Tobacco Documents Online

This confidential Philip Morris document lists the arguments that the tobacco industry "must cover" in hearings for public smoking bills. Note the arguments that smoking bans discriminate against women, the disabled and blue collar workers while favoring white male executives, and the argument that smoking bans on airplanes will cause a fire hazard, because it will drive smokers into smoking in dangerous ways and places to evade the ban.

Ellen Merlo, Senior Vice President of Corporate Affairs at Philip Morris, gives quite revealing speeches. This speech describes Philip Morris' strategy and political activities in the New England states. In it, Merlo directly links Philip Morris' "Accommodation Program" to thr company's enacting of pre-emption laws at the state level. She even runs the words together into a single term, "Accommodation/Pre-emption." Merlo gives a complete nuts-and-bolts run down of what she refers to as "our preemption strategy" and "our preemption bills," boldly claiming company ownership of this novel political interference strategy that effectively stops people from taking action on smoking and health issues in their own communities. Merlo tells us PM's goal to enact their preemption laws in all 50 states. She tells us about PM's strategy to reign in boards of health, whose free-standing power to enact regulations PM fears. She also tells us that Philip Morris is not above pressing their own sales force, employees and even external employees at Kraft and Miller Beer, into taking political action on their behalf, and she makes clear that they also use the grocers associations and restaurant associations to do their bidding. According to Merlo, even your friendly local convenience store owner may actually be the eyes and ears of the Philip Morris Tobacco Company, reporting back on health-related efforts in your town. Documents like these reveal how deeply this corporation is involved in co-opting the democratic process to stop public health measures, right down to the street corner level in little cities and towns throughout the country. But then, they also tell us where WE can be most successful at getting around them, too.

This memo from Thomas Humber of the giant PR firm Burson-Marstellar (B-M) to Ellen Merlo of Philip Morris (PM) signals the start of PM's war against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) after EPA pronounced secondhand smoke a group A carcinogen.

Humber emphasizes to Merlo the need to discredit the EPA, portray the agency publicly as corrupt, encourage other businesses to jump in and oppose EPA, and to portray EPA as an agency under siege. Humber tells Merlo PM needs to sue EPA ("Sue the bastards!") as a way to "delay or cloud" other legal actions against the company, help the industry regain credibility and encourage other industries and companies to fight EPA.

Ironically, Humber says Philip Morris needs to keep major employers from voluntarily stampeding towards smoke-free workplace policies and at the same time position itself as a defender of democratic principles and protector of "rights for all."

Humber tells Merlo that

The memo also reveals the awesome power of major public relations firms to shape the American political landscape. Humber boasts how, through front groups like "Citizens for a Sound Economy" and the "Institute for Regulatory Policy," B-M arranged a symposium where the vice-president of the U.S. was a keynote speaker, then assured that the media surrounding the event was dominated by the corporate message of "overregulation."

Humber also discusses partnering with ventilation businesses, since they, too could profit from PM's stance that ventilation will solve the problems caused by secondhand smoke.

This memo from Philip Morris' (PM) public relations firm in Colorado, Karsh & Hagan, discusses the strategies of doing a test "rollout" of two PM programs: the Accommodation Program and its youth anti-smoking program.

The key line showing that Philip Morris' youth anti-smoking program is a strategy to preempt further legislation comes in the fifth paragraph of the memo. It says:

"While we accept that both programs [Accommodation and youth program] have significant value as major tactics in a strategy to achieve a kind of pre-emption, we believe the clutter of messages...in one community wil make measuring success of either program difficult."

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.