Tobacco Documents Online

This 119-page Philip Morris document is a gold mine of internal information about the company's strategies to defeat smoking bans and excise taxes. Strategies inlcude encouraging tighter restrictions on the operation of nonprofit (health) organizations (for example, restricting how much of these groups' income could go to administrative and lobbying costs and creating minimum percentages of funding that they would have to put towards research), to use of PM's "Accommodation Program" as a "tactical weapon" to support preemptive state legislation.

In the document, PM laments that "Recent Polling Says Californians Want Smoking Restrictions," and that the "Industry's Economic Impact Arguments Losing Credibility as Glanz Studies Have More Credibility with Media."

On page 80, PM recounts the company's reasons for opposing bans:

"If smokers can't smoke on the way to work, at work, in stores, banks, restaurants, malls and other public places, they are going to smoke less. A large percentage of them are going to quit. In short, cigarette purchases will be drastically reduced and volume declines will accelerate."

Other parts of the document outline exactly how PM works with R.J. Reynolds to interfere in efforts to enact smoking bans: organizing smokers in its database to call city council members and testify at public hearing, convincing restaurant associations to oppose bans, setting up phone banks to assist people in making calls to oppose bans, pressing employees of PM subsidiaries into helping oppose smoking ordinances (Miller, Kraft, etc.)

This 1997 document from the Philip Morris (PM) collection is a draft press release promoting cigars and cigar use. It mentions how Arnold Schwartzenegger's image has helped increase cigar use and sales around the country:

"News reports from coast to coast show that the cigar smoker's image is now more Arnold Schwartzenegger and less Archie Bunker. The change has been good for the industry. The Cigar Association of America reported last fall that it expected 1996 sales of premium, hand-rolled cigars to hit more than 150 million units, nearly double 1994 sales."

Bodybuilder-turned-movie star-turned politician Arnold Schwartzenegger portrayed primarily action heroes in many Hollywood films in the late 1980's to early 1990's. In 1996, he appeared on the cover of "Cigar Aficionado" magazine sporting a stogey. Thus, Mr. Schwartzenegger's name and image became closely associated with tobacco use, particularly in the form of cigars.

The 1992 Philip Morris document, "Marlboro Target Exploration: Understanding Generation X," reports that when young adult male "Marlboro targets" were asked to name the person whom they admired most, they ranked Arnold Schwartzenegger just below their mothers/ fathers/ grandfathers, and just above retired U.S. General Norman Schwartzkopf. (Start Bates No. 2041855604, on Page 189) http://tobaccodocuments.org/pm/2041855604-5819.html

In August 2003, Mr. Schwartzenegger joined over 100 citizens in placing their names on a ballot as potential replacements for California governor Gray Davis, the subject of a rare recall election in that state.

A 1998 article in the Baltimore Sun described how cigar manufacturers paid Hollywood brokers to get stars like Mr. Schwartzenegger to "wield cigars on television and in the movies." The article credits Mr. Schwartzenegger as well as other stars like Demi Moore, Madonna, hockey great Wayne Gretzky and model Claudia Schiffer with helping bring cigars back to popularity, to the detriment of public health. The article points out that while federal authorities cracked down on use of films as a medium to promote cigarette smoking to youth, cigars escaped the attention of rulemakes and thus their promotion remained unregulated: http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/cgi/getdoc?tid=aqr47c00&fmt=pdf&ref=results

In this 1994 speech to the Philip Morris USA Trade Council, Ellen Merlo (Senior Vice President of Corporate Affairs at PM) states of public health efforts:

"For each of our major issues, we have strategies in place designed to insure that our opponents are not successful."

Merlo laments that increased cigarette taxes will cause too many people to quit smoking, saying

"When the [cigarette] tax goes up, industry loses volume and profits as many smokers cut back...If smokers can't smoke on the way to work, at work, in stores, banks, restaurants, they are going to smoke less. A large percentage of them are going to quit. Overall cigarette purchases will be reduced and volume decline will accelerate."

Merlo describes a major PM strategy to thwart public health efforts to restrict indoor smoking: shift the argument away from the health effects of tobacco smoke exposure and onto "accommodation" and indoor air quality in general. She describes PM's strategy to enact what the company calls "accommodation legislation," which will "serve to pre-empt local smoking restrictions which tend to be more severe." Merlo describes public health advocates' use of the "Pac-Man approach" to enacting advertising bans, and discusses "battling the antis" [public health authorities] on enforcement of the Synar Amendment to restrict marketing to youth. She urges support of PM's programs to defeat public health initiatives.

Merlo concludes the speech by urging PM USA Trade Council members to join PM in fighting its "war" against public health:

"The simple fact is we are at war, and we currently face the most critical challenges out industry has ever met. We have to get together and join forces to successfully defend our business right now--today."

This document shows Philip Morris' warlike dedication to opposing public health initiatives, and describes a multitude of corporate programs, strategies and front groups created specifically to oppose tobacco control efforts. Despite the company's repeated claims that it has changed, Ellen Merlo was still with the company as of November, 2002, according to press releases on Philip Morris' corporate web site.