Tobacco Documents Online

This confidential internal Philip Morris memo marked "attorney work product" shows that in all likelihood Philip Morris (PM) masterminded the 1997 and 1998 Master Settlement Agreement proposals. PM lawyers first came up with the idea of voluntarily accepting a total ban on tobacco advertising and event promotions ("Project Rainbow") in return for immunity from personal-injury lawsuits involving their products around 1990--many years before the attorneys general of 46 states ever thought of suing the tobacco industry.

The memo reveals that that the industry considers some types of limitations on their advertising and promotion to be quite minor, but perceives they are of great importance to the anti-tobacco community. These concessions are valuable bargaining chips to the industry because they can give away something of little value to them and in doing so, avoid more serious restrictions:

"Some concessions that may not be very important to us are probably important to our antagonists (e.g. bans on vending machines and sampling.) Therefore, we may be able to achieve a compromise without offering the most we are willing to concede."

Clearly the Cipollone case "rattled Philip Morris' cage," as it seems to have triggered them to start thinking about how they could manipulate the U.S. Congress into protecting them by enacting the "mother of all preemption"--the assurance of blanket immunity from future lawsuits.

It is also amazing to see that PM was fully prepared a full decade ago to voluntarily agree to severe restrictions on advertising and promotion--and yet so little has been achieved towards that end by the government and public health officials. Indeed, when people try to ban their advertising and promotion for public health reasons without handing them a "plum," the industry cries that this is a violation of their first amendment rights.

If government officials, attorneys general and health groups only knew back in 1991 how much Philip Morris was prepared to give up, perhaps we would have some more meaningful restrictions on their promotional activities in place today.

This 67 page R.J. Reynolds (RJR) document is a run-down on how the tobacco industry deals with threats. In one example from this document, RJR was threatened by a government-instituted smoking cessation program, and worked to defeat the program:

In 1986 the U.S. Department of Defense initiated smoking cessation programs in all branches of the armed services with a goal of reducing smoking prevalence among military personnel to 10%. The RJR document concludes, "Reports indicate that such goals are reachable," and then says, "RJR is seeking to limit the impact of cessation program." The financial impact, RJR determined, was "Possibly as high as $1.8 million annually" in cigarette sales. RJR's "Action Plan" was to "Posture [the cessation program] as discriminatory and unfair toward class of individuals loyal to and serving their country." Specific actions to fight the program were: "Organize and maintain Congressional opposition to continuation of [the program]. Continue contacts with Department of Defense officials and individual services to limit the impact of cessation programs." (Bates Page 507604615)

RJR also planned to fight measures that would allow states to mandate more informative health warnings on cigarette packages, saying "This would greatly increase RJR's exposure to adverse results in smoking and health litigation." RJR put the potential loss at "upward of several hundred million dollars annually." The overall strategy to fight these measures was to "Focus the debate on the success of [existing federally-mandated warning label] provision in communicating health warnings about smoking to the public." Their "fallback plan" was to throw communities a harmless bone, permitting laws to be passed instead that would only "Limit scope of preemption so that it does not prevent localities from reasonably regulating placement of billboards advertising cigarettes." (Bates page 507604591).

To fight cigarette excise taxes, RJR's overall plan was to "Focus debate on excise taxes as regressive, working man's tax rather than 'sin' taxes or user fee." Specific plans to oppose taxes included "Reintroduce legislative resolutions opposing increase in excise taxes," and "placing favorable op-ed articles from noted economists in major and select local papers." Costs to implement this plan included fees paid to anti-tax front groups, public relations groups, RJR employees and the Tobacco Institute.

For the issue of environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), RJR says, "Increased smoking restrictions affect consumption, and the beginnigns of lawsuit exposure in U.S. offer prediction of things to come internationally." RJR deems the financial impact of smoking restrictions to be "Substantial (expressed both in consumption fall-off and defense and political costs)..." It's also clear that Philip Morris was the leader in fighting efforts to regulate ETS worldwide: "Action Plan: Evaluate effectiveness and decide whether to join the current international activities led by PM." (Bates Page 507604593).