Tobacco industry strategies to undermine tobacco control activities at the World Health Organization

Tobacco industry strategies to undermine tobacco control activities at the World Health Organization, Report of the Committee of Experts on Tobacco Industry Documents, July 2000. 260 pp.

Summary of published paper:

This 260 page paper published by the World Health Organization in 2000 is a detailed examination of information found in tobacco industry documents that shows tobacco companies have operated for many years with the deliberate purpose of subverting the World Health Organization's efforts to control tobacco use. The heretofore unknown subversion efforts have been elaborate, well financed, sophisticated, and usually invisible. The paper demonstrates the scale and intensity of the often deceptive strategies and tactics tobacco companies used in their anti-WHO activities.

The report shows that tobacco companies instigated global strategies to discredit and impede WHO’s ability to carry out its mission. The tobacco companies’ campaign against WHO was rarely directed at the merits of the public health issues raised by tobacco use. Instead, tobacco companies sought to divert attention from the public health issues, to reduce budgets for the scientific and policy activities carried out by WHO, to pit other UN agencies against WHO, to convince developing countries that WHO’s tobacco control program was a “First World” agenda carried out at the expense of the developing world, to distort the results of important scientific studies on tobacco, and to discredit WHO as an institution.

Although these strategies and tactics were frequently devised at the highest levels of tobacco companies, the role of tobacco industry officials in carrying out these strategies was often concealed. In their campaign against WHO, the documents show that tobacco companies hid behind a variety of ostensibly independent quasi-academic, public policy, and business organizations whose tobacco industry funding was not disclosed. The documents also show that tobacco company strategies to undermine WHO relied heavily on international and scientific experts with hidden financial ties to the industry. Perhaps most disturbing, the documents show that tobacco companies quietly influenced other UN agencies and representatives of developing countries to resist WHO’s tobacco control initiatives.

Related SourceWatch and TobaccoWiki resources

 * Boca Raton Action Plan
 * Whitecoat Project
 * Philip Morris Corporate Affairs
 * World Health Organization Technical Advisory Group on Tobacco and Health