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Friday, January 08, 2016TOBACCO

Article Spotlight: Philip Morris and the Use of Third Parties to Oppose Ingredient Disclosure Regulations

Every few months, we highlight a newly published article/post/report along with a few key industry documents used in the paper as a primary source:

Velicer C, Glantz SA (2015) Hiding in the Shadows: Philip Morris and the Use of Third Parties to Oppose Ingredient Disclosure Regulations. PLoS ONE 10(12): e0142032. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0142032

In 1996 Massachusetts proposed regulations that would require tobacco companies to disclose information about the ingredients in their products. This December 2015 paper examines the strategies employed by Philip Morris to stop these regulations from being implemented. The authors used tobacco documents to demonstrate the tobacco companies' historical use of third parties to form coalitions to oppose ingredient disclosure regulations and how these coalitions have prevented regulations by creating the appearance of local opposition to the measures.

Key Documents from the UCSF Truth Tobacco Industry Documents:
  • Chayet N (1996) Ingredient Disclosure. 12 Nov 1996. Available: https://industrydocuments.library.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/tnxp0076
    Document from a communications firm contracted by Philip Morris that warns "food police" could use a similar approach to food "containing caffeine, fat, or whatever else zealous consumer organizations believe is harmful."

  • Salinsky R (1997) M.G.L. Chapter 94, Section 307a, Proposed Implementation Regulations. 20 Feb 1997. Available: https://industrydocuments.library.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/yylp0054
    Richard Salinsky, then president of the Best Petroleum Company based in Massachusetts and member of the Society of Independent Gasoline Marketers of America (SIGMA), argued in a public comment to the Dept of Public Health, that the proposed regulations did not protect consumers because it could create the illusion of safer cigarettes. Stalinsky said, "rather than having an effect of reducing risks to public health, [the regulations] have the opposite effect of increasing such risks by creating a false illusion that some brands of cigarettes are ‘more healthy’ than others."

  • Vermont Ingredients Disclosure Plan. 16 Aug 1996. Available: https://industrydocuments.library.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/qjyh0045
    Philip Morris political strategy for fighting ingredient disclosure in Vermont that mirrored its Massachusetts activities in 1996 and 1997 and provides a more detailed description of its two-phase approach to defeat the bill: (1) building third party alliances (the “educational outreach”), and (2) legislative phase.

  • Project Breakthrough. 1994. Available: https://industrydocuments.library.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/pyhc0003
    RJ Reynolds launched "Project Breakthrough" a campaign to convince Americans that anti-smoking advocates wanted cigarettes to be completely prohibited. The campaign was aimed at spreading the fear that other products could be made illegal including alcohol, beef, pork, private property, logging, fur, cholesterol and motorcycles.

Friday, December 11, 2015DRUGTOBACCO

IDL has launched its new Login feature!

By logging in from the home page (https://industrydocuments.library.ucsf.edu/), you can:

  • Save your bookmarks and search histories indefinitely
  • Set and save your search preferences
  • Set display preferences for search results, saved documents, and search histories
Register with your email address to create an account!
Thursday, November 19, 2015TOBACCO

Over 1100 New Tobacco Documents Added

1,187 new documents were added to the Truth Tobacco Industry Documents today:

Monday, October 19, 2015TOBACCO

E-Cigarette websites captured and preserved

Did you know the average life of a website is 100 days?

Information on the web is constantly changing (reference rot) and disappearing (link rot) - sites that were there a year ago may not be there today.

Using the Internet Archive's web archiving service, Archive-It, we have been crawling, capturing and preserving websites related to the marketing of e-cigs and their equivalent in the belief that continued access to this content is vital to understanding growing usage. Much of the marketing for these products takes place online and we hope this project will provide valuable data on marketing techniques which can be used to support research, inform regulatory decisions and demonstrate industry strategies.

Come check out the UCSF E-Cigarette Web Archive and see how the major e-cigarette brand websites change over time - not only their imagery but also their language!

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Thursday, October 08, 2015TOBACCO

Another batch of industry documents posted!

148 new documents were posted to the Truth Tobacco Industry Documents today -

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Features and Fixes:

Thanks to all of our users that provided constructive feedback over the last few months!
We have a few items we would like to point out that have come out of our conversations with you:

1) We now have more options for sorting your results -
- by the date the document was added to the industry's website
- by the date the document was added to the UCSF Truth Tobacco Industry Documents website

2) We have a new feature that allows a user to open the PDF of a document outside of the TTID site and in their own native browser. We realize many people were used to viewing/searching/printing PDFs using the PDF viewer that was configured in the browser of their choice. So we have added this feature (View --> PDF) in the "Actions" drop-down menu in the "Document View" page.
Tuesday, September 22, 2015TOBACCO

New Industry Documents Added in September

186 new documents were added to the Truth Tobacco Industry Documents.

Includes:
Thursday, September 10, 2015TOBACCO

Big Tobacco and Drugstore Chains...A Long, Cozy Relationship

David Tuller and Lisa Bero's Viewpoint article in today's JAMA Oncology, doi:10.1001/jamaoncol.2015.2621 calls out the long and very intimate relationship between cigarette companies and the retailers responsible for key public health functions such as selling prescription medications and otc health aids. Using the Truth Tobacco Industry Documents, the authors found that, prior to the 2014 CVS decision, all leading chain drugstores sold not only cigarettes and related goods but had collaborated closely with tobacco companies to "boost point-of-purchase sales, test market new products, shape public attitudes toward smoking, and thwart regulatory efforts." See the documents: