannot be the function of a health bureaucracy to cure us of such self-imposed risks…to classify as a dangerous disease what is in fact, a voluntary activity and a source of pleasure, the risk of which falls entirely on the smoker…Big tobacco is an easily demonized opponent, and one currently as defenceless as a chained and baited bear.”

It turns out Scruton was working for Japan Tobacco International, one of the world’s biggest producers and exporters. Leaked emails were revealed by The Guardian. Scruton sought to get a £1,000 raise on his existing £4,500 monthly fee because he was providing “good value for money.”

“We would aim to place an article every two months in one or other of the WSJ [Wall Street Journal], the Times, the Telegraph, the Spectator, the Financial Times, the Economist, the Independent or the New Statesman,” says an email from 2001, from Sophie, Scruton’s wife and business partner. “While one or more of these articles might be written by RS, we would do our best to get other journalists to join in.”

Lastly, you can go straight after the journalists themselves. Philip Morris paid a CBS TV anchor to do a mock TV show at one of their conventions. Later, she co-hosted a newsmagazine segment on tobacco taxes. This segment contained factual errors and prominently featured an interview with a paid consultant to the Canadian Tobacco Manufacturers Council. This conflict of interest was not disclosed in the program.

Influencing journalism is a mainstay strategy that involves a wide variety of tactics. The sad fact is that today, with heavy consolidation and links across industries, journalism has suffered far more from these tactics than in Big Tobacco’s zenith.

Key Takeaways on Influencing Journalism

• There are more PR people than journalists, who receive higher pay for their duties.
• The overall journalism strategy involves to get more favorable coverage and downplay or squash any negative coverage. Getting more favorable coverage includes:
  • Staging PR events that push your agenda forward
  • Distributing positive coverage in one media source to other media sources.
  • Using a network of media contacts to get coverage far and wide.
  • Using opinion polling to gauge your effectiveness, and tweaking campaigns from there.
  • Building up the credibility of your front people and their research or other efforts.
  • Pay to have high-profile people write puff pieces about you.
  • Pay journalists themselves through consulting, speaking fees, etc.
• Downplay or squash any negative coverage includes tactics such as:
  • Being aware of science or other negative threats before they’re published so they could be attacked right away or even preemptively.
  • Lawsuits for libel, tortious interference and more, including just the threat of lawsuits.
  • Pulling advertising dollars, including the threat of pulling advertising.
  • Opposition research to smear opponents.
• Relationships among industry executives and news executives might be used to influence media coverage. This becomes even more likely with greater business consolidation.

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Please leave any comments or questions below. Feel free to share it with anyone you’d like.

Links to all published chapters of The Industry Playbook can be found here.

You can also support this project with a tip.

• Paypal
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• Ethereum (or any ERC20 token): 0xfF1EbDf738b9BD28c02Cd9914F4dD7834DCB41dd

This is Chapter 14 of my new book, working title “The Industry Playbook: Corporate Cartels, Corruption and Crimes Against Humanity” that is being published online chapter by chapter.

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It is not just the army of scientists, PR spinsters, politicians and lobbyists. Without an army of lawyers, the industry playbook would be far from complete.

People started suing the cigarette companies as early as the 1950’s. In 1964, over 30 lawsuits had been filed against Big Tobacco accusing them of negligence and other crimes. The majority were dismissed or dropped. Others failed.

One of the main legal strategies was to do all kinds of maneuvers designed to maximize costs for the plaintiffs. Big Tobacco had deep pockets, meanwhile their victims, and the lawyers they worked with, simply couldn’t compete economically.

R.J. Reynolds attorney J. Michael Jordan specified, “The aggressive posture we have taken regarding depositions and discovery in general continues to make these cases extremely burdensome and expensive for plaintiffs’ lawyers…to paraphrase General Patton, the way we won all of these cases was not by spending all of [R.J. Reynolds’] money, but by making the other son of a bitch spend all his.”

It wasn’t until 1988 when a jury awarded Antonio Cipollone $400,000 in damages that we saw the first judgment against any tobacco company. Still, this was later overturned. It was estimated that the firm representing Cipollone had spent close to $10 million and a decade of 3,000 hours per year on this case.

The first actual payment of any damages didn’t occur until 1996 when lung cancer victim Grady Carter was awarded $750,000 in damages from Brown & Williamson. 

That’s almost fifty years of a flawless legal defense! How were they able to do this?

Understand that this was often a use of monopoly power once again. In 1964 all the Big Tobacco executives agreed to let attorney Thomas Austern of Covington & Burling represent them all when they went up against the FTC.

Like there was a united front of PR by working with Hill & Knowlton, there would be a predominately united legal front too. In this case, it was defense against the FTC in regulation of ads, but the same strategy would be used elsewhere. This is summed up by an attorney with Brown & Williamson, J. Kendrick Wells. He said, “direct lawyer involvement is needed in all activities pertaining to smoking and health.”

The principle legal defense used against the people was that they were warned of the dangers with the FTC required warning labels. A law that was meant to help people against Big Tobacco’s excesses, in turn actually helped them out.

“Once the purchaser is informed of a danger, the burden of any injuries incurred from that danger would shift to him,” argued David Hardy, a partner at Shook, Hardy & Bacon. This Kansas City law firm helped shape the overall legal strategy that worked against plaintiffs.

They would also argue that even if cigarettes did cause cancer that they couldn’t prove it did so in any individual case of cancer. Epidemiologically that cigarettes caused cancer was clear. But in individual cases the causality was difficult to pin down.

One helpful strategy included the use of scientific experts, this time extended to the courtroom. Brandt writes, “In 1966, CTR had established, under the guidance of its Committee of Counsel, a ‘special projects’ program to undertake specific research projects and to prepare scientific witnesses for trials and congressional testimony. Special Projects offer the lawyers considerably more control to direct the research and to withhold negative findings. This was overseen by Ed Jacobs of the firm Jacob, Medinger, Finnegan & Hart. As one former R.J. Reynolds employee explained, ‘As soon as Mr. Jacob funded [a scientific study] it was a privileged communication and it couldn’t come into court.’”

This is how science is used to influence not just the body of scientific research and the public, but how law is both made and enforced.

One of the most useful legal defense strategies was to claim client-attorney privilege. By running research papers and other memos through their paid lawyers, Big Tobacco would state that these did not need to be disclosed.

This strategy worked for many decades, but eventually many of these privileged documents were leaked or disclosed. One example came from 1983. A legal memo from a law firm working for Philip Morris quotes researchers Victor DeNoble and Paul Mele in their paper “Nicotine as a Positive Reinforcer in Rats” that “their overall results are extremely unfavorable” and that “research such as this strengthens the adverse case against nicotine as an addictive drug.” Note that this was in a legal memo that eventually came out. There was no earlier record of this damning science showing that the tobacco companies knew about the addictiveness of nicotine while publicly admitting nothing.

Shook, Hardy & Bacon wrote to Philip Morris, “Research engaged in, as well as some possibly under consideration, by Philip Morris, has undesirable and dangerous implications for litigation positions the industry takes in regard to smoking behavior…the performing and publishing of nicotine research clearly seems ill-advised from a litigation point of view.”

The lawyers did not approve of this research. What does law have to do with scientific fact? Sadly, it seems to lead what can and should be investigated and what should not.

Even when laws have been breached, that doesn’t mean the playbook has run out of strategies. In 1994, Congressman Marty Meehan requested the DOJ investigate the tobacco companies for perjury and criminal conduct. Despite five years investigation by a task force the DOJ did not file any charges. Even Judge Kessler, who found the companies guilty in the RICO case, said “perhaps it suggests that additional influences have been brought to bear on what the government’s case is.”

I can’t say for sure why this was, but many people think the law and those involved, especially judges, are beyond reproach. Some of them, maybe even most of them. But that doesn’t mean that all are. This is conjecture, but various backroom deals are absolutely possible in this realm as well.

In Horton v. American Tobacco, the end result had been a hung jury with claims of jury tampering. Seeing everything else these lawyers and executives involved in, would you put that past them?

And just like Big Tobacco was able to steer much legislation in its favor, they would sometimes pull this off in losing legal battles too! In 1997 over 30 US states banded together to sue Big Tobacco for public health costs. In June that year, Attorney General Moore announced a “global settlement” with tobacco industry. They agreed to pay $365.5 billion to the states over the next 25 years.

By November 1998, this master settlement agreement, MSA, was negotiated. The amount was whittled down. Five major tobacco companies agreed to pay $206 billion to 46 states over 25 years. This also included funding a national foundation devoted to public health and some restrictions to advertising.

The bad guys had to pay. Sounds good right? Regarding this settlement, “It’s a terrible deal,” said UCSF health economist Dorothy Rice. She estimated California had $8.7 billion in costs related to cigarette illness but would receive only $500 million per year.

The settlement made it so that the governments would assure Big Tobacco was successful enough to keep making these payments. Brandt writes, “In Illinois, where Philip Morris lost a class-action suit with a judgment of $10.1 billion, more than thirty attorneys general filed an amicus brief warning that bankruptcy to the company would cause dire harm to the states. It was a remarkable turnabout to have the attorneys general defending the industry and its economic well-being…The MSA proved to be one of the industry’s most surprising victories in its long history of combat with the public health forces.”

So here we see a way to not just put Congress in your pockets through lobbying, but the state’s legal departments through good lawyering!

Big Tobacco was amazingly successful in the court room. But the truth did eventually come out. It was in the courtroom where many battles were eventually won. That will be covered in the upcoming chapter Discovery and Litigation. 

Key Takeaways on Legal Defense

• Court cases against Big Tobacco began in the 1950’s. Due to an army of lawyers and a wide range of legal strategies, they didn’t lose a case until 1988, and paid nothing until 1996.
• Making cases difficult, long and expensive for anyone that came against them was the first key legal strategy.
• Like the united PR strategy, a united legal strategy was agreed on by the tobacco companies in many areas.
• A law meant to help people, by putting warning labels of cigarettes themselves, was a key defense strategy in saying that people had been warned.
• The lawyers became directly involved in science itself, directed what studies were done, what was withheld, all of it becoming client-attorney privileged communication and thus not open to the public.
• Despite criminal conduct and a successful RICO case, the DOJ never filed any charges against the tobacco companies. This raises the question of what larger influence they used.
• In at least one court case, there were accusations of jury tampering.
• Even a settlement made between the tobacco companies and the states, often trumpeted as a big win against Big Tobacco, would end up supporting the criminal companies. This made the states reliant on tobacco revenues which stopped further regulation or court battles.

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Please leave any comments or questions below. Feel free to share it with anyone you’d like.

Links to all published chapters of The Industry Playbook can be found here.

You can also support this project with a tip.

• Paypal
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This is Chapter 13 of my new book, working title “The Industry Playbook: Corporate Cartels, Corruption and Crimes Against Humanity” that is being published online chapter by chapter.

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Tobacco is an interesting case as it became a monopoly power before any of our big regulatory agencies were even created.

“As food and drug regulation was created in 1906 and stiffened in 1938, tobacco products were viewed within the Food and Drug Administration as neither food nor drug and, thus, outside the agency’s mandate,” writes Brandt. “The industry successfully avoided any requirements for reporting ingredients or evaluating the safety of the product. There was virtually no governmental oversight of the manufacturing process.”

This is in stark contrast to other industries where a revolving door of regulators moving to and from industry is critically important in benefiting the industry as will be described in other chapters. For Big Tobacco it was a matter of staying free from regulation and they were able to do that for a long time. Defying any kind of regulation is just one form of controlling it.

The Tobacco Institute could take credit for this. As legislation occurred, the industry aimed to make sure that state or local level regulations could not pass. They did so by pre-empting such regulations with federally approved legislation. A Congressional act would require labels to be put on cigarette packages and ads but wouldn’t allow states to pass any other regulation.

“The Federal Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act of 1865 (FCLAA) is a classic demonstration of how efforts to regulate can be turned 180 degrees—given enormous clout in Congress and a successful strategy, implemented with great tactical skill and military precision,” writes Brandt.

Journalist Elizabeth Drow wrote about the FCLAA that “It is an unabashed act to protect private industry from government regulation.”

In 1992, the EPA declared that tobacco smoke is a Class A human carcinogen. This action did not carry any policy change though.

In August of 1996, FDA Commissioner David Kessler announced they’d regulate nicotine-containing tobacco products as medical devices and restrict youth access and advertising. They asserted that tobacco did fall under its jurisdiction. “Whatever the challenges, the industry cannot be left to peacefully reap billions of dollars in profits, totally unrepentant, and without thought to the pain caused in the process. For that remains its intent,” said Kessler.

However, the industry immediately sued to stop this. And they did. The courts taking a long time through motions and appeals, it was not until March of 2000, that the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the FDA did not have jurisdiction to regulate tobacco.

But that wasn’t the end of the fight either. Ultimately, the FDA was successful, with the passage of the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act by Congress in 2009. This granted the FDA regulatory power over tobacco.

Big Tobacco now pays for a significant portion of the FDA’s budget for this regulation. In 2019, tobacco user fees, paid by manufacturers and importers, made up $666 million of the $3.15 billion total budget. That means that Big Tobacco pays roughly a quarter of the FDA’s budget.

Key Takeaways on Controlling Regulation

• Tobacco products were around before any regulatory agency that should oversee them was. With this they were sort of grandfathered in to not being regulated.
• Big Tobacco was able to stop regulation at a state or local level by pre-empting any such regulation with passage of a federal act that did nothing more than label cigarettes. 
• The FDA sought to regulate tobacco in 1996. Due to Big Tobacco fighting it, it didn’t come to pass until 2009, thirteen years later. Big Tobacco pays approximately one quarter of the FDA’s total budget.

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Please leave any comments or questions below. Feel free to share it with anyone you’d like.

Links to all published chapters of The Industry Playbook can be found here.

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This is Chapter 12 of my new book, working title “The Industry Playbook: Corporate Cartels, Corruption and Crimes Against Humanity” that is being published online chapter by chapter.

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Public relations are not just about the public but about professionals. Seeing as politicians have influence over laws that could either benefit or cripple industry aims, a huge part of the playbook is to influence the politicians and thus, the laws they create.

In the USA, there are three branches of government, the executive, legislative and judicial. These checks and balances were meant to keep government honest. In this chapter most of the focus is on the legislative branch, however influence is not exclusive to that branch.

Back around the turn of the 20^th century, well before the dangers of cigarettes were known, there was discussion of laws prohibiting sales of tobacco. Brandt writes, “As dozens of states debated such laws [prohibiting sales of cigarettes], rumors flew that Tobacco Trust representatives were liberally dispensing bribes among state legislators to fight the restrictions.”

It is one of the monopoly or cartel powers, to be able to influence those who make the laws.

There are illegal bribes and then there are legal bribes. Big Tobacco were some of the biggest spenders when it came to political campaigns, something that is legal to do.

Most of the spending went to politicians of the south where tobacco was grown. As such 80% of funding went to Republican candidates.

This led to statements such as this among politicians. “The Surgeon General is entitled to draw his own conclusions,” said Senator Sam J. Evans, Jr. in 1965. “He is treading on questionable ground, however, when he begins to impose these opinions on the public, without acknowledging the fact that this matter is in controversy among scientists.” This was the PR line of the tobacco companies used inside the Senate.

In 1965, the Federal Trade Commission required a label on packages saying “Caution: cigarette smoking is dangerous to health and may cause death from cancer and other diseases.” This was a result of the passage of the Federal Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act of 1965.

Brandt writes, “[T]he industry sought legislation that would explicitly preempt any state and local regulations about labeling and advertising in favor of a congressional mandated—and heavily lobbied—federal act…The legislation was aggressively regulatory in this one respect: it clipped the wings of the FTC, which was legally banned from taking regulatory actions against tobacco for four years.”

Despite the warning, passage of this act was actually in Big Tobacco’s favor. This is because with the warning, they would argue in court repeatedly, and successfully for decades, that people were made aware of the dangers and thus the companies were not responsible. This warning label would also help them in tort litigation over the coming decades, as the consumers were now warned of the dangers.

Not every politician is influenced by money, though this unfortunately seems to be a minority. Before the passage of the act, Congressman John Blatnik and seven other congressmen and senators wrote to President Johnson asking him to veto the bill saying it “protects only the cigarette industry.”

Behind most of this was the Tobacco Institute. Public Relations Journal described the Institute as one of the “most formidable public relations/lobbying machines in history.”

Former state legislator Ron Faucheux said, “In the modern world, few major issues are merely lobbied anymore. Most of them are now managed, using a triad of public relations, grassroots mobilization and lobbyists.”  Because of these strategies we would see examples of favorable legislation being enacted over and over again in the following years.

In 1966, The Fair Labeling and Packaging Act was passed. It explicitly did not cover tobacco thanks to the Tobacco Institute’s lobbying.

The “Federal Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act marks one of American history’s most impressive examples of the power of special interests to shape congressional action,” wrote Brandt. “The industry increasingly utilized legitimate antitobacco legislation as a ‘vehicle’ for inserting preemptive clauses. Given that such bills often originated with public health advocates and their allies, the addition of preemption clauses sometimes had the effect of dividing antitobacco coalitions, as they found themselves forced to decide whether to accept valuable public health interventions at the cost of conceding preemption of local controls.”

In 1969, The Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act passed, mandating the warning on cigarette packages read, “Warning: The Surgeon General Has Determined That Cigarette Smoking Is Dangerous To Your Health.” Note that this did not change much of anything.

In 1970, The Controlled Substances Act was passed. It explicitly did not cover tobacco thanks to Tobacco’s lobbying efforts.

In 1972, The Consumer Product Safety Act was passed. Guess what products it didn’t cover once again? This led the Wall Street Journal to say that the Tobacco Institute had shown its power in “turning a series of imminent disasters into near victories.”

In 1974, Senator Frank Moss of Utah submitted a petition to Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) to ban high-tar cigarettes. The next year in October of 1975, Congress passed HR 644, the CPSC Amendments Bill. This specifically excluded tobacco products from the jurisdiction of the CPSC.

In 1981, the FTC conceded that it’s warning labels on ads and packages were ineffective. Yet three years later, Congress passed the Comprehensive Smoking Prevention Education Act. A part of the bill changed the cigarette package labels to four in rotation, still active today.

Senator John McCain led a bill in 1998 to curtail Big Tobacco. As a result, they spent $40 million on radio and television ads within a two-month period talking about how the bill would increase taxes. One such ad stated, “Washington wants to raise the price of cigarettes so high there’ll be a black market in cigarettes with unregulated access to kids.”

In addition, tobacco lobbyists loaded it up with amendments that had nothing to do with tobacco. Then they opposed it on the grounds that it is was no longer a tobacco bill. This was another tactic in the political game. The bill was killed.

Understand that legislation could have been passed in these years that actually would have affected Big Tobacco’s impact on human health. But since they had the money to fund lobbyists, astroturfers, front organizations and the politicians themselves, they would be able to steer the laws in their favor.

Looking at the results of this legislation we can confidently say that Congress was effectively bought on the subject of tobacco for decades.

Yet the battleground wasn’t only there. It also existed in the states.

In 1973 we saw campaigning by a real grassroots organization Arizonans Concerned About Smoking, founded by Betty Carnes. This led to Arizona being the first state within the USA to pass a law restricting smoking in public places.

In 1975, Minnesota passed the Clean Indoor Air Act, banning smoking in most public places unless specifically allowed. 

Big Tobacco aimed to curtail these laws too. For example, in 1978, they spent $6.5 million to kill a referendum in California, Proposition 5, which aimed at statewide restrictions on smoking. This proposition was effectively defeated.

Still, in this case with the tide of public opinion turning especially regarding secondhand smoke, by

1981, thirty-six states had some form of restriction on smoking in public.

The deceptive tactics used only grew over time. In 1994, Philip Morris hired PR agency Dolphin, who setup a front group called “Californians for Statewide Smoking Restrictions.” Along with the National Smokers Alliance, they were able to gather enough signatures to put Proposition 188 on the ballot. Billboards promoted “Yes on 188—Tough Statewide Smoking Restrictions—The Right Choice.”

The facts were that this referendum would aid Big Tobacco, despite the anti-tobacco messaging they advertised it with. It would have undermined 270 local restrictions and state-wide smoke free work laws. The funding and the ploy came to light and this referendum was not passed by the public.

Total lobbying has decline in recent years, but it hasn’t gone away. “In 1998, the tobacco industry spent a total of almost $73 million on federal lobbying and employed over 200 lobbyists who advocated on its behalf. In 2014, total lobbying expenditures from the industry had dropped to around $22.2 million, with fewer lobbyists as well,” writes Alex Lazar of the Center for Responsive Politics.

Key Takeaways on Lobbying and Buying Politicians

• There are illegal bribes and legal bribes. Contributing to the campaigns of politicians is an effective way to influence how politicians will vote. Most funding went to Republicans, due to tobacco being grown in red states and their affinity for bigger businesses and less government.
• If we look at the track record it is clear that Big Tobacco was effectively ably to buy Congress on the topic of tobacco for decades.
• Any legislation that was passed did not cover tobacco, or when it did, was actually in favor of the tobacco companies.
• This came despite people and other legislators aiming to constrain the power of the tobacco companies. Bills were altered or amended. Bills were stuff full of other things.
• Any truly detrimental legislation would have the full power of the playbook thrown against it. Not just lobbying, but astroturf, front organizations, calling in favors, advertising, PR campaigns, smears and more.
• The biggest fights happened on the Federal level. But these fights also took place on the state and local levels too.
• Big Tobacco and their PR firm allies were not above deception such as the case of Proposition 188 in California shows. This pro-tobacco bill advertised anti-tobacco messaging to attempt to sway people to mistakenly vote for it.
• While the power of Big Tobacco has gone in recent year they still are active in the lobbying game today.

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This is Chapter 11 of my new book, working title “The Industry Playbook: Corporate Cartels, Corruption and Crimes Against Humanity” that is being published online chapter by chapter.

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Nowadays, there over 14 million documents from tobacco companies online. Just one place where they can be found is the UCSF website, along with documents from other industries.

It could take many lifetimes to go through all this. And this is more than enough evidence to prove everything that is shared in this report.

But the facts are likely even worse than what is proven here because of the topic of this chapter.

The Verdict is In, summarizes this as such. “Defendants attempted to and, at times, did prevent/stop ongoing research, hide existing research, and destroy sensitive documents in order to protect their public positions on smoking and health, avoid or limit liability for smoking and health related claims in litigation, and prevent regulatory limitations on the cigarette industry.”

Judge Fitzpatrick ruled that Philip Morris had engaged “in an egregious attempt to hide information.’” This included not just having lawyers review industry materials for the very purpose of claiming privilege, but the destruction of documents as well.

We can see a couple of examples from other companies. In the 1960’s R.J. Reynolds established a research facility nicknamed the Mouse House to do research on the health effects of smoking.

In 1970, Philip Morris’ president complained to R.J. Reynolds about this work. So R.J. Reynold’s closed the Mouse House, fired all 26 scientists working there, and destroyed all the research. They didn’t want it to possibly get out.

Another document from Thomas Osdene, Philip Morris’ director of research, stated, “Ship all documents to Cologne…Keep in Cologne. OK to phone and telex (these will be destroyed)…We will monitor in person every 2-3 months. If important letters have to be sent please send to home—I will act on them and destroy.”

Ironically there was documentation of the destroying of documentation.

Internal correspondence from British American Tobacco (BAT) showed just how far this destruction of evidence went. It became policy! “[M]embers of the BAT Group, in furtherance of the Policy’s purposes, destroyed documents, routed them from one country or BAT facility to another, erased a useful litigation database as well as the fact that the documents it contained had ever existed as soon as the pre-existing judicial hold was lifted, and constantly exhorted their many employees to avoid putting anything in writing. All these activities were taken for one overriding purpose — to prevent disclosure of evidence in litigation.”

Here’s an example of one of their memos from June 1992, regarding another front group Healthy Buildings International (HBI).

“Please also note, more importantly, that this [is] an extremely sensitive document! HBI are [sic] currently under a considerable amount of investigation in the US about their connections with the industry. All references to companies in the quote has [sic] therefore been removed. Please do not copy or circulate this in any way and please destroy this fax cover sheet after reading! I know this sounds a little like James Bond, but this is an extremely serious issue for HBI.”

So yes, we have tons of evidence. But the facts are we are likely missing the worst of the worst!

Just think about it for a moment. If they’re not capturing information in the first place, or go on to destroy any and all records, it will very often be the most incriminating stuff.

What are the things you don’t dare to put on paper, but only discuss behind closed doors?

Furthermore, if your policy involves destroying evidence, you know you’re doing immoral or illegal things. And you’re specifically seeking to cover it up.

What that means is as bad as we know Big Tobacco acted, it is likely even worse.

 Key Takeaways on Destroying Evidence

• Although there is plenty of damning evidence of what Big Tobacco did, the most damning of all evidence was likely destroyed never to see the light of day.
• Hiding and destroying research and evidence was actually the policy of many of the companies.
• If your policy involves destroying evidence, you know you’re doing immoral or illegal things. Is the cover up worse than the original crime?
• The fact that so much evidence has come out in court cases against Big Tobacco and other industries means that the amount of evidence destroyed by others has likely gone up. Or the most sensitive matters are discussed without any record at all ever existing. Learning from this history would lead to more conspiring behind closed doors off the record. 

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This topic is not often mentioned, yet a critically important aspect of a successful PR campaign. If you want to steer the public or professionals towards your agenda, how do you do it? You can’t simply say we want to make more profit so you should listen to us. No one would embrace your agenda if you did that.

Instead, you must hook into genuine values that people already hold. The stronger the values the better. This is key for good PR to work.

Months ago, I mentioned the crimes of Big Tobacco in an email I sent out to subscribers, and I received this reply from Michael:

“Thanks for this. While I understand the opinion, I’m a big believer in the Constitution and personal responsibility. Poor diet’s impact I’d say is over a billion [deaths per year]. The same could be said about unhealthy food, it’s a person’s free choice. Can’t blame McDonald’s if you’re obese and diabetic.”

First of all, I am big on personal responsibility too. I largely agree with this.

But these are exactly the values that Big Tobacco, not to mention other industries such as fast food, use against us. It’s called spin for a reason.

Big Tobacco successfully avoided legislation and continually won court cases based on using this idea of individual responsibility. As it fits in the American individualistic view, it was especially useful.

Brandt writes about this in the book. “Widely shared libertarian attitudes about both the role of the state and the behavior of individuals constrained the future of campaigns against tobacco. The American individualist credo, ‘It’s my body and I’ll do as a I please,” cast a net over further antismoking initiatives…The tobacco companies and the Tobacco Institute had aggressively and effectively presented the case for smoking as a voluntary risk…The industry and its political allies frequently invoked Big Brother or the Prohibition debacle to point out how paternalistic government interventions offended the basic American values of independence, autonomy, and the right to take risks. Dictating other people’s behavior, even in the name of health, was portrayed as un-American.”

Big Brother is absolutely something to be worried about. Prohibition was a spectacular failure. Independence is a great thing. I agree with all of these. And I certainly wish we enforced the Constitution much more than we do these days.

Yet, understand that these are not the full picture. The truth is messier. These same exact values can be twisted. They are spun in order to abdicate any responsibility from the companies involved.

Again, I am in total favor of people being personally responsible. Too few people become radically self-responsible. And we must talk about corporate responsibility too. Corporations used to have a social responsibility, not just a fiduciary one (that’s the responsibility to make as much profit as possible for their stakeholders).

Corporations have lots of benefits, in being treated as persons, so why not an equal playing field of responsibilities too? Responsibilities should actually be more important to big business, not less, because of the outsized power they have as compared to individuals.

Furthermore, we can’t think of free choice as an all-or-nothing thing. There are shades of grey involved. Many studies have shown just how swayable our thoughts and feelings are. One that sticks out in my mind is covered in Brian Wansink’s Mindless Eating. Giving a free bottle of wine to restaurant guests altered their outlook and behavior. If the label said California (a place known for good wine), compared to North Dakota (not at all known for wine), the differences were stark. With the California wine people stayed longer, tipped bigger and rated enjoyment of their food higher. And they said the wine had nothing to do with it.

I’m not saying we’re stimulus-response automatons. But neither is free choice absolute. There are shades of gray in all things. This is a large function of why propaganda, advertising and public relations exist. So much money is spent in these areas because they work.

So our question can transform a bit more into reflecting how much is free will? How much is choice overtly or covertly swayed?

How much is it an individual’s free choice when we’re talking about an underage child taking up smoking because of advertising specifically pointed at them? Take into consideration that R.J. Reynolds knew that Joe Camel targeted youths, and that’s just one example of many.

Is the adult still capable of free choice if they became addicted as a teenager when their brain is still developing?

Furthermore, how much is free choice when Big Tobacco claimed cigarettes were not addictive when they were specifically and purposefully engineering the cigarettes to be more addictive?

Where is the responsibility behind what a May 1994, New York Times piece shared featuring leaked documents from Merrell Williams? This included “the executives of the…Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation chose to remain silent, to keep their research results secret, to stop work on a safer cigarette and to pursue a legal and public relations strategy of admitting nothing.”

Such actions directly affect your autonomy because information is not only withheld but disinformation purposefully spread. How can you make a free choice, choose to smoke with informed consent, when the information necessary to do so is withheld from you and your perspective distorted?

 “It is ironic that the impact of smoking on nonsmokers, rather than on smokers themselves, is what finally transformed the regulation and cultural perception of the cigarette,” writes Brandt. Why was it this that changed everything? Because this had to do with the same values of liberty and autonomy.

In 1986, a National Academy of Sciences report showed that children of smokers were twice as likely to suffer from respiratory infections, pneumonia, and bronchitis as children of non-smokers. This report estimates that ETS caused between 2,500 and 8,400 lung cancer deaths per year.

In 1974, Surgeon General Jesse Steinfeld said, “Nonsmokers have as much right to clean air and wholesome air as smokers have to their so-called right to smoke, which I would redefine as a ‘right to pollute.’…It is time that we interpret the Bill of Rights for the Nonsmoker as well as the smoker.”

You’d be hard-pressed to believe that this was free choice and personal responsibility of the children. But then again, that was argued for! In 1996, Charles Harper, the CEO of R.J. Reynolds, stated, “If children don’t like to be in a smoky room, they’ll leave.”

You can say it’s the parent’s responsibility. Again, I agree in part, but what if that parent became a smoker because their parents before them were addicted? And that parent didn’t think it was important to quit because Big Tobacco lied about the dangers, the addictiveness, and grasped their values of independence, coolness, and manliness with the Marlboro man.

Upon careful reflection, values most often cut both ways. And it is important to recognize that rights go hand in hand with responsibilities. This is true, or at least ought to be, for individuals as well as companies.

Be aware of when industry uses your closely held values to manipulate you into believing and acting on their bidding. John Stauber and Sheldon Ramptom wrote in Toxic Sludge is Good For You!, “If the PR industry were only based on ‘lies and damn lies,’ it might be easier to see through its deceptions. But PR’s cunning half-truths and ‘spins’ appeal to us and work on us because they come from us, from the constant plumbing of the public mind by surveys, opinion polls, focus groups, and information gathered as we apply for bank loans, purchase goods with credit cards, place birth announcements in newspapers, vote and make phone calls. Every day we as individuals are leaving behind the electronic equivalent of fingerprints and DNA samples that marketing and PR firms lift from the commercial landscape, and refine for their use in their efforts to manipulate our minds.”

And keep in mind that this was all before social media even existed! This is the art of spin.

Key Takeaways on Weaponization of Values

• When it comes to PR, outright lies aren’t nearly as effective as half-truths spun in a way to hook onto values you hold near and dear.
• The common industry line is to place the blame on the individual, while abdicating any real responsibility for the companies involved. Notice where the blame is placed.
• Corporations have lots of rights legally, they ought to have greater responsibilities too. This is especially the case when you acknowledge they have outsized power as compared to individual people.
• Free choice nor stimulus-response are black and white. We must see these with shades of grey to properly navigate the world.

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This is Chapter 9 of my new book, working title “The Industry Playbook: Corporate Cartels, Corruption and Crimes Against Humanity” that is being published online chapter by chapter.

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This chapter is different than most. It covers an area I’ve never really seen covered in discussions of the industry playbook. Yes, it is well known that science can and will bend the knee to industry. But how does it happen? I’m guessing there are some sociopaths in science that are there just for power and money. But these can’t be the majority. Not by a long shot.

People are great at rationalizing their behaviors. Tobacco executives didn’t think of what they were doing as evil. No tobacco friendly research scientist thought that they were killing people. The truth was that their PR was not just external but internal. At least early on, they honestly convinced themselves that there was no link between health and smoking.

This chapter explores what it means to have other rigidly held beliefs that would stop someone from seeing such a link because of underlying assumptions. That some “fact” was assumed true regardless of actual validity and independent of observation.

We can see this ideological positioning clearly in an early survey. In 1955, a survey of doctors found that for heavy smokers only 31% agreed with “Heavy smoking may lead to lung cancer.” For non-smokers, more than 65% agreed with this statement.

Those that smoked didn’t want to believe it was bad for them because they’d have to own up to their behavior. This would unconsciously change how they viewed evidence, whose side they would take, which arguments they would find more appealing. This is human nature, and it affects authority figures like doctors and scientists just as well as laymen. Perhaps even more so because of their believing in the superiority of their rationality!

Evarts Graham wrote in 1954, “it has not been universally accepted and there are still many cigarette addicts among the medical profession who demand absolute proof…The obstinacy of many of them in refusing to accept the existing evidence compels me to conclude that it is their own addiction to this drug habit which blinds them. They have eyes to see but they see not because of their unwillingness or inability to give up smoking…I have never encountered any non-smoker who makes light of the evidence or is skeptical of the association between excessive smoking and lung cancer.”

In essence, this position boiled down to “I smoke, therefore it can’t be harmful.”

As the scientific evidence of dangers began to mount, there were opponents. Two of these were Joseph Berkson, head of Biometry and Medical Statistics of the Mayo Clinic and Sir Ronald Fisher, leading biometrician and geneticist at University College London and Cambridge University. These two were skeptics of the tobacco-cancer link.

Brandt writes, “While Fisher and Berkson raised important questions, their critiques were no match for the overwhelming evidence of repeated studies. Nonethelesss, the industry broadcast and rebroadcast these attacks and ultimately hired both Fisher and Berkson as paid consultants. Although both men identified themselves as ‘independent’ skeptics, they brought both a priori assumptions and, later, conflicts of interest to their unrelenting critiques.”

These men didn’t believe that smoking could cause cancer. They believed this because they had other beliefs about health and how the world worked, that essentially didn’t give room for this possibility. Big Tobacco found willing allies here. And that relationship only strengthened when money began to flow towards it.

This reminds me of Upton Sinclair saying, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

Of course, this wasn’t everyone. Many scientists started off skeptical of the link. But based on the mounting evidence some changed their positions. Some of these scientists quit smoking in light of the evidence. This is how science ideally works, if you’re not paid to look the other way or wrapped up in ideology.

We’ll now turn to Dr. Clarence Cook Little who was elected to head the Scientific Advisory Board of the TIRC.

“Little’s personal commitments and a priori assumptions about cancer causality made him the ideal proponent of the industry’s singular goal of maintaining a ‘controversy’ regarding smoking and health.,” writes Brandt. “His scientific beliefs about cancer corresponded directly to his belief in the importance of heredity for understanding the causes of disease. From his earliest scientific training, Little had been deeply committed to hereditarian notions of cancer and society. In 1936, as president of the American Birth Control League, he decried the ‘ill-advised and unsound policies of economic relief employed in this country,’ which he maintained would only lead to the further propagation of the unfit, and he offered gratitude to ‘the gentlemen who rule Italy, Japan, and Germany for demonstrating that a program of stimulating population is a program of war.” Little’s eugenic science was closely tied to his politics. ‘Our political and sociological premise in America is based on the false premise that all persons are born free and equal. This is an absolute absurdity,’ he wrote in 1936. ‘We must segregate men according to their standing.’ Little also became a founding director of the National Society for the Legalization of Euthanasia and the Race Betterment Congress. He vigorously defended compulsory sterilization, urging the expansion of legislation mandating such policies.”

While few people call themselves eugenicists today, these ideas have only slightly changed among many scientists. For many decades all health was attributed to genetics. The Human Genome Project promised to end all disease, and we’re still waiting. That genetics would solve all health problems is always on the horizon, even now using CRISPR, machine learning, gene therapies and more.

These assumptions about what causes disease and what does not, are very helpful to any industry that wants to point the blame away from their cancer and other disease-causing products.

Brandt continues, “Given Little’s personal rigidities and conceit, no epidemiological findings could possibly unsettle such deeply held convictions…Once Little became the scientific director of the TIRC, he demonstrated a complete unwillingness to be swayed from the positions he took in 1954. No new evidence ever convinced him of the relationship of smoking to disease. Little had no respect for clinical and field observations. He brought these unbending views to his work for the industry and structured its research program accordingly.”

Understand what this means. No amount of evidence would ever convince Little. Why? Because it wasn’t just about cigarettes causing cancer. For that to be admitted, his entire worldview would have to shift. His beliefs about race, economics, politics, heredity, health and more would all have to significantly change for him to see that cigarettes caused cancer. Therefore, it was all of these other things that ultimately held that single belief in place. It was the foundation on which his world view was built.

The ideal scientist is one who is dispassionately observing facts and brings no belief to the table to simply observe what is. But scientists are human. And deeply held beliefs, and a priori assumptions, are not always easy to observe.

Brandt concludes, “Was Little disingenuous in his skepticism? Did he dissemble on behalf of his employer? The evidence on this question remains indeterminate. What we do know is that Little, by self-proclamation deeply committed to science and rationality, lost all capacity to evaluate his own biases as he assessed the question. Fiercely independent throughout his career, he failed to comprehend the corrosive social and psychological mechanisms of conflicts of interest. Colleagues and friends came to question his judgment and rectitude: he had sold his science to industry.”

Clarence Little said as late as 1969, “There is no demonstrated causal relationship between smoking or any disease. The gaps in knowledge are so great that those who dogmatically assert otherwise – whether they state that there is or is not such a causal relationship – are premature in judgment. If anything, the pure biological evidence is pointing away from, not toward, the causal hypothesis.” He retired from the Scientific Advisory Board that year. A smoker himself, he died in 1971 of a heart attack.

Yes, there are scientists that have their price. But more often than not, the best industry strategy is finding ideological allies, those that already believe what you want believed for any other reason.

And while we focused on scientists here, ideology is certainly not exclusive to them. Journalists, politicians, lawyers, regulators and more can all become allied in the same way.

Key Takeaways on Ideological Allies

• The ideal of science is to objectively look at the data and form beliefs solely based on that. Many people confuse this ideal with what happens in scientific reality.
• Science in practice is done by human beings which bring a priori assumptions, beliefs and values to their experiments and their viewing of data. This can and does skew opinions. Like with Dr. Little, no evidence of smoking causing cancer could ever shift his worldview of cancer being solely hereditary.
• For industry it is best to find those people that have underlying assumptions about what causes disease and what does not that are friendly to your products and position. You don’t need to convince them, for one reason or another they’re already convinced.
• In addition to ideological positions, financial conflicts of interest can further sway scientists and other allies. Often one step leads to the next.

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Links to all published chapters of The Industry Playbook can be found here.

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This is Chapter 8 of my new book, working title “The Industry Playbook: Corporate Cartels, Corruption and Crimes Against Humanity” that is being published online chapter by chapter.

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By infiltrating existing institutions, Big Tobacco was able to spread its message through them. In some cases, this involved borrowing the credibility and authority of such places. Or at the very least Big Tobacco would aim to slow down institutions from taking harsher positions against them.

Let’s start with the American Medical Association (AMA). As we’ve already seen, Big Tobacco advertised heavily within the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). Yes, the advertisements were there to influence the doctors and scientists that read the journal. But even more important was to establish the financial relationship between Big Tobacco and the AMA. This wasn’t just about advertising but gaining influence over editorial content.

Morris Fishbein singlehandedly led the AMA for many years. Robert N. Proctor, professor at Stanford, wrote about such connections. “Dr Morris Fishbein of Chicago was another prominent defender of the industry. As iron‐fisted editor of JAMA, Fishbein helped stave off efforts to have the journal refuse tobacco ads and, in the mid 1950s, received about $100000 from Lorillard to write industry‐friendly articles on smoking and health. Fishbein also helped place ads for Kent cigarettes in medical magazines…the man should also be remembered as author of a 1954 review of tobacco and health hazards, contracted by Doubleday with financial backing from Lorillard. The makers of Kent cigarettes—with its ‘micronite’ asbestos filter—paid Fishbein tens of thousands of dollars to write [a] book.”

It was this cozy relationship that eventually forced Fishbein out. “Fishbein was actually booted from his position as JAMA editor a year after his editorial, partly for his refusal to limit cigarette ads in the pages of JAMA…In 1953 JAMA’s new editors announced that they would no longer publish tobacco ads of any kind, by which time Fishbein was receiving tens of thousands of dollars per year to front for the industry.”

Through the revolving door Fishbein went. In the 60’s and 70’s he continued to work for Lorillard.  

That shows what one man, holding sway over one large institution can do. And even though they stopped advertising, that doesn’t mean the AMA came out strong against tobacco. Even as late at 1965, one year after the Surgeon General’s report, the AMA resisted taking a position against smoking.

CEO of the AMA, F.J.L. Blasingame stated, “it is our opinion that the answer that will do most to protect the public health lies not in labeling…but in research.” The phrase “more research is needed” was the exact PR message of Big Tobacco.

They finally took a stand, launching a war against smoking, in 1972. Not exactly on the forefront of the biggest medical killer out there from the most powerful medical organization, at the time, in the world.

Part of the reason that institutional infiltration worked had to do with the size of such organizations. Brandt writes, “The fight for tobacco control ordinances demonstrated the possibilities of grassroots public health advocacy. Single-issue advocacy groups were in a far better position to take up the fight than the traditional voluntary health organizations like the American Cancer Society and the American Heart Association. The latter had complex constituencies and philanthropic and educational missions that led to an inherent conservatism; they sought to avoid political controversy that could alienate not only smokers, but donors from tobacco-growing states. The new organizations reveled in controversy, deliberately seeking media attention to sustain their cause.”

For instance, in 1957, scientists from American Cancer Society, American Heart Association, National Cancer Institute, and the National Heart Institute looked at the data and concluded: “The sum total of scientific evidence establishes beyond reasonable doubt that cigarette smoking is a causative factor in the rapidly increasing incidence of human epidermoid carcinoma of the lung…The evidence of a cause-effect relationship is adequate for considering the initiation of public health measures.”

But these scientific positions didn’t always translate into policy, based on the controversy, constituency and funding involved. (In a bit of irony, the American Heart Association would hire Hill & Knowlton in 2004 and received tremendous backlash for the PR firm’s role in tobacco which causes heart disease.)

Some of the institutional outreach was more defense than offense, seeking to do damage control and soften anti-tobacco positions. In 1963, Little and the TIRC attempted to shape the Surgeon General’s Advisory Committee through the committee’s medical coordinator, Peter Hamill. They were ultimately unsuccessful in doing this, but they tried.

I think the World Health Organization (WHO) provides one of the best examples of institutional infiltration. In 1995, the World Health Assembly, WHO’s governing body, began looking into the possibility of an international treaty on tobacco control. In May of 1996, the World Health Assembly unanimously passed a resolution for the director-general of the WHO to develop a framework convention, a type of multilateral treaty, for tobacco control.

And finally, in May 2003, the 192 member nations of the WHO unanimously adopt the FCTC (Framework Convention of Tobacco Control), which was the WHO’s first ever multilateral treaty. More on the effects of that later.

When I was doing research on the history of the WHO, I found a document called Tobacco Company Strategies to Undermine Tobacco Control Activities at the World Health Organization.

This was put together internally at the WHO by the Committee of Experts on Tobacco Industry Documents in July 2000.

This 260-page report is extremely revealing, sharing how the WHO was infiltrated and influenced by Big Tobacco. Here are just a few quotes from inside:

• “Evidence from tobacco industry documents reveals that tobacco companies have operated for many years with the deliberate purpose of subverting the efforts of the World Health Organization (WHO) to control tobacco use. The attempted subversion has been elaborate, well financed, sophisticated, and usually invisible.”
• “In one of their most significant strategies for influencing WHO’s tobacco control activities, tobacco companies developed and maintained relationships with current or former WHO staff, consultants and advisors. In some cases, tobacco companies hired or offered future employment to former WHO or UN officials in order to indirectly gain valuable contacts within these organizations that might assist in its goal of influencing WHO activities. Of greatest concern, tobacco companies have, in some cases, had their own consultants in positions at WHO, paying them to serve the goals of tobacco companies while working for WHO. Some of these cases raise serious questions about whether the integrity of WHO decision making has been compromised.”
• “In several cases, tobacco companies have attempted to undermine WHO tobacco control activities by putting pressure on relevant WHO budgets. Tobacco companies have also used their resources to gain favor or particular outcomes by making well placed contributions.”
• “Documents in this study illustrate that tobacco companies utilized a number of outside organizations to lobby against and influence tobacco control activities at WHO including trade unions, tobacco company created front groups and tobacco companies’ own affiliated food companies.”
• “Much of the Boca Raton Action Plan [created at a secretive Big Tobacco meeting] involved the creation or manipulation of seemingly independent organizations with strong tobacco company ties. The documents show that some of these organizations such as LIBERTAD, the New York Society for International Affairs, the America-European Community Association and the Institute for International Health and Development, were used successfully to gain access to dozens of national and world leaders, health ministers, WHO and other United Nations agency delegates.”

Once again, propaganda and influence are actually less about influencing the public directly but instead through all manner of professionals. This includes influencing organizations to make use of their authority ideally to advance your agenda. If that doesn’t work then seeking out to undermine their authority instead.

By necessity, this complicates matters significantly. Yet it is exactly a group like Big Tobacco, who has the necessary money and people, that is able to afford to play this game. The complicated web they weave involves front organizations, consultants, donations and so much more involved.

Because this is more complicated most people are not able to see it happening. The WHO had to look deep at themselves in this area to come to terms with the specifics of how they were infiltrated. That’s a rare thing! (Unfortunately, these same exact tactics are used even more successfully by other industries with the WHO and other large organizations.)

These same tactics of infiltrating institutions and setting up front groups are still being used to this day. A 2020 article by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism shows how Phillip Morris, British American Tobacco and others were able to use front groups to ultimately influence NHS and Public Health England.

A picture is worth a thousand words. Here you see the combination of advocacy front groups being used to infiltrate bigger and more powerful scientific and public health institutions. Webs of influence are a main method of the playbook.

Key Takeaways on Infiltrating Institutions

• Advertising, whether in journals, on TV, or elsewhere is a useful step in gaining some influence over editorial content.
• The largest and most powerful medical association, the AMA, was firmly under the financial influence of Big Tobacco for decades. They promoted cigarettes, and even when that stopped, refused to stand against them, echoing the PR line of Big Tobacco. They only came out against smoking in 1972, hardly at the forefront of the science.
• Even when large organizations took scientific stands, it often didn’t translate into policy due to complex reasons of constituencies, politics, and influence.
• Big Tobacco attempted to influence the Surgeon General’s committee through Peter Hamill. While this attempt was unsuccessful, it was just one of many such attempts. 
• The FDA tried hard to put tobacco under its jurisdiction in 1996, but Big Tobacco was able to delay this regulation until 2007.
• A report from the WHO looked at how they were infiltrated and subverted by Big Tobacco including by paying consultants, advisors and other officials that worked for or with the WHO, by the use of political pressure, lobbying and more.
• The Boca Raton Action Plan, created at a secretive Big Tobacco meeting, relied primarily on using various advocacy front groups to help influence and infiltrate institutions. These complicated “webs of influence” are an industry playbook mainstay.

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Please leave any comments or questions below. Feel free to share it with anyone you’d like.

Links to all published chapters of The Industry Playbook can be found here.

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