Deadly Deception: The Tobacco Industry's Secondhand Smoke Cover Up

SmokingMany of the of the tobacco industry's underhanded strategies and tactics have been exposed, thanks to landmark legal cases and the hard work of public health advocates. But we are still uncovering the shocking lengths to which the industry has gone to protect itself from public health measures like smoking bans. Now we can thank the city of Pueblo, Colorado, for an opportunity to look a little bit deeper into how the industry managed the deadly deceptions around secondhand smoke.

A new study, now the ninth of its type and the most comprehensive one yet, has shown a major reduction in hospital admissions for heart attacks after a smoke-free law was put into effect.

On July 1, 2003, the relatively isolated city of Pueblo, Colorado enacted an ordinance that prohibited smoking in workplaces and indoor public areas, including bars and restaurants. For the study, researchers reviewed hospital admissions for heart attacks among area residents for one year prior to, and three years after the ban, and compared the data to two other nearby areas that didn't have bans (the part of Pueblo County outside city limits, and El Paso County, which includes Colorado Springs). Researchers found that during the three years after the ban, hospital admissions for heart attacks dropped 41 percent inside the city of Pueblo, but found no significant change in admissions for heart attacks in the other two control areas.

Eight studies done prior to this one in other locales used similar techniques and yielded similar results, but covered shorter periods of time -- usually about one year after the smoking ban went into effect. The results of this longer, more comprehensive study support the view that not only does secondhand smoke have a significant short-term impact on heart function, but that lives, and money, are probably being saved by new laws proliferating around the world in recent years that minimize public exposure to secondhand smoke.

Tobacco Smoke and the Heart

Heart structureWhen most people think "cigarette smoke," they immediately think "lung cancer," but far less public attention has been paid to how secondhand smoke effects heart function. In a memo dated 1980 that I first discovered in 1999, a Philip Morris scientist points out that nicotine lowers the heart's threshold to ventricular fibrillation -- an inefficient heart pumping pattern -- which increases people's susceptibility to heart attacks.

A 1991 report sponsored by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimated that secondhand smoke kills approximately 53,000 Americans year, mostly from heart disease. A public health study published in 2001 showed that exposure to secondhand smoke for even short periods of time, as little as 30 minutes, causes changes in platelets and cardiac epithelium. Lung cancer takes many years to develop, but heart function is impacted more rapidly upon exposure to secondhand smoke.

Tobacco Companies Have Long Been Aware of Secondhand Smoke Hazards

Tobacco companies knew much more about the health hazards of secondhand smoke, and knew it longer ago, than most people realize.

Recognizing the need to do more biological research on its own products, but also understanding the need to distance itself from this research for legal reasons, in 1971 Philip Morris purchased a biological lab in Germany called Institut Fur Biologische Forschung ("INBIFO"), or Institute for Biological Research. PM then created a complex routing system to ensure that work done at INBIFO could not be linked back to Philip Morris. INBIFO routed its study results through a PM research and development facility in Switzerland called Fabriques de Tabac Reunies, and documents created at INBIFO were often in French or German language.

Between 1981 and 1989, Philip Morris (PM) conducted at least 115 different inhalation studies on secondhand smoke at INBIFO in which they compared the toxicity of mainstream smoke (the smoke the smoker himself inhales) to that of secondhand smoke. PM discovered that secondhand smoke is 2-6 times more toxic and carcinogenic per gram than mainstream smoke. The company never published the results of these in-house studies or alerted public health authorities to their findings. Rather, they kept this information strictly to themselves -- even most Philip Morris employees were unaware of these studies.

Strategies to Deceive the Public

But Philip Morris did much worse than hide this crucial information from the public. Spurred by a 1993 EPA Risk Assessment that declared secondhand smoke a known human carcinogen, and recognizing the danger the secondhand smoke issue held for the cigarette industry, Philip Morris masterminded a massive global effort to confuse and deceive the public about the health hazards of secondhand smoke and to delay laws restricting smoking in indoor public places.
Smoke chemicals
A 1993 internal Philip Morris (PM) strategy paper titled "ETS (Environmental Tobacco Smoke) World Conference" shows PM organizing a wide range of strategies to shape public views on secondhand smoke and fight smoking restrictions worldwide. PM pursued tactics to "shift concern over ETS to slippery slope argumentation and/or tolerance"; liken secondhand smoke to perceived risks from other items of public concern, such as cellular phones and chlorinated water; "shift concern over ETS in the workplace from the health issue to one of annoyance;" "shift the concern over ETS in restaurants from bans to accommodation where bans are imminent;" "develop an 'ETS Task Force,' with global PM representation to develop strategies to combat smoking restrictions;" "... package comprehensive improvements in ventilation to forestall tobacco specific bans and ... shift the debate from ETS to IAQ [indoor air quality]." Another strategy was the "development of a global coalition against "junk science" to complement a similar coalition PM was already forming in the United States.

At the same time, PM implemented Project Brass, a secret action plan conceived by the Leo Burnett Company, to create a "controversy" over secondhand smoke where there really was none. Project Brass strove to "forestall further public smoking restrictions/bans," "create a decided change in public opinion," and "develop an atmosphere more conducive to smokers" in the general public.

Project Brass was just the tip of the iceberg. The tobacco industry implemented many projects over the decades to shape public perception about secondhand smoke and to delay laws regulating it. Many of these projects are listed under TobaccoWiki's "Projects and Operations" page: Project Mayfly, the INFOTAB ETS Project, PM and British American Tobacco's Latin American ETS Consultants Program, PM's ETS (Environmental tobacco smoke) Media Strategy, Philip Morris' Science Action Plan, and PM's ICD-9 Project to impede the creation of a medical billing code that would indicate illnesses that are attributable to secondhand tobacco smoke exposure.

These are just some of the projects we've learned of by combing through industry documents. Any one of these projects taken individually would be stunning in scope and ambition in its own right, but all of them taken together -- and the as-yet undiscovered efforts -- probably constitute the single most coordinated, widespread, expensive, under-the-radar PR campaign ever waged.

These extensive, expensive and hidden deceptions significantly undermined public understanding of the hazards of secondhand smoke and killed thousands and thousands of non-smokers and smokers alike.

The Final Chapter?

The Pueblo study was only made possible because the people of Pueblo courageously enacted a smoke-free law before the rest of the state did. Pueblo's law predated Colorado's statewide smoking law by three years. This is how it usually happens: a slew of cities and towns enact their own smoking bans until finally a measure is passed at the state level. Attaining smoke-free places has been a true grassroots activity. Once people experience air clean of cigarette smoke in bars, restaurants and other public places, they love it and don't want to go back to allowing smoking. There are many people alive today who could never conceive of encountering cigarette smoke on buses or airplanes, in hospitals, theaters or universities or other places where once smoking was the norm. Once upon a time, most people believed it was impossible to get bars to go smoke-free, but today this commonsense life-saving law that is the norm in many states and countries.

Time and society are marching on, and as more people are protected from secondhand smoke, we are only starting to learn the true scope of its health effects -- from studies like the one done in Pueblo.


No, it does not mean 13 more people will get cancer or some other ailment... You've gone and done what the media complicitly does, and the ANTI's, because it works for them, never bother to correct - even though the ACS and others know the real math... It means that the risk factor that someone in that pool of 100,000 people has increased by a very tiny amount - .013% Your probablity of getting some sort of lung or other health ailement is much higher if you wait at a bus stop every day, commute in highway traffic for long hours with the windows open (or in a car without a cabin air filter), work in any sort of manufacturing that includes industrial chemicals. Why does the government not go after all that? Easy... because they want people herded around on buses, and going after industry would be bad for the economy - though they do take their little nips and cuts there in the cause of "environmentalism". Oh, and the smoking community is a small enough minority... A lady walked past me in a resteraunt saturday and her perfume was so strong that I sneezed for like 5 minutes. Can I get the government to hold a gun to her head and tell her not to wear that stink in public? After all, it's the same thing you're trying to do to those who choose to smoke... FORCE them. The only way you can believe this is right is if you believe that you derive your rights FROM the government, and so like your parent they (big-mommy-state) can take them away. The government derives IT's right and powers from the CONSENT of the governed. There is nothing CONSTITUTIONAL about a government, of any kind, dictating to it's citizens this way. We could devolve this into a complete discussion of all the things the government does that it truly does not have the right or the power to do, but, that's beyond the point. Let's not forget, <a href="">a private business does NOT become public property just because the public is invited...</a>

"Your probablity of getting some sort of lung or other health ailement is much higher if you wait at a bus stop every day, commute in highway traffic for long hours with the windows open (or in a car without a cabin air filter), work in any sort of manufacturing that includes industrial chemicals. Why does the government not go after all that? " What??? Government DOES go after car emissions, has rules against CO(carbon monoxide) leaking into the cabin, as well as limits on industrial chemicals in the natural environment! And then you make the claim that government doesn't do any of the above because "going after industry would be bad for business". Erhh...uh. You better go back to Cato Inst. website so you can read up on who and what it is your supposed to believe as a 'good' libertarian. Because assuming that government is on the side of industry is what those nasty environmentalist-types believe, not you! No, No! Libertarians believe gub'mint /interferes/ with industry....that it is the natural enemy of free markets.

When a researcher actually takes money from the very industry he then is expected to do objective science for, he creates a circumstance legally recognized as being one wherein there are reasonable grounds to expect bias due the clear conflict of interest he has created by accepting funding from that source. Yet you announce that "if this is so", then that means we should also doubt any science produced by those whose findings conflict with the findings of that first, legally biased, researcher! Why? Because those scientists must "obviously" be engaged in a conspiracy to "take total control over human lives"!!! This is a bizarre claim, and is one which you (obviously) fail to offer any evidence for. That failure stands in complete contrast to the overwhelming documentary proof and actual admissions made by Arnett et al that they are in receipt of funding from Big Tobacco. What your claim does provide evidence of however, is the paranoia, the cognitive-intellectual immaturity and pathological gullibility that is characteristics of the group whom Dr. Arnett has thrown his lot in with. Oh..How far can a man sink in pursuit of the almighty dollar? Dr. Arnett?

Private property ownership has always come with various constraints, which owners accept in return for legal validation and protection of their ownership and of those rights not specifically constrained. Court decisions concerning those rights come and go, and "consent of the governed" means you get to vote on who makes your laws and appoints your judges. The public has the right not to be "invited" into unhealthful environments. Your perfume experience was unusual, which makes it easy for you to be so tolerant. I'll bet you'd sing a different tune if so many people used perfume in that way, all the time, in so many places you either liked or needed to frequent that it significantly cramped your freedom live your life. And if those people took your attitude, they'd just say, "Tough luck, Woodstock! We're libertarians, so too bad if you don't like it," and Big Perfume would spend millions funding think tanks and marketing campaigns to encourage that attitude. As for transportation, the better the service, the less significant the question of "herding," and electric trolleys would mitigate the problems of buses. Transportation and manufacturing are necessities of modern life; smoking is not a necessity of ANY life, and that makes any risks associated with it, great or small, unnecessary as well. <blockquote>"Oh, and the smoking community is a small enough minority..."</blockquote> Didn't used to be. Progress does happen. <blockquote>...and so like your parent they (big-mommy-state) can take them away.."</blockquote> So it's not just "nanny" but "mommy." Hmm. But yes, the neener-neener-nyah-nyah society may be in decline -- or growing up a bit, to put it more positively.

Actually, my PERFUME comment was meant to show you the that the problem you "antis" have with smoking can be turned on to ANY item. Before SMOKING bans existed, we all had a choice. When the BANS came, only some of us did... Freedom means that you get to do what you want, so long as it does not interfere with the rights of others. It does NOT mean you get to prevent others from doing things you have some sort of personal, religious, or other problem with. And, a business owner running a BAR that permits smoking does NOT infringe on anyone else's rights. Period.

I think tobacco industry did a lot of mistakes an half-illegal things in the past. Nevertheless every individual should decide to smoke or to smoke not. Government should not enclose personal freedom. Just my 5 cent. kind regards

Since some people (person) is still referring to this website, let me add my comment here. The second hand smoke science is bogus : Repeating ad nauseam that only the tobacco industry is refuting the science is getting very stale and has lost all credibility. Of all the documentation in the above link that refutes the harm of SHS, please point out to your readers here which ones are tied to the tobacco industry and how. Bets are you won't find very many if any at all! But I agree that people do not have to put up with second hand smoke if they dislike the smell or if it irritates their eyes and nose, they can go somewhere it's not allowed or stay home. They can even start their own smoke-free business if they can't find one to their liking. What they don't have the right to do is to dictate to private owners what legal activity they allow in their businesses just because they don't happen to approve or like it. If we were to ban any and every activity on such flimsy evidence (manufactured evidence is more like it) as the one the SHS science is based, we would have to eliminate an awful lot of activities before we even start thinking about eliminating second hand smoke. Get over yourselves and ''the second hand smoke is harmful and only the tobacco industry denies it'' mantra! You have lost all credibility the day the surgeon general Carmona iirc declared that there was no safe level of SHS and the day some buffoon invented the third hand smoke danger. That's what happens when we don't know when to call it quits.

The connections between Heartland and Philip-Morris are many and well documented. Roy E. Marden is a former member of Heartland's board of directors, and was until May 2003 the manager of industry affairs for the Philip Morris (PM) tobacco company. His responsibilities included "managing company responses to key public policy issues," which he accomplished by "directing corporate involvement with public policy organizations to determine philanthropic support thereto." Or in other words, which public relations orgs. industry (read as "Philip-Morris" et al) will send money to so they can produce the garbage you depend on for your own sad attempts at corporate propaganda.