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Draft Speech for Hamish Maxwell, Marketing Meeting, 000624

 24 Jun 1983 (est.)
18 pp

Author: Maxwell, Hamish
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[ 1 of 3 | landman/2021285680-5697 ]

In this 1983 marketing speech, Philip Morris (PM) President Hamish Maxwell cites the importance of PM's efforts to maintain the presence of smoking in the movies to help preserve the social acceptability of tobacco use. Maxwell states:

"RECENTLY, ANTI-SMOKING GROUPS HAVE ALSO HAD SOME EARLY SUCCESSES AT ERODING THE SOCIAL ACCEPTABILITY OF SMOKING. SMOKING IS BEING POSITIONED AS AN UNFASHIONABLE, AS WELL AS UNHEALTHY, CUSTOM. WE MUST USE EVERY CREATIVE MEANS AT OUR DISPOSAL TO REVERSE THIS DESTRUCTIVE TREND. I DO FEEL HEARTENED AT THE INCREASING NUMBER OF OCCASIONS WHEN I GO TO A MOVIE AND SEE A PACK OF CIGARETTES IN THE HANDS OF THE LEADING LADY. THIS IS IN SHARP CONTRAST TO THE STATE OF AFFAIRS JUST A FEW YEARS AGO WHEN CIGARETTES RARELY SHOWED UP ON CAMERA. WE MUST CONTINUE TO EXPLOIT NEW OPPORTUNITIES TO GET CIGARETTES ON SCREEN AND INTO THE HANDS OF SMOKERS. THE PMI CORPORATE AFFAIRS DEPARTMENT IS HELPING..."

RE: Joint Meeting on ETS - London, England

 15 Jun 1988
14 pp

Author: N/A
Recipient: Presumably attendees of the meeting, which included representatives from American, British, European and Japanese tobacco companies
Notes Marked "PRIVILEGED AND CONFIDENTIAL ATTORNEY WORK PRODUCT." Privilege has been removed.
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[ 2 of 3 | landman/23706 ]

These remarkable minutes are from a 1988 meeting of cigarette manufacturers from the U.S., United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, Canada and Japan who met to discuss global strategies for dealing with the industry's greatest threat: the secondhand smoke issue.

The minutes contain a fascinating discussion wherein a representative of the German cigarette industry, Dr. Franz Adlkofer, departs from the industry's established route of promoting global deceit on the secondhand smoke issue and urges the industry representatives to adopt a more responsible course:

During the meeting, Dr. Adlkofer questioned the industry's continuing creation of it's own "marketable science." In a stunning departure from typical industry plotting, Dr. Adlkofer stated that what the industry was really seeking was "good public relations material, not good science." Dr. Adlkofer further said that "real science" would be "essential if the industry was to prevail on the ETS issue." Furthermore, Adlkofer "refused to endorse a situation in which scientific research is guided by public relations needs." Adlkofer questioned the wisdom of the industry's present course on the ETS (environmental tobacco smoke) issue and urged the industry instead to concentrate on identifying a threshold level for risk of ETS exposure. This controversial suggestion caused "widespread disagreement" among the meeting's participants. Dr. Boyce of British American Tobacco (BAT) said that the "no-threshold argument would automatically indict active smoking." Thomas Osdene of Philip Morris helpfully suggested that "a threshold level could be set, but that the threshold not be quantified." Another attendee, Mr. Westcott (a consultant to Philip Morris U.S.A.) said that setting such a limit would be "dangerous" because it would provide "a priori proof of causation for anti-smoking advocates," and "would indict active smoking." John Rupp, of the U.S. tobacco industry's law firm Covington and Burling, further stated that "the industry should continue to emphasize the lack of substantive proof of causation." To this Adlkofer responded, "Science cannot propel the industry any further on the ETS issue unless it is able to say that not one person has died from exposure to ETS." There was nothing further added in discussion of this landmark statement.

The rest of the document is full of descriptions of the industry's existing path of global deceit on the ETS issue.

The Japanese tobacco industry representative said that the public and medical professions "must be better informed on ETS research," adding that,

..."in providing this information, the industry must be inconspicuous. Otherwise, he argued, the public will suspect the authenticity of the information. He recommended the use of third parties to convey the industry's message."

The Canadian tobacco industry representative indicated his awareness that there was almost total public support in Canada for regulation of smoking, reporting that "85-90% of Canadians, both smokers and non-smokers, are not against smoking regulation." Despite this acknowledgement, however, he went on to state a Canadian tobacco industry priority was "to underwrite the Smoker's Freedom Society, a group that publicly represents smokers' interests and is separate from the tobacco industry," showing that the Canadian tobacco industry intended to create and fund a group to oppose smoking regulations where there normally would be virutally no opposition, and that they intended to give the group the appearance of being separate from their industry.

RE: Affirmative Legislative Program

 18 Jul 1988
13 pp

Author: Silfen, Thomas E.
Recipient: Legislative Team
Notes Thanks to Bert Hirshhorn for forwarding this document.
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[ 3 of 3 | landman/23511 ]

This remarkable memorandum, written by lawyer Thomas Silfen of Philip Morris' law firm Arnold and Porter, comes about as close to soul-searching as a tobacco industry operative probably could. In the memo, Silfen muses about what can be done "to relieve the industry's long agony over health issues--to get the industry out of the 'it hasn't been proven' trap once and for all." Silfen mulls over the utility of the "hasn't been proven" stance, but discloses its shortfalls when it comes to litigation and public health:

"In litigation, we have sought to defuse the issue by adopting the slightly softened risk factor position: i.e., there is a statistical association which could possibly be causal, but the evidence is still not conclusive. Out of court, and especially before Congress, that position will not suffice. When the issue is public health not scientific proof, admitting that tobacco is a 'risk' actually highlights the hard questions. How big is the risk: is it 20% proven or 40% proven or 55%?... Given that risk, how many people die from smoking: if not 350,000, is it 200,000 or 100,000? What would it take to convince us that it is proven; are we waiting until every doctor in the world agrees? And what are we going to do once we are finally convinced; will we stop selling the, product, as some company officials have said in the past?"

Despite this, Silfen argues against admitting causation, putting higher priority on the image and liability problems that would be caused if the industry admitted that cigarettes kill people. Silfen counsels that abandoning the industry's long-standing "case isn't proven" stance without a sizeable scientific event

"...would look bad in the public forum and, perhaps, in court as well. More importantly, admitting causation leaves the really significant public health questions unanswered: What do we do next? Do we stop selling cigarettes altogether or stop advertising or submit to FDA jurisdiction? We are right back on the spot, maybe worse off."

Silfen envies the model of the alcohol industry, since their product has similar problems. He says,

"Why do we tolerate alcohol sales and promotion, despite the attendant death, crime and misery. Several elements seem to contribute. Everybody knows the danger of alcohol (or at least, we all assume that everybody knows). The alcohol manufacturers do not deny the negative aspects of their product and, in fact, counsel both moderation and adult use....as a matter of law, alcohol use is restricted to adults. Finally, we tried prohibition in this country and it was a miserable failure. That is the position we want for tobacco. Once a product is used only by fully informed, competent adults, all that remains (we would say) is prohibition."

However, Silfen recognizes a major difference from the "alcohol model":

"Cohen tells us that we have created an inconsistent information environment in which vulnerable smokers are able to disbelieve even the best known health warnings. This is, of course, a major difference from the 'alcohol model.' "

This is a fascinating look into the ruminations of an industry attorney who knows well the tobacco industry's track record for deception and who is left trying to find ways to get the industry out of the difficulties it created for itself by its history of denial.