Taking on Big Tobacco

New York Times reporter Walt Bogdanich talks about Philip Morris’ $10 billion lawsuit against the American Broadcasting Companies and him for his reporting on how tobacco companies add nicotine to cigarettes.

 

IPR Launch Conference – A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing: The Corporate Subversion of Public Health

Research conducted by the Tobacco Control Research Group at the University of Bath has examined the political strategies tobacco companies have developed to gain access to policy élites and shape public health agendas. Tobacco companies constantly innovate in the techniques they use to influence policy that affects their interests.

The findings show that seemingly benign initiatives – such as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programmes and the European Union (EU) Better Regulation agenda – have provided mechanisms for tobacco companies to progress their own interests and subvert public health concerns and priorities.

As a result, the research stresses the vital importance of critically assessing and monitoring how such initiatives are used, in order to ensure balanced and effective policymaking.

 

Origins of the Cigarette Catastrophe and the Case for Abolition

On Friday, March 29, 2013, Dr. Robert Proctor spoke to the Johns Hopkins community about cigarettes or “the deadliest artifact in the history of human civilization,” and the cause for their abolition.

Dr. Proctor recently published “Golden Holocaust: Origins of the Cigarette Catastrophe and the Case for Abolition” (2011), and much of his research and writings focus on the history of scientific controversy, expert witnessing, tobacco duplicity, and the history of ignorance. Proctor was the first historian to testify against the tobacco industry as an expert witness (in 1998), and continues to serve as a witness in the U.S. and abroad.