Studies say Big Tobacco gets sneaky in Asia

Bangkok, Thailand —- Two of the world’s largest tobacco companies, seeking to expand sales into Asia, worked to undermine anti-smoking policies in Thailand and China by infiltrating one research institute and funding another, researchers said this week.

The allegations —- highlighted in two separate studies —- come as tobacco companies are aggressively marketing cigarettes in the developing world as lawsuits and anti-smoking laws hit revenues in the West.

“As the high-income countries put more and more obstacles in the path of the cigarette companies, they have to look for new markets,” said Edouard Tursan d’Espaignet, epidemiologist with the World Health Organization’s Tobacco Free Initiative.

Critics said tobacco companies are trying to drum up sales by minimizing the dangers of smoking.

In Thailand, Philip Morris, the world’s largest cigarette maker, planted a scientist in Chulabhorn Research Institute in Bangkok in a bid to get researchers to shift their attention away from secondhand smoking and toward other forms of air pollution, according to one study.

Public health researchers from the University of Sydney in Australia and the University of Edinburgh in Scotland produced the study by analyzing internal industry documents made public after litigation in the U.S.

A separate study alleges that British American Tobacco, the world’s second-largest tobacco company, provided funding in China for the Beijing Liver Foundation in a campaign to shift focus away from links between smoking and ailments such as liver disease.

Both companies denied the charges presented online in the Public Library of Science Medicine journal. The two studies were partly funded by the National Cancer Institute in the U.S.

However, longtime anti-smoking advocate Stanton Glanz said the tactics are “part of long-running and continuing tactics by the tobacco industry all over the world,” and he called on the two Asian institutions to end their ties with the industry.

Anti-smoking groups say big tobacco has sought for years to covertly influence Western government’s smoking policies and squash scientific findings highlighting hazards of smoking.

Now, some charge, the tobacco countries are taking these time-tested tactics to Asia, Africa and Latin America where the WHO estimates 80 percent of the 8 million tobacco-related deaths will occur by 2030.

The University of Sydney’s Ross MacKenzie, who co-authored the Thai study, said tobacco companies have fought successfully to prevent the publication of ingredients in their products in Thailand and worked in Cambodia to undermine advertising bans.

“They have shown they are willing to take advantage of economic situations and lax legislation in many Southeast Asian countries to aggressively market their products,” MacKenzie said, citing previously released company documents.