Transnational Tobacco Company Research Articles

Pharmaceuticalisation as the tobacco industry’s endgame

ContextDeclining smoking prevalence and denormalisation of tobacco in developed countries reduced transnational tobacco company (TTC) profit during 1990s and 2000s. As these companies faced increasingly restrictive policies and lawsuits, they...

Hosting the Tobacco Industry Supply Chain and Political Interference.

We found no comprehensive studies on the location of transnational tobacco and leaf company (TTLC) subsidiaries (business entities they control) or the consequences of their presence on health policy. Here we assess (1) the global reach of TTLCs by mapping their tobacco growing and manufacturing subsidiaries and (2) the relationship between in-country presence of the tobacco industry and their power and interference. Data on subsidiaries were collated through systematic searching for countries' supply chain activities in documents and web pages. Cross-sectional multiple regression analysis was used to assess the association between the number of agricultural and manufacturing TTLCs and the Tobacco Industry Interference score, and the degree to which these were mediated by tobacco control, good governance, and economic importance of tobacco. TTLC supply chain activity had global reach. As the number of TTLCs with tobacco growing and manufacturing activities rose, interference increased significantly. Interference was associated with poorer tobacco control. The association with more TTLCs undertaking final product manufacturing was related to higher-value tobacco exports but was not related to tobacco making a bigger contribution to the economy. TTLCs continue to control the global tobacco supply chain through their globe-spanning subsidiaries. The presence of TTLCs in a country is associated with political interference. Countries should consider their participation in the tobacco supply chain alongside the understanding that they are likely to cede political power to TTLCs, potentially undermining the health of their populations. Tobacco control research has traditionally concentrated on the demand side of tobacco. Our results lend support to calls for more research on the supply of tobacco. Governments should require tobacco companies to provide detailed, up-to-date information in an easily accessible format on in-country supply chain activities. Policymakers should take the likelihood of political interference in health and environmental policy into account when making decisions about foreign direct investment offered by the tobacco industry.

Identifying misleading corporate narratives: The application of linguistic and qualitative methods to commercial determinants of health research.

Narratives are key to the way corporations represent themselves to the outside world, are important to the development of shared understandings and ultimately determine whether and how corporations are able to influence societal norms and participate in policy debates. A leaked corporate affairs strategy document, from the world's largest transnational tobacco company, Philip Morris International (PMI), suggests a company concerned about credibility; it highlights "normalization" as a key strategic priority until at least 2024. This suggests that the PMI are seeking to rehabilitate their image and alter perceptions of their business. We designed a mixed-methods analysis of corporately authored content, combining quantitative querying of large bodies of text (Corpus Linguistics) with inductive coding of key themes to critically examine PMI's corporate language and how these themes might impact public health debates. We systematically analysed a sample of PMI's corporate communications (n = 170), comparing investor-facing (investor reports, slides and presentations as well as annual reports) and public-facing (YouTube content and Webpage content) communications covering a period of eight years (2012-2019). Our analysis identifies how PMI's misleading external communication contradicts its core business focus and may threaten public health. In public-facing communications, PMI stress their commitment to transformation and change, while in investor-facing communications, they focus on cigarettes and reiterate the strength of their existing cigarette brand portfolios. This suggests that webpage and YouTube content provide a means through which PMI attempt to neutralise negative public perception of tobacco-product related harms and to present themselves as advocates of "better" consumer choice and even public health. The recurrence of transformation, sustainability, and science, as well as the co-option of united-nations terminology in their external-facing communications may serve to legitimise their involvement in policy arenas from which they currently excluded. We present a novel method through which corporate narratives can be monitored and critically assessed.

Turning a threat into an opportunity: British American Tobacco’s weakening of the Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products

BackgroundPrevious research has outlined transnational tobacco company (TTC) efforts to undermine implementation of the Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products (Protocol) and evidence of ongoing TTC complicity in...

Exploring the Twitter activity around the eighth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control

BackgroundTobacco companies’ intentions to influence the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) via the Conference of Parties (COP; the official biannual meeting where Parties review the Convention) are well...

PL 01.01 Current Status of Smoking Cessation Program (Tobacco Control)

PL 01.01 Current Status of Smoking Cessation Program (Tobacco Control)

KT&G: From Korean monopoly to ‘a global name in the tobacco industry’

ABSTRACTUntil the late 1980s, the former South Korean tobacco monopoly KT&G was focused on the protected domestic market. The opening of the market to foreign competition, under pressure from the U.S. Trade Representative, led to a steady erosion of market share over the next 10 years. Drawing on company documents and industry sources, this paper examines the adaptation of KT&G to the globalization of the South Korean tobacco industry since the 1990s. It is argued that KT&G has shifted from a domestic monopoly to an outward-looking, globally oriented business in response to the influx of transnational tobacco companies. Like other high-income countries, South Korea has also seen a decline in smoking prevalence as stronger tobacco control measures have been adopted. Faced with a shrinking domestic market, KT&G initially focused on exporting Korean-manufactured cigarettes. Since the mid-2000s, a broader global business strategy has been adopted including the building of overseas manufacturing facilities, establishing strategic partnerships and acquiring foreign companies. Trends in KT&G sales suggest an aspiring transnational tobacco company poised to become a major player in the global tobacco market. This article is part of the special issue ‘The emergence of Asian tobacco companies: Implications for global health governance’.

Japan Tobacco International: To ‘be the most successful and respected tobacco company in the world’

ABSTRACTJapan Tobacco International (JTI) is the international division of Japan Tobacco Incorporated, and the world’s third largest transnational tobacco company. Founded in 1999, JTI’s rapid growth has been the result of a global business strategy that potentially serves as a model for other Asian tobacco companies. This paper analyses Japan Tobacco Incorporated’s global expansion since the 1980s in response to market opening, foreign competition, and declining share of a contracting domestic market. Key features of its global strategy include the on-going central role and investment by the Japanese government, and an expansion agenda based on mergers and acquisitions. The paper also discusses the challenges this global business strategy poses for global tobacco control and public health. This paper is part of the special issue ‘The Emergence of Asian Tobacco Companies: Implications for Global Health Governance’.

A Corporate Veto on Health Policy? Global Constitutionalism and Investor-State Dispute Settlement.

The importance of trade and investment agreements for health is now widely acknowledged in the literature, with much attention now focused on the impact of investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanisms. However, much of the analysis of such agreements in the health field remains largely descriptive. We theorize the implications of ISDS mechanisms for health policy by integrating the concept of global constitutionalism with veto point theory. It is argued that attempts to constitutionalize investment law, through a proliferation of International Investment Agreements (IIAs), has created a series of new veto points at which corporations may seek to block new policies aimed at protecting or enhancing public health. The multiplicity of new veto points in this global "spaghetti bowl" of IIAs creates opportunities for corporations to venue shop; that is, to exploit the agreements, and associated veto points, through which they are most likely to succeed in blocking or deterring new regulation. These concepts are illustrated with reference to two case studies of investor-state disputes involving a transnational tobacco company, but the implications of the analysis are of equal relevance for a range of other industries and health issues.

Understanding corporations to inform public health policy: the example of tobacco industry interests in harm reduction and reduced risk products

BackgroundCorporations selling products that are damaging to health should be researched as vectors of disease, but how can such research inform public health policy? On the basis of findings of increasing transnational tobacco company (TTC) investments in reduced risk products, we aimed to examine companies' interests in harm reduction, including smokeless tobacco and nicotine-containing products in Europe. Methods416 TTC documents released via litigation and dating from 1971 to 2009 were obtained via searching the online Legacy Tobacco Documents Library and analysed by hermeneutic and sociohistorical archival methods. Various materials were used to triangulate documentary findings, including media, relevant tobacco industry journal, and Euromonitor reports. We also systematically examined contemporary industry materials, including all TTC annual reports accessible online and via the British Library in October, 2012, all British American Tobacco (BAT; n=42) and Philip Morris International (PMI; n=47) investor presentations available online in September, 2012, and all BAT sustainability reports from 2001–02 (the first year of publication) onwards. FindingsFrom 1971, prompted by fear of declining cigarette sales, BAT began to explore opportunities in smokeless tobacco in Europe and the potential to create a new form of tobacco use for those no longer interested in taking up smoking. Young people were therefore a key target. Despite awareness of smokeless tobacco's substantially lower health risks from the 1970s, TTCs did not invest in the product until 2002, when European Union cigarette volumes started decreasing and the public health community began actively exploring smokefree legislation and harm reduction. All TTCs have now invested in snus (a form of smokeless tobacco) such that no major European snus companies remain independent of cigarette interests; yet snus test markets seem to have failed and we identified no evidence that snus is central to TTCs' business strategy. This finding suggests that TTC snus investments might have been intended to eliminate competition between snus and highly profitable cigarettes. Recently, TTCs have invested in nicotine-containing products, including e-cigarettes. The scarce corporate information on this issue suggests that concerns identified in relation to smokeless tobacco might apply to such products; for example, a BAT investor presentation (2011) stated that “new ‘would be smokers’ begin with and stay with low risk product categories”. Documents suggest TTCs adopted the term “harm reduction” from the US Institute of Medicine, which published a report on the topic in 2001. Thereafter, TTCs increasingly used the term. For example, BAT's use of the term “harm reduction” in its social reports increased from two in 2001–02 to 247 in 2010. Documents and interviews suggest harm reduction offered TTCs two main benefits: reputation enhancement and an opportunity to establish or re-establish dialogue with and access to policy makers, scientists, and public health groups. InterpretationThe main study limitation is that the document collections might not fully represent TTC interests in Europe because they mainly cover BAT and PMI. Nevertheless, the findings suggest that TTCs' harm reduction discourse signals a tactical adaptation to policy change rather than a genuine commitment to reducing harm. Public health must, therefore, continue to protect policies from TTC influence. TTCs' historic interest in smokeless tobacco might apply to nicotine-containing products. Furthermore, having eliminated any competitive threat from snus, TTCs are now investing in e-cigarettes, which needs careful monitoring because TTC control of this market would serve to maintain the dominance of the cigarette. FundingThe internal industry document work was supported by the Pricing Policies and Control of Tobacco in Europe project EC FP7 Grant AgreementHEALTH-F2-2009-223323; the collection and analysis of contemporary industry materials was supported by the National Cancer Institute, US National Institutes of Health (grant RO1CA160695).

Transnational Tobacco Company Interests in Smokeless Tobacco in Europe: Analysis of Internal Industry Documents and Contemporary Industry Materials

European Union (EU) legislation bans the sale of snus, a smokeless tobacco (SLT) which is considerably less harmful than smoking, in all EU countries other than Sweden. To inform the current review of this legislation, this paper aims to explore transnational tobacco company (TTC) interests in SLT and pure nicotine in Europe from the 1970s to the present, comparing them with TTCs' public claims of support for harm reduction. Internal tobacco industry documents (in total 416 documents dating from 1971 to 2009), obtained via searching the online Legacy Tobacco Documents Library, were analysed using a hermeneutic approach. This library comprises documents obtained via litigation in the US and does not include documents from Imperial Tobacco, Japan Tobacco International, or Swedish Match. To help overcome this limitation and provide more recent data, we triangulated our documentary findings with contemporary documentation including TTC investor presentations. The analysis demonstrates that British American Tobacco explored SLT opportunities in Europe from 1971 driven by regulatory threats and health concerns, both likely to impact cigarette sales negatively, and the potential to create a new form of tobacco use among those no longer interested in taking up smoking. Young people were a key target. TTCs did not, however, make SLT investments until 2002, a time when EU cigarette volumes started declining, smoke-free legislation was being introduced, and public health became interested in harm reduction. All TTCs have now invested in snus (and recently in pure nicotine), yet both early and recent snus test markets appear to have failed, and little evidence was found in TTCs' corporate materials that snus is central to their business strategy. There is clear evidence that BAT's early interest in introducing SLT in Europe was based on the potential for creating an alternative form of tobacco use in light of declining cigarette sales and social restrictions on smoking, with young people a key target. We conclude that by investing in snus, and recently nicotine, TTCs have eliminated competition between cigarettes and lower-risk products, thus helping maintain the current market balance in favour of (highly profitable) cigarettes while ensuring TTCs' long-term future should cigarette sales decline further and profit margins be eroded. Please see later in the article for the Editors' Summary.

OP01 How a Detailed Understanding of Industry Activities can Inform Public Health Policy: The example of Cigarette Pricing in Britain

BackgroundTobacco tax increases are the most effective means of reducing tobacco use and inequalities in smoking but effectiveness depends on transnational tobacco company (TTC) pricing strategies, specifically whether TTCs overshift...

Understanding tobacco industry pricing strategy and whether it undermines tobacco tax policy: the example of the UK cigarette market.

AimsTobacco tax increases are the most effective means of reducing tobacco use and inequalities in smoking, but effectiveness depends on transnational tobacco company (TTC) pricing strategies, specifically whether TTCs overshift tax increases (increase prices on top of the tax increase) or undershift the taxes (absorb the tax increases so they are not passed onto consumers), about which little is known.DesignReview of literature on brand segmentation. Analysis of 1999–2009 data to explore the extent to which tax increases are shifted to consumers, if this differs by brand segment and whether cigarette price indices accurately reflect cigarette prices.SettingUK.ParticipantsUK smokers.MeasurementsReal cigarette prices, volumes and net-of-tax- revenue by price segment.FindingsTTCs categorise brands into four price segments: premium, economy, mid and ‘ultra-low price’ (ULP). TTCs have sold ULP brands since 2006; since then, their real price has remained virtually static and market share doubled. The price gap between premium and ULP brands is increasing because the industry differentially shifts tax increases between brand segments; while, on average, taxes are overshifted, taxes on ULP brands are not always fully passed onto consumers (being absorbed at the point each year when tobacco taxes increase). Price indices reflect the price of premium brands only and fail to detect these problems.ConclusionsIndustry-initiated cigarette price changes in the UK appear timed to accentuate the price gap between premium and ULP brands. Increasing the prices of more expensive cigarettes on top of tobacco tax increases should benefit public health, but the growing price gap enables smokers to downtrade to cheaper tobacco products and may explain smoking-related inequalities. Governments must monitor cigarette prices by price segment and consider industry pricing strategies in setting tobacco tax policies.

British American Tobacco on Facebook: undermining article 13 of the global World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control

BackgroundThe World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) bans all forms of tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship. The comprehensiveness of this ban has yet to be tested by online social networking media such as Facebook. In this paper, the activities of employees of the transnational tobacco company, British American Tobacco, (BAT) on Facebook and the type of content associated with two globally popular BAT brands (Dunhill and Lucky Strike) are mapped.MethodsBAT employees on Facebook were identified and then the term ‘British American Tobacco’ was searched for in the Facebook search engine and results recorded, including titles, descriptions, names and the number of Facebook participants involved for each search result. To further detail any potential promotional activities, a search for two of BAT's global brands, ‘Dunhill’ and ‘Lucky Strike’, was conducted.ResultsEach of the 3 search terms generated more than 500 items across a variety of Facebook subsections.DiscussionSome BAT employees are energetically promoting BAT and BAT brands on Facebook through joining and administrating groups, joining pages as fans and posting photographs of BAT events, products and promotional items. BAT employees undertaking these actions are from countries that have ratified the WHO FCTC, which requires signatories to ban all forms of tobacco advertising, including online and crossborder exposure from countries that are not enforcing advertising restrictions. The results of the present research could be used to test the comprehensiveness of the advertising ban by requesting that governments mandate the removal of this promotional material from Facebook.

Exploring the impact of foreign direct investment on tobacco consumption in the former Soviet Union

Background: Tobacco is the single largest cause of morbidity and mortality in the developed world; in the former socialist bloc tobacco kills twice as many men as in the west....

Prevalence of smoking in 8 countries of the former Soviet Union: results from the living conditions, lifestyles and health study.

We sought to provide comparative data on smoking habits in countries of the former Soviet Union. We conducted cross-sectional surveys in 8 former Soviet countries with representative national samples of the population 18 years or older. Smoking rates varied among men, from 43.3% to 65.3% among the countries examined. Results showed that smoking among women remains uncommon in Armenia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, and Moldova (rates of 2.4%-6.3%). In Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Russia, rates were higher (9.3%-15.5%). Men start smoking at significantly younger ages than women, smoke more cigarettes per day, and are more likely to be nicotine dependent. Smoking rates among men in these countries have been high for some time and remain among the highest in the world. Smoking rates among women have increased from previous years and appear to reflect transnational tobacco company activity.