Tobacco Documents Online

< INFOTAB WORKSHOP GROUP DISCUSSIONS - TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 20 - Harald Konig Grou~_1__"Mobilising_Allies - Threats - Fallacies - Realities" ---- ---------------------------------- The group discussed not only the role of our traditional allies but in evaluating the Winnipeg conference found that with the fact that our adversaries there had actually shifted their main argumentation away from medical argumentation to the political area in that they declared war on the tobacco industry, gave us a new way of argumentation in the following way. First they declared war on us and they chose the political field as the battleground. This gives us more than in the past the possibility to concentrate our argumentation on this declared war. This gives us more than in the past possibilities to find allies who feel that they have by far gone beyond anything which could be declared the policy of the World Health Organization but really is the policy of a fanatic group. The group felt that there are more than in the past possibilities to find publishers, media and other allies who accept this position of an industry on which war had been declared. Second it would give industry more than in the past the possibility to itself cooperate with the independent scientific community and use scientific sound argumentation against these political attacks. It was mentioned that especially on the question of passive smoking there are very good reasons to believe that this question, from a scientific point of view, can be solved in a positive way for us, which means that this would give us an argumentation to go against the declared will of making smoking socially unacceptable and especially the new dimension that the W.H.O. has expressed against the social discrimination of people who work on responsible places in the tobacco industry. Second main point was the FAO paper on economic impact of tobacco growing and tobacco earnings in developing countries. The group felt that this paper gives us a very good and very useful ammunition

2 that should be exploited further and may be combined with the thought that had already been brought up after the Stockholm conference that is to find out in the selected developing countries with a questionnaire to medical practitioners on the spot what their real medical problems are in their respective countries. And then combine that with priority lists on the other hand with the economic impact that tobacco growing in that country has for the further development of that economy.