Philip Morris Hid Link to Research Facility -Study

[Tab]

LONDON (Reuters) - Philip Morris, one of the world's leading tobacco manufacturers, was involved in research into the health effects of smoking 30 years ago but did not reveal data on the dangers of passive smoking, scientists said on Thursday.

Although the tobacco industry claimed for many years that it was not aware of the toxic effects of cigarettes, the researchers said material from internal industry documents revealed Philip Morris used a German research facility to study the health impact of smoking from the early 1970s.

"Arrangements were made to conceal the process, not only from the wider public, but also from many within Philip Morris, although some senior executives did know," said Martin McKee, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in London, in research published online by The Lancet medical journal.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=564&ncid=564&e=7&u=/nm/20041111/ts_nm/health_smoking_dc

[Warpy]

1. My mother, who died from smoking last year

said that the health news on smoking had never been news, that cigarettes had been called "coffin nails" ever since she was a kid.

The only new information regards all the ways tobacco kills, and the mechanisms for many of them.

That tobacco execs hid this stuff for years isn't anything new or different, either.

Let's face it, smoking is dumb. After you get addicted, the only pleasure comes from scratching an itch. Not only are you offending people, stinking up the place, and screwing up your health, you're also giving a lot of money to some of the worst corporate weasels out there.

[phasev]

2. exactly n/t

[gratuitous]

3. Yup, institute was known as INBIFO

Philip Morris conducted its research overseas so as to better hide it from public health groups. Meanwhile, their public pronouncements were always of the "more research needs to be done" type. Knowing that their customers were addicted to a deadly habit, they knew that by clouding the issue in the public mind, they could retain the number of victims to keep their profit margins up while publicly claiming that they were doing everything they could.

In the 1950s, Philip Morris executives publicly claimed that if it was proved that smoking was harmful to health, they would go out of business the next day. In the 1970s, in internal memoranda, they were congratulating themselves on their "brilliant" strategy of confusing the public record about smoking and health, while guaranteeing their profits and insulating themselves from any financial repercussions from the estates of their victims.

Now, of course, Philip Morris is all about how bad smoking is, and "everybody knows it." It doesn't take long from a post or a story like this before you hear the company line come out from people who don't realize they've been manipulated by corporate rhetoric.

And now, what do we hear from corporations anytime there's a controversy over their profits balanced against the public good? "More research needs to be done." Or "The evidence isn't conclusive." Think about global climate change as just one example. We are clearly poisoning our environment through our lifestyle practices, and just as clearly we could ameliorate much of that damage except that it would cause extractive industries to suffer. So we're subjected to another round of shrieking about "environmental extremists" from corporate mouthpieces while people, usually in the poorest and worst served areas of the planet, die daily from pollution of their water and air.

Twenty-five years from now, the public perception will be "Of course burning fossil fuels and clear cutting forests are bad things. Everyone knows that, and we've all known it for years! But what can we do about it now?" Meanwhile, the environmental plunderers will have looted the planet for everything they could get, and will refuse to accept or even acknowledge responsibility for their own actions, because "everybody knows" how rapacious their practices were.

[teryang]

4. Exactly, and these corporate disinformation practices

...have been adopted whole cloth and then some by government and so called news organizations.

Fox's "fair and balanced" logo was actually one carved out by one of madison ave spinster artists like Hill & Knowlton. They and others manufactured talking points to defend big tobacco, asbestos, fen-phen and other corporate attacks on the public health.

[dArKeR]

5. I read Delay, Hastert and Lott were directly dealing with drug trafficers

and mob murderers in South and Central America.

Big Tobacco - by Mark Schapiro

Tobacco is one of the most globalized industries on the planet. More cigarettes are traded than any other single product, some trillion "sticks," as they're known in the business, passing international borders each year. As a result, American brands have been propelled into every corner of the world, with just four companies controlling 70 percent of the global market. Marlboro, Kool, Kent: They have become as omnipresent around the world as they are here in the United States. With declining sales in this country, foreign markets have become increasingly critical to the tobacco companies' financial health: The top US tobacco firms now earn more from cigarettes sold abroad than in the United States. How they got there is a tale that leads straight into a global underground of smugglers and money launderers who have played a key role in facilitating the tobacco companies' entry into foreign markets…

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020506&s=schapiro

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How Big Tobacco Subverted Anti-Terror Act

How Big Tobacco nicked terror act Firms accused of smuggling cigarettes feared language on laundering

Mark Shaprio
MSNBC

NEW YORK, June 13 — On the one-month anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the tobacco industry took aim at Congress’ first effort to respond to the crisis with a major piece of new legislation — the Patriot Act. Why would America’s largest tobacco companies take an interest in a bill designed to go after America’s terrorist adversaries?

THE ANSWER: legal liability. Not that the tobacco companies are terrorists, but some of their marketing and distribution strategies look awfully similar to the illegal financing systems used by terrorists. At least they do from the U.S. Department of Justice perspective.

To get to the bottom of this story, we need to return to those traumatized days last fall, in which our lives were filled with fears of another terrorist attack, the retaliation of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, and shock and horror at the revelation that anthrax had contaminated the halls of
Congress.

http://lists.essential.org/pipermail/intl-tobacco/2002q2/000750.html

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Cigarette giant denies smoking leads to cancer - Imperial Tobacco

A giant British tobacco company is to take the unprecedented step this week of denying there is a proven causal link between smoking and lung cancer in the first case against a cigarette firm to go to a UK court.

The unique defense, to be heard in Scotland's Court of Session, denies decades of scientific proof of such a link, which was accepted by the British Government in 1957.

Imperial Tobacco is being sued for £500,000 (US$835,000) by Margaret McTear, whose husband, Alf, a 60-a-day smoker from Beith near Glasgow, died of lung cancer in 1993. The case, which starts tomorrow, will be scrutinized across Europe by lawyers who want to bring similar actions against tobacco firms.


http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2003/10/06/2003070628

[dArKeR]

6. I'm shocked to see in WA Indiana Jones type poster AD sketches promoting

smoking. But the location the tobacco industry places them could only be directed and managed by Satan. Child eye level in windows facing the street. I'll go out and take a pic of one today and post it later in the day.

[Cocoa]

7. this should void their settlement n/t