Tobacco Documents Online

INFOTAB WORKSHOP GROUP DISCUSSIONS - WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 21 - Maurice Rooney Group_3___"Fifth_World Conference_on Smoking_and_Health" -------------- ------- ----- (International Initiatives) -------------------------- We had some difficulty in defining what areas could be tackled on an international basis. The value of the discussion was that though in theory there might be a whole lot of avenues, in practice we could see that there were difficulties. There were problems in that the national situation differs from country to country and to send people from one country to another might well bring up issues of credibility. But we feLt that there was considerable need for international assistance between NMAs and that the concept of mobile action squads which Bill Kloepfer mentioned would need further investigation. One concept was that INFOTAB could have a list of experts for an international fire brigade. This would have to be kept very confidential but it would be very useful to have. On the question of advertising - we must not overlook the support that has been offered by the A.A. etc. defending the principle of freedom of advertising in general and the need to enlist as many allies in other fields, such as alcohol, confectionary, cosmetics and things of that nature. The question of personalisation of the attack on the industry was discussed at a fair amount of length and although it was thought that it would be nice to reply in kind to the gentlemen who are lobbying against the industry, in other words that those who are quite happy to call the manufacturers of tobacco "merchants of death" could be singled out and their dedication to the destruction of the industry could be highlighted rather than their real interest in the health of their fellow men. But it was felt that this might be counter-productive and no firm conclusion was reached.

2 A definite area for initiatives was that of the international organisations and there was a need to establish who were our enemies and friends in those organisations. The suggestion by Bill Kloepfer that the established organisations in the developed countries could provide media training to representatives of NMAs from the developing countries was welcomed. The main conclusion that we reached was the value of INFOTAB as a gold-mine of information and as the hub around which the whole wheel of international initiatives would circulate. It might well be that a specialised group could be formed to explore some of these issues further.