This Philip Morris (a.k.a. Altria Group or PM) Corporate Affairs Plan for Europe (1994-96) is rich with corporate strategies to reverse the decline in social acceptability of smoking in Europe.
In the Plan, PM reveals its understanding that a huge majority of Europeans actually favor smoking restrictions in public places:
"Europeans are highly in favor of smoking restrictions in public places (82%) and 88% are in favor of clear separation in the workplace."
Despite this, PM planned to fight smoking restrictions with all resources it could muster.
PM viewed laws to protect worker health and safety as a threat:
"A proposed Directive was issued in early 1993 with the aim of protecting transport worker's health and safety...This is the biggest threat at European Community level which needs to be addressed."
The Plan also reveals PM as the organizing and driving force behind Smokers Rights Groups (SRGs) all over Europe:
"Smokers' Rights Groups (SRG's) are an essential medium for presenting [the tobacco industry's] views in favor of reasonable solutions because a) they have no commercial interest and, as such, are more credible voice than the tobacco industry and b) they are able to position themselves as a large but discriminated "minority" of individuals who have rights. The Plan foresees continued support [to SRGs] provided by PM/industry to the groups in Italy, Spain, France, the Netherlands and Greece to help them expand in both number of members and in influence."
PM lamented the lack of organization among Smokers Rights Groups and anticipated the benefits that could accrue if the company assisted further in organizing them:
"The real weakness of the SRG network is the absence of any co-ordinating body or secretariat which can share information, techniques and ideas between the various SRG's. We should examine the feasibility of creating a pan-European SRG secretariat or Smokers' movement to... have an organization that can rightly claim to represent 100 million European smokers (and voters) which could function as a central media and lobbying "voice". Rothmans Int. have expressed their interest in this project and would co-fund with us."
PM also planned to foster and promote misunderstanding between the people of the United States and Europe to promote its own ends:
"Europeans believe that Americans tend to be fanatical extremists went it comes to public health issues. We shall take this opportunity to use US-sourced 'ETS excess stories' (dismissal from work over smoking, career discrimination due to smoking, etc.) to help discredit all anti-smoking initiatives -American as well as European."
And once again, PM reveals its strategy of hiding behind, and working through, third-party Libertarian groups to do its bidding:
"The Plan calls for using libertarian groups (e.g., Social Affairs Unit, Arise) whenever possible to communicate this message..."
PM's Plan also explains the logic behind its urgent efforts to preserve smoking on airplanes, despite the relatively small amount of time people actually spend on airplanes:
"Although the time a smoker may spend in the air and at the airport may not constitute a large amount of time relative to the amount of time spent in the workplace for example, bans on airlines are highly visible and may disproportionately contribute to the deterioration of the social acceptability of smoking."
Only a few of PM's planned strategies are listed in this summary or in the quotes below. The document contains much more information and, at only 13 pages, is worth a read in its entirety, especially for Europeans.