Ken Wassum, Associate Director, Clinical Development & Support
Picture a tobacco company video showing organized crime hawking cigarettes on the black market and execution-style killings by the underworld to control illicit cigarette sales. You may think this is nuts, (and you might be right), but the video exists. On their website, British American Tobacco (BAT) has just released this video, called Who’s in Control?
In this six-minute video, underworld figures, including shady British, Canadian, and Russian mafia types, are portrayed using government tobacco control efforts to increase their devious activities. The video even goes so far as to play the “terrorist” card.
The FDA just released 36 different graphic images that are being considered for cigarette packs and which are intended to discourage smoking. This is in addition to the ratification of the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control by over 170 countries, which callsfor plain packaging and regulation on tobacco product contents, including a ban on cigarette flavorings. BAT would have us believe that plain packaging, graphic images, tax increases, and retail placement of cigarettes play right into the hands of organized crime and terrorists.
In creating and showing the Who’s In Control video, BAT representatives are positioning themselves as the “good guys.” They want us to believe that they are looking out for society’s best interests, and that we should trust them. Right… Before discussing the merits and challenges of product regulation let’s take a look at the track record of BAT with regard to trust and ethics.
Rewind 40 some years ago - BAT was arguing that nicotine was not addictive. Their strategy was to deny and confuse the issue, and they did this very well – for several decades. Millions of Americans, including children, became addicted to the nicotine in tobacco and died from smoking. This continued until 1995, when BAT was forced in litigation to turn over internal memos in the courtroom, which proved their prior knowledge of the addiction potential of nicotine.
Okay, you might say, that was a long time ago. Maybe they have had a change of heart. Think again. According the Sydney Morning Herald, in 2002 Rolah Ann McCabe, a 51-year-old woman suffering from advanced stages of lung cancer, became the first Australian to successfully sue a tobacco company (BAT). She won a $700,000 judgment when the Supreme Court found that the tobacco company had destroyed potentially relevant documents about the damaging effects of smoking. BAT used their army of lawyers to overturn the judgment nine months later.
After filing an appeal, the family of the late McCabe received a letter from the BAT lawyers stating BAT may “ultimately look to” the sale of the McCabe family home to recover legal costs. Simon Chapman, University of Sydney professor of public health, interpreted this as “designed to send the message (to the McCabes and everyone else) that you take on big tobacco at your peril.”
Back to the issue of regulating cigarettes. The entire discussion should be framed with the acknowledgment that cigarettes remain the only product that result in disease and death when used as directed by the manufacturer. No rational person in public health wants to outlaw cigarettes. That would be a disaster similar to Prohibition and the War on Drugs.
The goal of these efforts is to make cigarettes less desirable and less marketable to kids and other first time users. That hits the tobacco industry where it hurts – the bottom-line.
According to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids:
•over 5 million kids alive today will die from smoking related diseases
•90% of kids start smoking before the age of 18
•the tobacco industry spends over $35 million per day to advertise and promote their product
It would seem that making cigarette packaging and visibility less appealing is in the interest of society and our children. Clearly, restrictions on tobacco products needs to be carefully thought out to avoid escalating the illicit tobacco trade, but it is obvious to me that BAT’s horrifying little video is nothing but a scare tactic to confuse the issue and they are no more trustworthy than they were 40 years ago.