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“[BAT’s] ‘document retention’ policy must be questioned. It’s inconceivable that a company like this can be allowed to shred documents that can shed light on their role in Australia’s numberone public health problem. These documents must have had crucial implications for public health.”

—Tod Harper, executive director of Quit Victoria,
on the McCabe verdict, 2002

Litigation against the tobacco industry has disclosed millions of secret documents containing revelations about tobacco industry conduct that have advanced tobacco control efforts around the world. Public release of these documents clearly illustrates the power of exposing tobacco industry corporate malfeasance to profoundly influence public opinion.

Under the U.S. Master Settlement Agreement, cigarette manufacturers were required to reveal internal documents and make the records available on the Internet. By U.K. court decree, BAT documents have been made publicly available at physical depositories in Guildford. U.S. documents are housed in Minnesota. Today, documents from these and other cases are available to researchers online at websites such as the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library.

The Legacy Tobacco Documents Library, supported by the American Legacy Foundation and others, is located at the University of California, San Francisco. The library contains over 8 million documents, numbering 43 million pages, providing details about tobacco industry advertising, manufacturing, marketing, sales, and scientific research. The American Legacy Foundation grants two annual awards, one for adults and the other for youth and young adults under age 25, recognizing outstanding achievements in tobacco industry document research. Both awards honor innovative use of tobacco industry documents to achieve the primary goals of tobacco use prevention and advancement of public health.

As of 2008, nearly 500 research papers citing tobacco industry documents have been published.

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Monitor tobacco use and prevention policies
Protect people from tobacco smoke
Offer help to quit tobacco use
Warn about the dangers of tobacco
Enforce bans on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship
Raise taxes on tobacco

Building on the first-ever global public health treaty - the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) - the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2008 issued a comprehensive country-level report on the global tobacco epidemic. This report provides data from 179 countries covering 99% of the world’s population and sets baselines for implementation and enforcement of the six evidence-based and cost-effective policies of the WHO MPOWER strategy. Currently only 5% of the world’s population is fully protected by any one of the MPOWER interventions and no country implements and enforces all of them. By taking action to implement MPOWER, the leaders of governments and civil society can create the necessary environment to protect children from tobacco, help people quit tobacco use and save millions of lives a year.

The final version of the online Tobacco Atlas will have information on MPOWER steps related to the issues portrayed on each map.

“You can look at those documents and say maybe people made some mistakes, maybe they did some things they shouldn’t have, but I don’t think that shows intentional fraud. It’s certainly not the conduct the companies would tolerate today.”

—William Ohlemeyer, Philip Morris USA lawyer, on the Department of Justice’s assemblage of incriminating documents, 2004

“In the long term, it’s good for our business if fewer people get sick and die from smoking.”

—Steven C. Parrish, senior vice president of Altria Group Inc., 2007

“New smokers enter the market [Nigeria] at a very early age in many cases: As young as 8 or 9 years seems to be quite common.”

—Quote from “The Cigarette Market in Nigeria,” 1991 BAT document discussing the habits of younger smokers in Nigeria. It is among the secret documents to be used in various Nigerian states’ lawsuits.

“The situation will worsen [in Malawi] if countries fail to team up with tobacco manufacturing companies to counter the WHO anti-smoking campaign.”

—Gary Faga, BAT’s managing director for Malawi, on why BAT has reduced production in Malawi. The Panafrican News Agency, 2003

“We must attack the anti-smoking groups and zealots more confidently than we have in the past… Possibly too, we can discredit our critics… If we start to dig around, we will certainly find anomalies which we can exploit.”

—Philip Morris International, 1985

“Since Russia opened up to the West, this large country with a tradition of smoking has meant great business opportunities for us and other tobacco companies… We are braced for however long it will take.”

—Axel Gietz, Media Relations Chief at R.J. Reynolds International, 1998