Tobacco Documents Online

This 1995 budget for Philip Morris'(PM) Worldwide Regulatory Affairs office lists the company's activities to fight public health-tobacco control efforts around the globe during that year and what it cost PM to carry out these activities. It lists PM's consultants by name and/or company, tells how much PM budgeted to pay them, and lists the countries where PM applied this interference.

PM's activities included persuading restaurant owners, airport officials and employers around the world that they needed too install new ventilation equipment instead of banning smoking entirely, developing strategies and programs to protect smoking in the workplace, subsidizing construction and renovation of airport smoking lounges, working to prevent and pre-empt smoking restrictions, "slowing down the spread of smoking bans on international [airline] carriers," promoting acceptance of indoor air quality standards that would allow smoking, funding front groups like ARISE (Associate for Research in the Science of Enjoyment) and TASSC (The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition), funding of public relations groups like the Dolphin Group and Burson Marstellar to push their agenda, and much more. According to this document, in 1995 PM planned to implement the above activities in Brazil, Costa Rica, Japan, Sweden, Hungary, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Puerto Rico, Finland, Czech Republic, Korea, Belgium, Spain, Germany, Italy, Columbia, Poland, Norway, Gulf Council Countries (GCC), Argentina, United States and Australia.

PM's total budget for these activities in 1995 was over $17 million, which does not include legal costs for 1995, which are listed on Page 20 of the document. The total cost of legal assistance to PM's Worldwide Regulatory Affairs Department in 1995 was $25,785,000, which includes the costs of lawsuits against the ABC Television Network, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and legal work on cigarette issues like ingredients disclosure and ignition propensity. The law firm of Shook, Hardy and Bacon alone was budgeted to make over $7.3 million from Philip Morris in this single year.

This Philip Morris (PM) Corporate Affairs plan discusses the company's goals, objectives and strategies for achieving them during 1994-1996 in the areas of Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa (EEMA). One objective of PM's Corporate Affair plan was nothing short of "Stop the decline in, and start re-building to social acceptability of smokers and smoking in society." Reasons given for PM's concern about the declining social acceptability of smoking were the threat this situation posed to PM's profits, as well as the effect it had on the company's ability to recruit allies and influence government:

"While the ultimate threat is widespread public smoking bans...we also risk consumption decreases due to shrinking possibilities to smoke at the workplace as well as a deterioration of the social acceptability of smokers and smoking. With the lack of social acceptability, we will face further problems in ally-building and Government Relations work."

As part of its '94-96 plan on the secondhand smoke issue in this region, PM hoped to "...influence the setting of indoor air quality and ventilation standards."

PM also sought to take the focus of the secondhand smoke issue off of science and health: "The messages on ETS related issues will focus on solutions and accommodation, rather than on a scientific debate," and "We will encourage [Philip Morris Inc.] to initiate and fund research into the causes and consequences of social intolerance, aiming at broadening the political debate about bans / laws / tolerance in our societies."

The document also discusses PM's corporate activities on topics of excise taxes, fighting restrictions on advertising and sponsorship, strategies for corporate contributions and more, in the countries of Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, the Czech Republic, the Slovak Republic, Poland, Egypt, Denmark Austria, Hungary, Russia, Kazakhstan, the Gulf Council Countries (GCC), Baltic States and Syria.

This Philip Morris (PM) Regional Corporate Affairs plan lists as an objective to "Stop the decline in, and start re-building the social acceptability of smokers and smoking in society," thus revealing PM's internal corporate goal of reversing the gains made by public health authorities against tobacco use since the 1964 Surgeon General's report. PM worried that the EPA's looming classification of environmental tobacco smoke (ETS, or secondhand smoke) as a Class A carcinogen could cause "the ultimate threat" of "widespread smoking bans." In this report, PM also links public concern about secondhand smoke to the double threat of declining cigarette sales and reduced influence with policymakers: "We also risk consumption decreased due to shrinking possibilities to smoke at the workplace as well as a deterioration of the social acceptability of smokers and smoking. With the lack of social acceptability, we will face further problems in ally-building and government relations work."

A PM strategy was to shift discussion about ETS away from science, saying "The messages on ETS-related issues will focus on solutions and accommodation rather than on a scientific debate." PM also worked to influence indoor air quality and ventilation standards in part to "focus more on standards and regulations and less on scientific base work." The report also discusses the emergence of concern about "the primary issue" [smoking-induced illness] in less developed countries of Africa and Eastern Europe, saying the information had been "channeled effectively to the global media by our opponents."

The document reveals PM's internal corporate policies were squarely at odds with the goals of governments around the world to reduce tobacco use. It describes PM's vast activities to derail and minimize public policy attempts to regulate tobacco in Switzerland, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Austria, Poland, Hungary, Russia, Turkey, the Gulf Council Countries, Egypt, the Czech Republic and North Africa.