Presumed recipient, R.J. Reynolds
This 1980 R. J. Reynolds document is another progress report on the global tobacco industry's Social Costs/Social Values Project to develop argumentation against the "social costs" claim that smokers cost society more in increased absenteeism, lost productivity, higher medical costs, etc.
Page 5 of the progress report shows that the industry attempted to find data to support their assertions that public health advocates don't really care about public health, but instead fight tobacco because they "have a special agenda to serve their own purposes." The report states,
"It was hoped that a rigorous, scientific analysis of the written material produced by anti-smoking groups would reveal a great deal about their ideologies. At [the World Conference on Tobacco or Health in ] Stockholm, speakers indicated, for example, a clear bias against capitalism, business, and multinational firms in particular. There are other indications that organized anti-smokers are also active in public interest movements relating to air-pollution, nuclear power, health foods, and the like -- all characterized by an aversion to moderate risk, by a utopia of eternal life, and by a disregard for the economic trade-offs which these imply. Such disregard necessarily affects their view of the social costs of smoking, and in turn justifies the distortions of social cost..."
Instead, the industry found no real underlying ideology to indict the public health advocates:
"In fact, analysis of anti-smoking materials revealed very little ideological content. This is in such striking contrast to [industry consultant] Dr. [Peter] Berger's observations at [the World Conference on Tobacco Or Health in] Stockholm that we must speculate that these ideas are suppressed in the anti-smoking media..."
This document shows how the industry sought to cast public health authorities as self-serving, utopian extremists and discredit the credibility of their attempts to reduce tobacco use.