Tobacco industry playbook cause health effects of tobacco
The tobacco industry playbook, tobacco strategy or simply disinformation playbook describes a strategy devised by the tobacco industry in the 1950s to protect revenues in the face of mounting evidence of links between tobacco smoke and serious illnesses, primarily cancer. Much of the playbook is known from industry documents made public by whistleblowers or as a result of the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement. These documents are now curated by the UCSF Truth Tobacco Industry Documents project and are a primary source for much commentary on both the tobacco playbook and its similarities to the tactics used by other industries, notably the fossil fuel industry. It is possible that the playbook may even have originated with the oil industry.A 1969 R. J. Reynolds internal memorandum noted, "Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the mind of the general public."In Merchants of Doubt, Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway documented the way that tobacco companies had campaigned over several decades to cast doubt on the scientific evidence of harm caused by their products, and noted the same techniques being used by other industries whose harmful products were targets of regulatory and environmental efforts. This is often linked to climate change denialism promoted by the fossil fuel industry: the same tactics were employed by fossil fuel groups such as the American Petroleum Institute to cast doubt on climate science from the 1990s and some of the same PR firms and individuals engaged to claim that tobacco smoking was safe, were later recruited to attack climate science.History
The strategy was initiated at a crisis meeting between US tobacco executives and John Hill, of public relations company Hill & Knowlton, at the New York Plaza Hotel, in 1953, following the Reader's Digest's précis of an article from the Christian Herald titled "Cancer by the Carton", highlighting the emergent findings of epidemiologists including Richard Doll and Austin Bradford Hill. It led to the 1954 publication of A Frank Statement, an advertisement designed to cast doubt on the science showing serious health effects from smoking.
Tactics included:
"Fear, uncertainty and doubt", including funding studies designed to undermine scientific consensus on the health effects of tobacco and characterising findings of harm as "junk science";
Astroturfing;
Lobbying and political talking points;
Emphasising industry self-regulation and personal responsibility.Documents such as Bad Science: A Resource Book were used to promulgate talking points intended to cast doubt on scientific independence and political interference.