Bring, Murray H.
Maxwell, H; Murray, R.W.
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.