Tobacco Documents Online

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.

This is a 1996 memo from the tobacco industry-funded policy group called "Frontiers of Freedom." Frontiers of Freedom was created by Malcolm Wallop, a Republican ex-Senator from Wyoming. In this memo, Jeff Taylor of Frontiers writes to Alexander Spears of Lorillard to solicit funding. Taylor describes the activities in which Frontiers of Freedom engaged to attack the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's efforts to regulate the tobacco industry. The memo also shows how Frontiers managed to generate a clamor among Congressmembers for the praise of the relatively new group. Wallop writes, "One sure gauge of our growth took place recently when we presented 15 members of Congress with our 'Defender of Freedom' award. When we returned to the office, we had calls from a handful of other Members asking why they had not been recognized by Frontiers."

One of the "Achievements" Frontiers lists for 1996 was Wallop's guest-hosting of the Armstrong Williams talk show. Armstrong Williams was recently revealed to have accepted $240,000 in taxpayer funds from the Bush administration to comment positively on his show about Bush's "No Child Left Behind" education act. A USA Today article about the scandal can be seen at http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-01-06-williams-whitehouse_x.htm

Other policy topics on which Frontiers of Freedom was active include privatizing Social Security, privacy and anti-terrorism legislation (and, ironically, this was all back in 1996).