Through tobacco industry eyes: civil society and the FCTC process from Philip Morris and British American Tobacco's perspectives

Abstract

Objective: To analyse the models Philip Morris (PM) and British American Tobacco (BAT) used internally to understand tobacco control non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and their relationship to the global tobacco control policy-making process that resulted in the Framework Convention for Tobacco Control (FCTC).

Methods: Analysis of internal tobacco industry documents in the Legacy Tobacco Document Library.

Results: PM contracted with Mongoven, Biscoe, and Duchin, Inc. (MBD, a consulting firm specialising in NGO surveillance) as advisors. MBD argued that because NGOs are increasingly linked to epistemic communities, NGOs could insert themselves into the global policy-making process and influence the discourse surrounding the treaty-making process. MBD advised PM to insert itself into the policy-making process, mimicking NGO behaviour. BAT's Consumer and Regulatory Affairs (CORA) department argued that global regulation emerged from the perception (by NGOs and governments) that the industry could not regulate itself, leading to BAT advocating social alignment and self-regulation to minimise the impact of the FCTC. Most efforts to block or redirect the FCTC failed.

Conclusions: PM and BAT articulated a global policy-making environment in which NGOs are key, non-state stakeholders, and as a result, internationalised some of their previous national-level strategies. After both companies failed to prevent the FCTC, their strategies began to align. Multinational corporations have continued to successfully employ some of the strategies outlined in this paper at the local and national level while being formally excluded from ongoing FCTC negotiations at the global level.

Figure 1

These quotes (including notes in margins) from the Mongoven, Biscoe, and Duchin, Inc. (MBD) report An Analysis of the International Framework Convention Process explain why epistemic communities are important to the policy-making process and how activists ‘infiltrate’ the policy making process by using science.

Figure 2

Presentation slides explaining British American Tobacco’s Consumer and Regulatory Affairs (CORA) model of the global regulatory environment, the various areas of society, what factors leads to the push for global-level regulation, and how BAT can derail regulation.