More Dirty Tricks from Tobacco Flacks

Stan Glantz, a professor of medicine at the University of California-San Francisco who researches the lobbying and PR tricks of the tobacco industry, has just published two new papers on the topic in leading medical journals.

• In the June issue of the American Journal of Public Health, Glantz joins Pamela M. Ling, MD and Anne Landman of the American Lung Association in examining the tobacco industry's advertising campaigns which purport to discourage children from smoking. In reality, the tobacco industry's own documents show that most youth smoking prevention programs it has supported are designed to promote industry political and marketing aims. "The tobacco industry is aggressively expanding similar programs
  worldwide," Glantz stressed. "No health department or school should be fooled by the tobacco industry's 'youth smoking prevention programs,'" which "do not prevent and may even encourage youth smoking."
  
• The June issue of Tobacco Control, a specialist publication of the British Medical Journal, features an article looking at tobacco industry funding of the hospitality industry -- restaurants, taverns and hotels. Glantz cites internal industry documents which show that tobacco manufacturers gave donations to more than 65 hospitality groups in the USA alone as part of an "aggressive and effective worldwide campaign to recruit hospitality associations, such as restaurant associations, to serve as the tobacco industry's surrogate in fighting against smoke-free environments. ... The tobacco industry, led by Philip Morris, made financial contributions to existing hospitality associations or, when it did not find an association willing to work for tobacco interests, created its own 'association' in order to prevent the growth of smoke-free environments. ... Through the myth of lost profits, the tobacco industry has fooled the hospitality industry into embracing expensive ventilation equipment, while in reality 100% smoke-free laws have been shown to have no effect on business revenues, or even to improve them. The tobacco industry has effectively turned the hospitality industry into its de facto lobbying arm on clean indoor air."