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Philip Morris, the multinational company best known for Marlboro cigarettes, has developed a corporate strategy to undermine a global treaty and fight tobacco regulation around the world, leaked documents reveal.
A slide presentation from 2014 entitled “Corporate Affairs Approaches and Issues” details a plan to counter plain packaging – the standardised packs and labelling that have recently been introduced in the UK. A World Health Organisation treaty urges their adoption. Tobacco companies have fought them through the courts in a number of countries, as a major Guardian investigation this week revealed.
The document lists the “components of a preventive packaging plan” including challenging the introduction of plain packs as unconstitutional and in breach of trade agreements and copyrights. The Guardian investigation revealed letters and court papers to eight governments in Africa from multinational tobacco companies that used some or all of those arguments to oppose regulations, including plain packaging.
The Philip Morris International (PMI) presentation suggests “potential process-based roadblocks” to hold up plain packaging and urges staff to “take command over media reporting”.
The document, part of a cache passed to Reuters, makes it clear that a PMI priority is to keep the issue of tobacco taxes out of the hands of the ministry of health and within the remit of the minister of finance in countries where it is doing business. “Ensure that tobacco taxation policy remains driven by MoFs,” it says.
The fear of the tobacco industry is that health ministers will be persuaded by public health campaigners and agencies such as the WHO to hike tobacco taxes – a move that has been proven to reduce smoking. Finance ministers, however, can potentially be persuaded that there is a risk of losing revenue.
The document shows PMI is also alarmed by the possibility of countries getting together to agree a higher tax, which prevents smuggling – the main argument the industry uses against tax hikes by single governments. The strategy is to “prevent regional tax initiatives (tax harmonization, earmarking)”.
PMI’s corporate affairs staff must “play the political game”, moving tobacco issues away from the ministry of health and finding allies that cannot be ignored. “Allow for political cover and political wins,” it says, and “roadblocks are as important as solutions”.
The documents reveal the tobacco giant’s opposition to the WHO’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), which underpins the anti-smoking interventions such as plain packs and raising taxes that governments globally are trying to introduce.
At meetings of ministers and officials from governments that have signed the treaty, PMI has done its best to lobby, even though the tobacco companies and their advocates are excluded from the conferences.
During the 2014 FCTC meeting in Moscow, the documents show, PMI set up a “coordinating room” outside the conference. At the end of the meeting, on 18 October 2014, Chris Koddermann, the executive in charge, sent an email congratulating his 33-strong team on their success in diluting or blocking measures intended to strengthen tobacco controls and reduce cigarette sales.
Overall, the company achieved its “trade-related campaign objectives”, including “avoiding a declaration of health over trade” and “avoiding the recognition of the FCTC as an international standard”, wrote Koddermann. The achievements were the culmination of a two-year effort, his email said.
Philip Morris International says there is nothing improper about its executives engaging with government officials. “As a company in a highly regulated industry, speaking with governments is part of our everyday business,” said Tony Snyder, PMI’s vice-president of communications. “The fact that Reuters has seen internal emails discussing our engagement with governments does not make those interactions inappropriate.”
Deborah Arnott, the chief executive of action on Smoking and Health, said:
“Yet again the appalling hypocrisy and dishonesty of the tobacco industry has been revealed for all to see. On the one hand, Philip Morris executives talk about the end of smoking, and a new world of reduced-harm nicotine products. On the other hand, they’re making enormous efforts to subvert and undermine the key world treaty on tobacco control.
PMI’s actions make clear that it plans to continue to sell its lethal products to as many people as possible, particularly in developing countries. Nothing this company says about its positive intentions can be taken at face value.”
(THE GUARDIAN)
