Earlier this month, two members of the European Parliament hosted a debate in the Parliament on the 514 cases that corporations have brought against governments. Some of the examples presented were the international tobacco giant Philip Morris suing the governments of Uruguay and Australia for introducing plain cigarette packaging. This debate also considered current negotiations between the EU and the US, Thailand and India, as well as the recently agreed Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with Canada. Presentations are available here.
FDA Analysis of Tobacco Graphic Warning Labels Found to be Flawed
Graphic warning labels (GWLs) on cigarette packages reduce smoking prevalence. A recent article in Tobacco Control found that that FDA’s approach to estimating the impact of GWLs on smoking rates is flawed. Using data from an analysis of the Canadian GWLs, the authors estimate that if the USA had adopted GWLs in 2012, the number of adult smokers in the USA would have decreased by 5.3–8.6 million in 2013.
Lobbyists Clash Over Proposed E-cigarette Restrictions in D.C.
The Washington Post reported last week that tobacco industry lobbyists and public health advocates battled it out in a D.C. Council committee chamber over whether the city should restrict electronic cigarettes from all of the same places that it bans those rolled with tobacco. In the absence of any federal guidelines on the increasingly popular devices, states and cities have scrambled to decide how to treat them. On Thursday, those for and against a bill to create “parity” with tobacco cigarettes, restricting them from all indoor areas, patios and bus stops, presented wildly different views of the battery-operated inhalers.
Advocacy for Reducing the Role of the Global Alcohol, Food and Beverage, and Tobacco Industries in Health Education
In recent decades, the alcohol, tobacco and food and beverage industries have become the leading global providers of public information about their products and their health impact, spending far more than governments or public health agencies to disseminate messages to consumers.
At the American Public Health Association meeting in Boston last week, Corporations and Health Watch sponsored a session that examined the implications of this corporate takeover for the discipline and profession of health education and for the prevention of chronic diseases, now the world’s leading killers.
First, Cheryl G. Healton, Dean of the New York University Global Institute of Public Health and former CEO of the American Legacy Foundation described the role of the tobacco industry in promoting its products and compared its strategies to those used by the food and beverage and alcohol industries.
Next, Michele Simon from Eat Drink Politics and the author of Appetite for Profit examined the food and beverage industry. In her report And Now a Word From Our Sponsors, she described the ways the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics collaborates with the food industry, jeopardizing the credibility of nutritionists and nutrition educators.
David H. Jernigan, the Director of the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University analyzed the role of the alcohol industry in educating consumers and policy makers about alcohol and described some of the ways the industry sought to influence alcohol policy.
Finally, Nicholas Freudenberg from City University of New York School of Public Health and Hunter College, who served as moderator, discussed the roles that health educators and other public health professionals can play in mobilizing various constituencies to oppose the takeover of health education by the alcohol, food and beverage and tobacco industries.
Partnerships of Peril: Keeping Food, Alcohol and Beverage Industries Out of Global Health Governance
In a blog on PLOS Medicine, Heather Wipfli, from the University of Southern California, highlights the lack of consensus regarding the role of private industry in efforts to control the burden of non-communicable diseases. At the May meetings of the World Health Assembly, there was widespread discussion about the role of the private sector in NCD control. While WHO’s position on the tobacco industry is definitive, the definition and parameters of partnerships with other industries driving NCD epidemics are not, despite recent efforts to put safeguards in place. The lack of clarity on when and how to engage with the private sector and the increasing push for public-private partnerships to address global health challenges provides industries with vested interests in policy outcomes direct access to, and greater influence on, decision makers.
Pricing in the Global Tobacco Industry: A Flagship Concept Under Threat?
A new report from Research and Markets, an international market research company, found that pricing strength remains of paramount importance to the tobacco industry. But things are changing and the prognosis is for less bullish price growth than previously, due to less uptrading and reduced product mix improvement.
Read about Lethal But Legal: Corporations, Consumption and Protecting Public Health, a new book by Nicholas Freudenberg
Lethal But Legal: Corporations, Consumption, and Protecting Public Health
By Nicholas Freudenberg published by Oxford University Press in February 2014 with new paperback edition with an afterword by the author released in March 2016.
“In his new book, “Lethal but Legal: Corporations, Consumption, and Protecting Public Health” Freudenberg’s case is that the food industry is but one example of the threat to public health posed by what he calls “the corporate consumption complex,” an alliance of corporations, banks, marketers and others that essentially promote and benefit from unhealthy lifestyles. It sounds creepy; it is creepy. .. Freudenberg details how six industries — food and beverage, tobacco, alcohol, firearms, pharmaceutical and automotive — use pretty much the same playbook to defend the sales of health-threatening products. This playbook, largely developed by the tobacco industry, disregards human health and poses greater threats to our existence than any communicable disease you can name.” – Mark Bittman, contributing op-ed writer, New York Times
“A superb, magnificently written, courageous, and compelling exposé of how corporations enrich themselves at the expense of public health—and how we can organize to counter corporate power and achieve a healthier and more sustainable food environment. This should be required reading for anyone who cares about promoting health, protecting democratic institutions, and achieving a more equitable and just society.” –Marion Nestle, Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health, New York University; author of Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health.
In this century, it is estimated that one billion people will die prematurely because of tobacco use, according to “Lethal but Legal,” a smart new book about corporate irresponsibility by Nicholas Freudenberg, a professor of public health at City University of New York. Put that one billion in perspective. That’s more than five times as many people as died in all wars of the 20th century. Freudenberg notes that smoking grew in part because of deliberate manipulation of the manipulation of the public by tobacco companies. For example, tobacco executives realized that they could expand their profits if more women smoked, so they engineered a feminist-sounding campaign to get females hooked: “Women! Light another torch of freedom! Fight another sex taboo!”– Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times
“A reservoir of constructive indignation that can arouse all Americans who adhere to basic human values.” ―Ralph Nader
Nader Recommends New Book Lethal but Legal to Provoke Conversation in 2014
“Freudenberg is optimistic that, despite the enormity of the challenges facing us as we confront the power of the multinational companies, a tipping point will be reached when the many thousands of pro-health organisations around the world come together and create the political power—and therefore the political will—necessary for success. Lethal But Legal buoyed my optimism.” Robert Beaglehole, The Lancet
“A real eye-opener. Freudenberg lays out the labyrinth of connections between corporate misbehavior and the health of the world, then gives a roadmap to fix it. I love this book.” –Cheryl G. Healton, Director, NYU Global Institute of Public Health; former President and CEO, American Legacy Foundation
“After documenting how multinational corporations manipulate us into hyperconsumption, this book goes on to identify the strategies we can, together, use to liberate ourselves.” –Richard Wilkinson, Emeritus Professor of Social Epidemiology, University of Nottingham
Watch Marion Nestle, Professor in Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at NYU and Laura Berry, Executive Director of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility discuss Lethal but Legal: Corporations, Consumption and Protecting Public Health on CSPAN Books.
Lethal but Legal examines how corporations have shaped ― and plagued― public health over the last century, first in industrialized countries and now in developing regions. It is both a current history of corporations’ antagonism towards health and an analysis of the emerging movements that are challenging these industries’ dangerous practices. The reforms outlined here aim to strike a healthier balance between large companies’ right to make a profit and governments’ responsibility to protect their populations. While other books have addressed parts of this story, Lethal but Legal is the first to connect the dots between unhealthy products, business-dominated politics, and the growing burdens of disease and health care costs. By identifying the common causes of all these problems, then situating them in the context of other health challenges that societies have overcome in the past, this book provides readers with the insights they need to take practical and effective action to restore consumers’ right to health. Nicholas Freudenberg, DrPH, is Distinguished Professor of Public Health at the City University of New York School of Public Health and founder and director of Corporations and Health Watch, an international network of activists and researchers that monitors the business practices of the alcohol, automobile, firearms, food and beverage, pharmaceutical, and tobacco industries.
Lethal but Legal is available from:
For more information, contact us.
Read book excerpts and op-eds by Nick Freudenberg
Top lessons from 50 years of fighting the tobacco industry, The Guardian, January 21, 2014
CVS stores will no longer sell cigarettes. It’s the health over profit revolution, The Guardian, February 5, 2014.
McDomination: How corporations conquered America and ruined our health, Salon, February 23, 2014
How Washington dooms millions of Americans to premature death, The Daily Beast, February 25, 2014
How corporate America exports disease to the rest of the world, Salon, March 2, 2014.
Insatiable: Sizing Up the Corporate-Consumption Complex, The American Interest, March 3, 2014
Why Taming Corporation Promotion of Dangerous Consumer Products is Vital to Improving Public Health Scholars Strategy Network, March 2014
Profit Above Safety, Slate, April 1, 2014
GM’s $35 Million Fine Is A Downpayment On Fixing America’s Regulation, Talking Point Memo, May 20, 2014
Stop TPP Protections for Big Tobacco
Cross-posted from Action on Smoking and Health
The U.S. has a rare opportunity this week to rein in the tobacco industry, and assert its mandate to protect and save lives, while proudly exercising cross-border diplomacy. The U.S. Trade Representative should accept a proposal to carve protections for Big Tobacco out of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), a mega-trade deal among 12 Pacific Rim nations, including the U.S.
Americans generally like breathing smoke-free at bars, restaurants, offices, airplanes and elevators. The tobacco industry has noticed, and they’re not happy about it. Under present trade rules, predatory tobacco corporations have new global rights to challenge important tobacco control laws and regulations in the U.S. and elsewhere that help people quit smoking, and keep kids from getting addicted, like a ban on clove cigarettes, and limitations on advertising. The TPP would perpetuate and extend these trade rules and their threats to health.
Malaysia’s chief negotiator last week proposed the only effective solution: Carve out tobacco control regulations and laws, and also remove tobacco products, from being covered by the TPP.
CPATH and important medical and public health allies have applauded Malaysia’s carve-out proposal. On Sunday, Sept. 1, the NY Times editorial board stated its support. The tobacco industry and their allies, on the other hand, are busy blowing smoke about it, and the U.S. is balking.
Tobacco use is the leading preventable cause of death, claiming 6.3 million deaths a year, including 1,200 Americans daily, and draining almost $200 billion a year in U.S. health care costs and lost productivity. Tobacco is barely a blip in the U.S. economy, and less than a fraction of a percent of our exports.
Trade agreements are supposed to lower prices for goods through competition. But lower prices for cigarettes means more kids will buy them, with damaging results for health.
Carving out tobacco is hardly a radical proposal. The global economy is dynamic, and the rules that govern it must be responsive. In 2007, for example, the Bush administration decided to exclude the U.S. gambling services sector from coverage by World Trade Organization rules, after the WTO ruled against the U.S. Internet gambling ban.
But tobacco is highly addictive, and as a result, highly profitable. Industry defenders are rushing to insist that the U.S. should develop an alternative proposal, and bring it back to the negotiating table. In fact, just such a proposal developed by the U.S. in August was deemed by local legislators as virtually ineffective.
The truth is, it is not that complicated. The TPP negotiations are negotiations. Our trading partner, Malaysia, has summoned the political will to advance a straightforward, effective proposal, one advocated unanimously for years by every major medical and health organization that has looked into the matter: carve out tobacco measures out of trade agreements, thereby eliminating the tobacco industry’s grounds to challenge these measures. It is also consistent with the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, an international covenant supported by 176 countries worldwide, including all TPP partners except the U.S.
The TPP negotiators will meet in Washington, D.C., starting on Sept. 8, and again later in the month. After almost four years of talks, the 12 TPP countries have reportedly made only partial progress on key issues. Acknowledging countries’ rights to adopt their own domestic regulations on tobacco is one issue where the U.S. Trade Representative can and should gracefully demonstrate statesmanship, as well as the Administration’s determination to reduce the toll of preventable deaths, and agree to Malaysia’s historic proposal to carve out tobacco from the TPP.
Trans Pacific Partnership Trade Pact Threatens Public Health
Two recent commentaries summarize the public health objections to the Trans Pacific Partnership, a new global trade pact now in its final stages of negotiation. An editorial in the New York Times argued that “American trade officials need to toughen their stance when Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations resume. They should be siding with the public and those concerned about public health, not the makers of products known to be lethal and highly addictive.” In an earlier Op Ed in the Times, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg asked “Why is Obama Caving on Tobacco?”. He wrote that “a deal that sells out our national commitment to public health, and forfeits our sovereign authority over our tobacco laws, does not merit the support of Mr. Obama; of the Senate, which would have to ratify it; or of the American people.”
Indonesia to Seek Compensation from US in Tobacco Trade Fight
Indonesia will seek compensation from the United States for pulling its clove cigarettes from shelves despite a World Trade Organization (WTO) ruling that deemed the ban discriminatory, reports the Jakarta Globe. Indonesia’s trade ministry said it had lost between $200 million and $300 million annually from the 2009 ban, aimed at helping prevent youths from taking up smoking. The WTO found that the US had flouted trade rules in its health act — under which cinnamon, coffee, grape and strawberry-flavored cigarettes were also banned — because it allowed menthol-laced tobacco to stay on the market.
Corporations and Health Watch 