Tobacco Documents Online

880000 - 920000 Five Year Plan Business Planning & Analysis 880300

Abstract

This Philip Morris USA (PM) 5-year plan reveals the company's aggressive strategies to slow and even reverse national successes in controlling tobacco use. PM describes "proactive" strategies and actions that "go beyond simply defending ourselves," and that were aimed at "maximizing industry volume" and "making anti-smoking forces defend past gains..." PM justifies its actions by saying, "PM-USA is taking a major role in defending the cigarette industry since... we have the most to lose if the industry is radically altered by the aggressive attacks of anti-smoking forces...Thus, we must continue to lead the fight against the anti-smoking movement and devote considerable resources to defeat or mitigate their initiatives..."

The plan shows PM's priority of profits over health, and many statements place the company squarely at odds with U.S. and worldwide public health authorities:

"To combat the well-organized, well-funded anti-smoking movement in this country and abroad we have put into place programs that target three groups whose decisions and actions ultimately determine the long-term viability of the cigarette industry...Our overall goal is to preserve the industry by protecting smokers' rights and improving the perception of smokers and smoking in society..."

PM describes plans to create local smokers rights groups help the company block public health efforts all over the country:

"These groups will campaign for repeal of anti-smoking legislation and enactment of legislation to protect smokers from discrimination in employment. This offensive strategy is intended not only to change existing laws, but to force anti-smoking advocates to defend their gains rather than seeking to expand them."

The plan also lines out PM's strategy of sponsoring "third party research to...generate more favorable coverage of our issues." PM also lists reasons for creating the Center for Indoor Air Research (CIAR), a research group PM hoped would "Isolate the anti-smoking forces by making the industry appear reasonable while they are irrational in their demands..."

PM describes these anti-health tactics as "a sustained holding action with aggressive counterattacks" to be implemented "whenever we have the opportunity to demonstrate weakness or fanaticism in our opponents..."

The strident language in this document demonstrates PM's embattled mindset, and how far at odds the company was with worldwide public health authorities' efforts to control tobacco.

User-Contributed Notes

1. Ingredient disclosure: Massachusetts not printed due to lack of focus on trade issues, and length of document. Includes revealing information about target of youth, working-class, and women. Focus on the United States.

Fields

Notes

This document also discusses a number of other topics such as "clean" (safer) cigarettes, fire-safe cigarettes, excise taxes and much more.

Quotes

[From Page 58, "Sociopolitical Strategy" (Bates Page 20437743780]:

PM-USA's sociopolitical goal is to maximize industry volume by protecting the rights of smokers while also preserving the rights of manufacturers to market cigarettes. PM-USA is taking a major role in defending the cigarette industry since our leadership position in terms of market share and profitability implies that we have the most to lose if the industry is radically altered by the aggressive attacks of anti-smoking forces.

The industry currently faces a number of threats, of which one of the most serious is the growing concern -- among smokers and non-smokers -- regarding environmental tobacco smoke (ETS). Despite the lack of definitive scientific evidence, ETS is being linked to health problems in non-smokers, including the families of smokers. By blowing the ETS issue out of proportion, anti-smoking advocates are succeeding in increasing the ostracism of smokers and heightening the uneasiness smokers feel when smoking around others...

...We are planning to blunt the ETS issue by stressing acccomodation and comromise between smokers and non-smokers while working longer term to allay consumer fears through additional research...Corporate Affairs will seek to limit the number and severity of smoking restrictions and, where necessary, push for compromises which segregate smoking instead of banning smoking entirely...

...Corporate Affairs will...monitor and combat legislation unfavorable to PM-USA. In doing so, we will take a more proactive role by making anti-smoking forces defend past gains...

An important program to combat the ETS issue, growing smoking restrictions and increasing social pressures, will be Operation Downunder...In Operation Downunder we will restate the industry's position on smoking accommodation to gain credibility and popular support and will create and push private initiatives for this accommodation. When government involvement is unavoidable, we will use the legislative process to compel accommodation as opposed to ouright bans. Finally, we will continue the scientific battle over the effects of ETS through the Center for Indoor Air Research.

[From Page 80, Bates No. 2043774400]:

Advertising

...The [Benson and Hedges] campaign effectively portrays smoking and nonsmoking people in spontaneous natural situations which reinforce the social acceptability of the brand and the people who choose it...

...B&H currently has a relatively affluent, higher educated smoker profile. Survey data indicates that these groups have lower start rates and higher quit rates than blue coller smokers. While we intend to maintain broad media support to B&H's core smokers, targeted efforts will be directed at younger adults, blacks and Hispanics.

[From Page 117, "Sociopolitical Strategy," Bates No. 2043774437]:

SOCIOPOLITICAL STRATEGY

In the next five yeers the assault on cigarettes and smoking is expected to intensify. Led by Surgeon General Koop, virtually all public health associations and various politicians, the anti-smoking movement has three main goals:

• Make smoking an unacceptable behavior in any social context.

• Make cigarette promotion and advertising illegal.

• Make cigarettes themselves more expensive through heavier taxation.

During the plan period, the cigarette industry will face legislation to increase excise, taxes, to ban print and outdoor advertising, to prohibit sampling and promotion, and to forbid smoking in any public place, office, common carrier, restaurant or accommodation. These legislative initiatives represent the most visible element of the anti-smoking force's coordinated strategy to ostracize smokers both in the general public and even in their homes, where they are accused of perpetrating health problems on their spouses and children. The movement against smoking and smokers enjoys sanction from the media, business leaders and government akin to that accorded Prohibition and McCarthyism. These groups will campaign for repeal of anti-smoking legislation and enactment of legislation to protect smokers from discrimination in employment. This offensive strategy is intended not only to change existing laws, but to force anti-smoking advocates to defend their gains rather than seeking to expand them. The continuing fallout from the 1986 Surgeon General's Report on environmental tobacco smoke has demonstrated that the anti-smoking forces are willing to distort science in their single-minded quest to alienate smokers.

[From Page 119]:

Unless we continue to act forcefully against our opponents, the cigarette market will be fundamentally changed. Since PM-USA commands 37.9 percent of industry sales, nearly half of estimated industry profits and continues to grow, we have the most to lose from that change. Thus, we must continue to lead the fight against the anti-smoking movement and devote considerable resources to defeat or mitigate their initiatives...

...Our strategy then needs to be a sustained holding action with aggressive counterattacks whenever we have the opportunity to demonstrate weakness or fanaticism in our opponents...Our strategic objective is to leverage [public sentiments against taxes, in favor of freedom of speech, against government interference, etc.] and maximize industry volume by aggressively blunting attacks from anti-smoking advocates and improving public perceptions of smoking...We have identified four primary fields of battle:

--The social ostracism of smokers and consequent inhibitions about when and where to smoke caused by health-risk perceptions, effective lobbying by anti-smoking groups, restrictive smoking policies (public and private) and biased media coverage.

[Page 121]

To combat the well-organized, well-funded anti-smoking movement in this country and abroad we have put into place programs that target three groups whose decisions and actions ultimately determine the long-term viability of the cigarette industry. Our overall goal is to preserve the industry by protecting smokers' rights and improving the perception of smokers and smoking in society.

...Specifically we plan to do the following:

To go beyond simply defending ourselves, we intend to fashion proactive groups led by the regional managers of the public affairs network. These groups will campaign for repeal of anti-smoking legislation and enactment of legislation to protect smokers from discrimination in employment. This offensive strategy is intended not only to change existing laws, but to force anti-smoking advocates to defend their gains rather than seeking to expand them.

State political action committees will expand to make contributions to key political decision-makers in states where direct corporate contributions are not permitted.

Smokers and Other Potential Allies

Direct lobbying alone cannot stop the anti-smoking movement or influence an indifferent public and media who tolerate fanatical anti-smoking activities. To enlist public support, we will take our program of identification, recruitment, education, communication and mobilization of smokers to a new level of organization....

[Page 123, Bates No. 2043774443]:

In 1988, we intend to create local smokers' rights associations throughout the U.S. The basis for these associations will be a network of 50,000 "block captains" who will monitor local smoking issues, write or visit political decision-makers, write letters to local newspapers and generally serve as a grass roots voice for smokers' rights. We intend to link these "captains" to local, state and ultimately a national rights organization. Once the national organization is established and funded, we will spin the Smokers Newsletters into it and create a self-sustaining membership organization similar to the National Rifle Association.

[From Page 126, Bates No. 2043774446]:

Finally, we will continue the scientific battle over the effects of ETS through the Center for Indoor Air Research (CIAR). The CIAR is an industry-sponsored scientific funding organization designed to obtain better scientific research on ETS and the overall indoor air quality issue.

We believe there are several benefits to the industry in pursuing this strategy. It will:

1) Increase the industry's leverage in legislatures by showing a more reasonable approach to the issue.

2) Provide an acceptable smoking environment for smokers in all social contexts by demanding at least a designated smoking area.

3) Provide a statutory basis for smokers to assert their right to smoke by inserting in legislation the requirement that smokers be accommodated.

4) Isolate the anti-smoking forces by making the industry appear reasonable on the issue while they are irrational in their demands.

5) Allow the industry to claim victory for smokers when accommodation legislation is passed thus reversing the perception that all smoking legislation is anti-smoking...

Like all new programs, a degree of risk is involved. Operation Downunder will raise the visibility of the ETS issue, but it is already a highly visible controversy. It could also be construed as conceding that smoking can be legitimately limited and promote government intervention. However, the fact that 45 states and 260 localities debated restrictive smoking legislation in 1987 clearly demonstrates that government intervention is already a part of political life in the U.S...

Company

Philip Morris (now a division of Altria Group)

Author

Corporate author, Philip Morris

Recipient

Corporate Recipient, Philip Morris

Region

United States

Type

REPT, REPORT, OTHER

CHAR, CHART, GRAPH, TABLE, MAPS

Litigation

Stmn/Produced

Named Person

Caton, F.

Koop, C. Everett, M.D. (Surgeon General ('81-'89))

former US Surgeon General (1981-1989)

Levrat, J.M.

Operation/Project

Operation Downunder (PM Corp. strategy to deal with ETS issue)

On June 24-26, 1987 Philip Morris held the Operation Downunder Conference to determine a new strategy to deal with the ETS issue, which was eroding sales. The conference was attended by fifteen people, seven of whom were high-up PM executives (see list of attendees at PM 2024270519)and the balance of whom were public realtions people, attorneys from Covington and Burling, etc.

Named Organization

American Tobacco

Anti Tobacco Forces

Arnold & Porter

Bakery Union

BW, Brown & Williamson

Center for Indoor Air Research (CIAR) (Industry formed/funded air research organization)

Nonprofit organization funded by the tobacco industry. CIAR was formed in March 1988 by tobacco companies "to sponsor "high-quality research on indoor air issues and to facilitate communication of research findings to the broad scientific community."

Circle K Stores (Convenience stores)

Coalition Against Regressive Taxation - PM-backed third party group

Confectionery Union

Congress

Deutsche Bundesbank

Elite

Iri Food Stores

K Mart

Leo Burnett Agency

Liggett

Liggett & Myers

Lorillard

Mobil

Natl Rifle Assn

Smokers Caucus

Pathmark

PM Magazine

PM, Philip Morris

Political Action Comm

Richmond Westab Et

RJR, R.J.Reynolds

Smokers Newsletters

Smokers Rights Groups (Groups set up by tobacco companies)

Smokers Rights Groups (SRGs) were created clandestinely by the major tobacco companies of Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds (usually through public relations firms) to produce the appearance of "grass roots" opposition to laws restricting smoking in public places. The U.S. SRG, set up by Philip Morris, was the National Smokers Alliance. European groups had names like HEN-RY, Smokepeace and FOREST.

Southland

State Political Action Comm

Target

Tax Comm

Texaco

TI, Tobacco Inst

Tobacco Workers Intl Union

Zayres

7-11 (Convenience stores)

Subject

industry

industry activity

industry front group

industry influence

industry sponsored research

industry strategy

Corporate image

Corporate strategy

fire safe cigarette

taxation

smoking prevalence

smoking restriction

target market

Target/ethnic (targeting ethnic markets)

Target/Low-Income (Target Groups)

Target/Women (Target Groups)

Target/Young Adults (Target Groups)