Tobacco Advisory Council

Tobacco Advisory Council (TAC) was a British tobacco industry trade and lobbying group that served as the U.K. equivalent of the Tobacco Institute in the U.S.

TAC primarily operated to delay and obstruct tobacco control legislation and preserve the social acceptability of smoking. Member companies included the Gallaher, British American Tobacco, Imperial Tobacco, and Rothmans Tobacco. TAC engaged in various programs and activities aimed at confusing the public about the scientific consensus that secondhand smoke harms the health of nonsmokers. The public relations company Daniel J. Edelman Ltd. (now known as Edelman), assisted TAC and in 1987 prepared a proposal, "Managing the ETS [Environmental Tobacco Smoke] Issue" that stated the overall strategy was to "maintain doubt" about the health effects of secondhand smoke "principally via third parties." 

Minutes of a 1979 meeting of a subcommittee of the Tobacco Advisory Council describe plans to set up the smokers' rights group FOREST (an acronym that stands for "Freedom Organisation for the Right To Enjoy Smoking Tobacco"). FOREST was to act as product-free, arm's length lobbying group for the tobacco industry with no apparent ties to tobacco companies. In the meeting, members of the tobacco industry rehearsed how they would distance themselves from the group when answering press inquiries about FOREST after its launch, saying "T.A.C. should reply that while they were aware of its existence, [the industry] had no connection with the new organization...]. " The General Manager of Public Affairs at Gallaher Tobacco stated that "his company should reply that FOREST was an independent organisation, that it seemed a good idea for it to support smokers and that the company provided financial support and nothing more." FOREST was supposed to appear to the public to be independent from the industry, but it derived its funding almost completely from tobacco companies and their allies.

This type of "smokers rights" front group activity by the British tobacco industry preceded similar activity by U.S. tobacco companies, such as R.J. Reynolds' "Partisan Project" (c. 1987) and Philip Morris' National Smokers Alliance (c. 1993).

Other SourceWatch Resources

 * Front Groups
 * Third party technique
 * Tobacco industry