880000 - 920000 Five Year Plan Business Planning & Analysis 880300

This article is part of the Tobacco portal on Sourcewatch funded from 2006 - 2009 by the American Legacy Foundation.

880000 - 920000 Five Year Plan Business Planning & Analysis 880300

This 142-page, Philip Morris USA (PM) 5-year plan reveals the company's aggressive strategies to slow and even reverse national successes in controlling tobacco use. PM describes its "proactive" strategies and actions that "go beyond simply defending ourselves," and that were aimed at "maximizing industry volume" and "making anti-smoking forces defend past gains..." PM justifies its actions by saying,

PM-USA is taking a major role in defending the cigarette industry since... we have the most to lose if the industry is radically altered by the aggressive attacks of anti-smoking forces...Thus, we must continue to lead the fight against the anti-smoking movement and devote considerable resources to defeat or mitigate their initiatives...

Many statements place PM squarely at odds with public health authorities both in the U.S. and worldwide:

To combat the well-organized, well-funded anti-smoking movement in this country and abroad we have put into place programs that target three groups whose decisions and actions ultimately determine the long-term viability of the cigarette industry...Our overall goal is to preserve the industry by protecting smokers' rights and improving the perception of smokers and smoking in society...

PM describes plans to create local smokers rights groups help the company block public health efforts all over the country:

These [smokers rights] groups will campaign for repeal of anti-smoking legislation and enactment of legislation to protect smokers from discrimination in employment. This offensive strategy is intended not only to change existing laws, but to force anti-smoking advocates to defend their gains rather than seeking to expand them.

The plan also outlines PM's strategy of sponsoring "third party research to...generate more favorable coverage of our issues." PM also lists reasons for creating the Center for Indoor Air Research (CIAR), a research group PM hoped would "Isolate the anti-smoking forces by making the industry appear reasonable while they are irrational in their demands..."

PM describes these anti-health tactics as "a sustained holding action with aggressive counterattacks" to be implemented "whenever we have the opportunity to demonstrate weakness or fanaticism in our opponents..."

Title 880000 - 920000 FIVE YEAR PLAN BUSINESS PLANNING & ANALYSIS 880300
Org. Author PM, PHILIP MORRIS
Date 19880300/E
Type REPT, REPORT, OTHER ; CHAR, CHART, GRAPH, TABLE, MAPS
Bates 2043774321/4463
Pages 143
URL: http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/cgc12a00