Anne Landman's News Articles

Working to Make A Difference (In Their Favor): The Arts Dollars of Philip Morris

Cigarette maker Altria/Philip Morris (PM) recently announced that it is moving its New York headquarters to Richmond, Virginia, and that it will end its corporate sponsorship of the arts in New York. Predictably, New York arts organizations are crying over the loss of cigarette dollars. These organizations sadly believe that their acceptance of PM dollars has been benign. In truth, these organizations have helped PM advance its credibility and legitimacy with policymakers, and have done tremendous harm to the country.

It's a Tobacco Thing, You Wouldn't Understand: Virginia Commonwealth University and the Tobacco Industry

It's no secret that Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) shares a cozy relationship with the tobacco industry. In fact, VCU and the industry have long supported each other in a number of ways.

In 1991, while other medical schools including Harvard and Johns Hopkins were divesting their tobacco stocks, VCU's longtime President, Dr. Eugene Trani, was working to make VCU more tobacco-friendly, negotiating a new smoking policy that explicitly permitted smoking in 41 out of 42 of the University's facilities. The one area where smoking was not permitted was VCU's hospital, since this would have made it ineligible for accreditation, and hence government Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements. Philip Morris CEO Michael Szymanczyk was the keynote speaker at VCU's graduation ceremony in 2003. In 2005, USA Today reported that PM had endowed a Chair of International Business in the University's School of Business, and that PM was at that time funding 12 studies at VCU accounting for $4.4 million. Also in 2005, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported that PM was investing $300 million in a new Virginia Biotechnology Research Park and that VCU had been closely involved in the negotiations to create the facility. The Dispatch wrote that, thanks to the Biotech Park, "VCU is poised to become a partner in key areas of compatible research with Philip Morris."

The Untold Story of How & Why Philip Morris is Pushing for FDA Regulation

It may seem incongruous to the average person why Philip Morris (PM) would back legislation to restrict its business, yet that is what PM seems to be is doing by supporting S. 625, the "Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act," the bill that would give the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authority over tobacco products. After all, PM has a corporate mandate to increase profits for its shareholders, so PM would not support this legislation if it wasn't going to benefit its bottom line, and it is practically an axiom in public health that whatever benefits PM's bottom line is going to be bad for public health. That's what makes this bill especially troubling to people who study tobacco industry documents; it is clear that PM had a hand in crafting it. That alone sounds like a lot, but PM's efforts to enact it are clearly delivering the company a hefty side-benefit of causing dissent within the tobacco control community over its passage.

Channeling Fox through the Wall Street Journal?

  • Topics: Media, Tobacco
  • As Australian-born media magnate Rupert Murdoch gets ever closer to adding the coveted Wall Street Journal to his media empire, it is instructive to examine how Murdoch's ownership and corporate relationships have affected media coverage in the past. Information on this can be found in tobacco industry documents.

    Big Tobacco's Racial Profiling Challenged in Court

    Gloria Tucker's mother and grandmother both smoked cigarettes. Both died from smoking-related health problems. An African American woman, Tucker believes that her loved ones' deaths were due to "racial profiling" by big tobacco companies. And she's got the documents to prove it.

    On June 7, Miami attorney J.B. Harris filed a lawsuit on Tucker's behalf. The suit seeks $1 billion in punitive damages collectively from Philip Morris USA, Lorillard Tobacco, R.J. Reynolds, and Liggett Group. It accuses the companies of using predatory marketing techniques to target African Americans. Central to the case are hundreds of tobacco industry documents that detail how companies designed cigarettes especially for African Americans; tailored marketing campaigns to lower-income, less-educated African Americans; and continued to do so long after the U.S. Surgeon General's 1964 declaration that cigarettes are hazardous to health.

    Nigeria Strikes Back at British American Tobacco

    If you think the U.S. tobacco industry is bad, you'll find the behavior of many of the same companies overseas to be truly shocking.

    Happily, the industry is beginning to be held accountable for its operations in the Global South. Nigeria's two largest states are following the lead of U.S. states, in suing British American Tobacco (BAT) of Nigeria, its U.K. parent company and Philip Morris International for the health care costs of treating sick smokers, The Times of London reported this week.

    The new lawsuits demonstrate the importance of the online public databases of previously secret tobacco industry documents. The 1998 U.S. Master Settlement Agreement required major tobacco companies to reveal millions of pages documenting unethical -- and even illegal -- marketing, public relations and lobbying campaigns. A lesser-known treasure trove is the British American Tobacco Documents Archive, which has made some seven million pages of BAT documents freely available. These documents are of particular importance to countries like Nigeria.

    Deja Vu All Over Again: Bush Admin Interference in Judicial Matters

    The Bush administration's political rigging of judicial matters is all over the news. There's the firing of the eight U.S. Attorneys. Then there's Sharon Eubanks, the lead attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) racketeering case against tobacco companies. Eubanks recently told the Washington Post that Bush appointees at DOJ pressured her to weaken the federal government's case against Big Tobacco.

    The more things change, the more they stay the same. In February 2000, the New York Times reported that then-Governor Bush's political advisor, Karl Rove, had interfered with the Texas Attorney General's plans to bring a lawsuit against major U.S. tobacco companies in order to recoup state Medicaid funds spent treating sick smokers.

    How did Rove pressure Texas Attorney General Dan Morales not to file the suit? He helped draft a 1996 push poll aimed at maligning Morales. The phone poll was financed with tobacco company money, and was carried out by a company called Public Opinion Strategies, which describes itself as a "Republican polling firm."

    The Appearance of an Independent Judiciary Goes Up in Smoke

    Things are looking grimmer and grimmer for U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

    The scandal involving the firing of eight attorneys has led to accusations that Gonzales runs the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to suit the Bush administration's right-wing political ideology instead of to protect the interest of citizens. Now Sharon Eubanks, the lead attorney in DOJ's racketeering case against the major American tobacco companies, has emerged to provide further evidence of judicial rigging.

    What Philip Morris Seeks in FDA Regulation: Preservation of the Status Quo

    A 23-page, formerly "privileged and confidential" company discussion document outlines Philip Morris' thinking behind its 180-degree turn from strongly opposing U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) oversight of cigarettes to in fact driving such regulation. It clues us in to the company's logic in proceeding down this path and what the company hopes for and fears most in FDA regulation. It was written by Mark Berlind, who was Assistant General Counsel of Philip Morris Worldwide Regulatory Affairs in 1998.

    University of Virginia Gets an "F" in Tobacco Industry Studies

    On February 9, 2007, the University of Virginia (UVa) announced its acceptance of a $25 million gift from cigarette maker Philip Morris, to support biomedical research and "business leadership." In its press release, UVa said the gift created a partnership between PM and the university "in a number of key areas in which they share a common interest."

    That a medical school would find common interests with a company whose products kill 440,000 Americans annually is troubling, to say the least. Moreover, an analysis of tobacco industry documents published by the medical journal Academic Medicine in October 2004 clearly shows that the tobacco industry seeks to buy legitimacy by funding research -- biomedical research, in particular. Study author Nathaniel Wander said that he found "PM wanted to be seen to contribute to medical research to counter the image of harm caused by its cigarettes." Such grantmaking has long been a centerpiece of the tobacco industry's decades-long propaganda campaign to keep the public confused about the health hazards of smoking and, more recently, the hazardous effects of secondhand smoke on nonsmokers. In addition, the covert influence of the tobacco industry on academic research is well established.

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