Cigarette Company Documents Outline Strategy to Derail Global Tobacco Treaty

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Cigarette Company Documents Outline Strategy to Derail Global Tobacco Treaty

 

 

By Ben Coates

 

 

 

WASHINGTON, May 16, 2003 -- With the first global treaty to regulate tobacco set

to be debated next week, newly released internal company records reveal a key

tobacco industry player’s sophisticated campaign against the proposed accord.

British American Tobacco, the world's second largest tobacco company with 2002

revenue of about $40 billion, considered a two-pronged strategy: projecting a

public image of corporate social responsibility while simultaneously working to

prevent the enactment of a tough worldwide treaty, the documents show.

 

The several hundred pages of documents, which came from the Minnesota Tobacco

Document Depository, a collection of company records established as a result of

the state of Minnesota’s lawsuit against tobacco companies, were sent to the

depository in February and April 2003 and are dated between 1999 and 2001.

 

During this period, BAT was developing and implementing a strategy to confront a

treaty sponsored by the World Health Organization. Work on the proposed

Framework Convention on Tobacco Control began four years ago. The World Health

Assembly, which oversees WHO, is set to consider the final draft during its

meeting beginning May 19.

 

The convention—or treaty— aims to reduce smoking worldwide. It requires

countries to ban all tobacco advertising (where constitutionally possible),

demand large health advisory warnings that cover at least 30 percent of

principal display areas, and prohibit deceptive product descriptions, possibly

including such terms as “light” or “low tar.” The convention, which is the first

negotiated under the auspices of the WHO, also sets forth a series of

recommendations, including measures to limit second-hand smoke exposure, raise

tobacco taxes, eliminate tobacco smuggling and prohibit underage smoking. If

adopted by the World Health Assembly, the treaty would enter into force once 40

nations have ratified it.

 

The United States has indicated that it will not sign the treaty unless a clause

is added allowing it to take ‘reservations’ (which would allow individual

countries to opt out of clauses they found objectionable), angering critics who

claim that such an action would benefit big tobacco companies.

 

The Center’s review of BAT emails, memos, meeting notes, and policy proposals

indicates that the company envisioned a serious threat from the proposed treaty.

“The WHO’s proposed Framework Convention on Tobacco Control represents an

unprecedented challenge to the tobacco industry’s freedom to continue doing

business,” concluded a document BAT proposing a broad strategy to confront the

WHO.

 

Others within the company saw adoption of a convention as inevitable, but didn’t

think it was necessarily a bad thing, as long as it did not include specific

enforcement measures harmful to the industry. “We are not necessarily against a

convention,” wrote Simon Millson, international government affairs manager and

head of BAT’s WHO task force, “but the potential form and content of the

proposed convention as is being proposed by the WHO could contain some serious

threats and concerns for the long term viability of the industry….We must

therefore ensure that the convention and associated protocols are broad based.”

 

Some strategies alluded to in the documents include:

 

A long range plan to rehabilitate the image of the company and the tobacco

industry as a whole. Consulting firm KPMG discussed a proposal with senior staff

to help the company reinvent itself as a more “socially responsible” enterprise

by drafting a code of conduct, working to assuage the doubts of key officials

and NGOs and making a conspicuous “commitment to social accountability.”

Shabanji Opukah, head of international development issues for the company ,

found the plan promising: “Time comes when organizations have to be shocked out

of their comfort zones and shells and some of this unfortunately may come from

externally driven rather than internally inspired and value driven sources.” For

BAT, Opukah continued, the treaty “presents the best opportunity to take forward

the big agenda on CORPORATE REPUTATION Management.”

A proposal to create an independent, international organization to regulate

the tobacco industry, in the hope that taking a proactive stance could preempt

WHO efforts for a global treaty and “increase public confidence in the

regulatory process, and thereby decrease political support for anti-tobacco

pressure groups.”

 

While these proposals for image reinvention were being circulated, more direct

lobbying against WHO’s initiative was planned. Among the aspects proposed for

this campaign:

 

“Propose a solution to fast track ‘sensible regulation’ at a national level

with the tobacco industry’s support that is consistent with our own corporate

objectives.” This would help to “stiffen the growing resistance to adopting a

legally binding global convention.”

Provide funding, along with other large tobacco companies, for a global

information campaign conducted by the International Tobacco Growers’

Association, a UK-based organization representing tobacco growers from 22

countries. An email from Dr. Tom Watson of Hallmark PR, a firm funded by BAT and

other tobacco manufacturers that directed ITGA’s marketing efforts, suggested

one aspect of the group’s value to the tobacco industry: the growers’

association could serve as “the credible (i.e. non-manufacturer) front end for

the battle over [the tobacco free initiative] and the Tobacco Control

Convention.” In other words, ITGA initiatives, supported with tobacco company

money but untarred by the industry’s reputation, could more effectively lobby

against the WHO’s convention.

Argue that AIDS and other diseases pose greater health threats than tobacco,

thereby undermining WHO’s credibility. “Then idea is to use the forum to

challenge and ridicule the WHO convention,” wrote Shabanji Opukah regarding an

upcoming pan-African AIDS conference.

Undertake a sophisticated and targeted global lobbying effort aimed at

convincing government officials of selected countries to oppose the WHO

initiative. Through its global network of Corporate and Regulatory Affairs

(CORA) personnel, BAT planned to target key countries for more intensive

lobbying. As one document noted of BAT’s activities to date: “Materials

containing the key arguments they need to challenge the legal, economic and

political foundations of the [tobacco free initiative] have been circulated to

all CORA managers. As a result, there has been some success at a government

level. Brazil, China, Germany, Argentina and Zimbabwe have all agreed to make

submissions to the drafting process.” Lists of key countries and summaries of

WHO activity were distributed to company lobbyists.

 

The documents do not make clear if all of these strategies were in fact

implemented. However, expenditure reports and billing sheets from outside law

and consulting firms illustrate that at minimum hundreds of thousands of dollars

were spent on the overall effort.

 

Ross Hammond, consultant to the international program for the Campaign for

Tobacco Free Kids, an organization supporting WHO’s proposed treaty, charged

that the documents “show a concerted industry effort to undermine the Framework

Convention, which [the tobacco companies] rightly see as a threat to their

ability to do business, particularly in developing countries.”

 

Jeannie Cameron, International Regulatory Affairs Manager for BAT, agreed that

the FCTC “affects the future of our industry,” but insists that the company has

not engaged in any underhanded activity. “We have provided our views openly and

transparently,” she says, adding that “we accept that tobacco should be

regulated but are in favor of sensible regulation, and feel that FCTC is a

one-size-fits-all approach and needs to be looked at more nationally. What may

work in one country may not work in another country,” she said.

 

 

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