Money

Funding overview

Governments are the biggest players in the tobacco market. In the US, for example, As Doctor Gio Gori has noted, various areas of government at the turn of the twenty-first century received around $40 billion annually from tobacco, against less than $9 billion received by the entire industry. "It is governments that benefit from and control the tobacco trade far more than the tobacco industry, which has been virtually nationalized by taxation and the US Master Settlement Agreement with the states," says Gori. The Master Settlement Agreement is a price-fixing scheme which makes manufacturers, in effect, surrogate tax collectors, even as direct government-collected taxes also continue to grow exponentially. The situation is similar worldwide, where total taxes on cigarettes typically outstrip the actual price of cigarettes, several times to one.

As the Big Tobacco industry, shrunken, regulated into submission, and gagged against protest, has declined, the Tobacco Control industry, supported by governments and the pharmaceutical industry which produces “smoking cessation” products, has become a financial colossus. The losers are the people. Their losses come in the form of suffering a divisive victimization campaign against smokers, and of wealth wasted on TC bureaucracy and junk science research, as well as from tarnishing of the good name of science, blocking of the development of effective reduced risk cigarettes, and oppression in the form of ever-encroaching restrictions on personal choice and individual freedom. All industries, in great part and essentially, are about money. The pharmaceutical and Tobacco Control industries are about very big money. A general illustration of forces in play is provided below.

Money Flow (graphical)

Explanation

• Smokers' Market: A worldwide market, worth billions of dollars, where two main industries (the tobacco industry and the pharmaceutical smoking cessation industry (NRT)) are competing for smokers' money and sympathy. The market is controlled by a third interest party who have sided with the pharmaceutical industry: government. For government, smokers are an easy cash cow.

The fourth interest group, the Tobacco Control industry, is working closely together with the pharmaceutical industry and government to get a share of the market, selling advice to government.

Smokers are crushed between these interests, eventually paying the bill.

Big Pharma funding of the anti-tobacco industry

Through their funding of university medical faculties that form our doctors, the funding of scientific studies, their affiliations with public health organizations such as the WHO, the CDC and the FDA, their intense lobbying of politicians to influence public health policy, or the funding of political campaigns, the tentacles of the pharmaceutical industry are everywhere. There are billions of dollars being directly donated or funneled through foundations and non-profits into the anti-smoking campaigns, smoking bans and the increase of tobacco taxation worldwide to profit the bottom line of the pharmaceutical industry that competes against the tobacco industry for the smoker's market.

The following are just some examples of the Big Pharma money trail:

WHO LAUNCHES PARTNERSHIP WITH THE PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY TO HELP SMOKERS QUIT

Excerpt:

The strength of the Partnership Project lies in the fact that it has brought together three major pharmaceutical companies, Glaxo Wellcome, Novartis Consumer Health and Pharmacia & Upjohn, all manufacturers of treatment products for tobacco dependence, to support a common goal that will have a significant impact on public health. The Project provides a model which can provide a basis for future partnerships with the private sector in other important health areas.

Smoking bans: good public policy? Or simply a great pharmaceutical marketing plan?

Excerpt:

(...) upon some preliminary investigation it is clear that these NGO's are backed by $446,000,000.00 from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) which has direct ties to the Johnson & Johnson Company, and J & J is the manufacturer of Nicoderm & Nicoderm CQ via its wholly owned subsidiary ALZA. Recently, the buyout of Pfizer Consumer Health(see page 4 or 61) means J & J profits even more from the passage of smoking bans thru additional sales of Nicotrol, Nicorette, Commit, (see pgs 32,33,56) and any other over the counter smoking cessation drugs once manufactured by Pfizer Consumer Health division. Global Health Partnerships

To read about the RWJF tobacco control strategy click here :

Taking on Tobacco

Tobacco control grantees of a $47 000 000 grant from Pifzer to combat cancer and tobacco use included :

Alliance for Control of Tobacco Use (Brazil), Hellenic Thoracic Society (Greece), SAMBA (Sweden), and Umberto Veronesi Foundation (Italy)

• Developing Tobacco Control Capacity: Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) International/Framework Convention Alliance (FCA) (Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Mexico, Colombia, Chile and Costa Rica; Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE and Lebanon), and Mexican Council on Tobacco • Protecting Nonsmokers from Secondhand Smoke: American Cancer Society (Algeria and Tunisia) and Chinese Association on Tobacco Control

• Helping Smokers Quit: Comprehensive Cancer Center at Freiburg University Medical Center (Germany), Health Promotional Foundation (Poland), Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario (Canada), Hungarian Academy of Teaching Family Physicians, Japan Medical-Dental Association for Tobacco Control, Partnership for Prevention (U.S.), Philippine Business for Social Progress, QUIT UK/European Network of Quitlines (Central and Eastern Europe)

The following link leads to a letter from ASH, UK to GSK about how disgusted they are that Derek Bonham, Chairman of Imperial Tobacco sits on the board of GSK.

Links between ASH, UK and Glaxo Smith Klein (GSK)

Excerpts:

ASH has worked closely with both Glaxo and SmithKline Beecham staff and always welcomed the active collaboration. (...) We have worked with GSK under the auspices of the WHO-Europe Partnership Project on tobacco dependence and at various one-off opportunities. ASH was instrumental in securing greater government commitment to smoking cessation products in the NHS National Plan and we have helped with PR for both Zyban and Niquitin CQ. Our involvement with GSK staff has, I believe, been mutually beneficial, and we have gained from exposure to the company's arguments and insights (...)

This experience is replicated in many organisations, many countries and in business areas beyond the smoking cessation category. (...)

There are clear conflicts of interest - every time someone successfully uses a GSK smoking cessation product the market for tobacco declines. Every time a smoker switches to 'lights' as an alternative to quitting the market for smoking cessation is diminished.

Most of the measures that drive people to want to quit smoking and use GSK products are exactly those that are opposed by tobacco companies. Such measures include:

Restrictions on smoking in public places and workplaces

Marketing restrictions on tobacco companies

Higher tobacco taxation

Greater NHS involvement in smoking cessation

Regulatory measures to be applied to tobacco products

(...)

ASH has a small shareholding in GSK and I will be attending with others to question you and the Chairman on this situation. (...) More than anything, I would like to resume normal and constructive relations with GlaxoSmithKline. (...)

Some examples of financial conflicts of interest between the Tobacco Control industry and Big Pharma:

• Drug companies among biggest funders of stop-smoking charities

• New Study Shows that Nicotine Replacement Therapy is Ineffective for Gradual Smoking Cessation, But Concludes the Opposite

• Chantix Lawsuits Piling Up; Dangers from Severe Financial Conflicts of Interests of Tobacco Control Researchers and Institutions Revealed

• HOW LONG WILL THIS BILLION DOLLAR CHARADE CONTINUE? - John R. Polito

• FDA Guidelines for Determining Eligibility for Advisory Committees are Ridiculous and Ensure that Conflicts of Interest Will Continue to Plague Agency

• Wall Street Journal Article Highlights Financial Conflicts of Interest of Chair of Federal Smoking Cessation Guidelines Panel

• ONTARIO LUNG ASSOCIATION - CHARITY ORGANIZATION OR BIG PHARMA FRONT GROUP?

• What is the Ottawa Model for Smoking Cessation?

Governments are senior partners of the tobacco industry

In some countries, taxes, qualified by many as regressive because they mostly affect the poor, amount to over 75% of the retail price of cigarettes. While these taxes and the hidden taxes from the Master Settlement Agreement (US) were supposed to help pay for the alleged additional health care costs of smoking, and to educate individuals, particularly children, on the health hazards of smoking, they are mostly used for other purposes such infrastructure, social programs, education and general state funding. Of course the anti-tobacco organizations also get generous pieces of the money pie that help sustain their careers. But as governments are increasingly struggling to balance budgets, they are now slashing the anti-tobacco funding and anti-smoking lobbyists squeal like stuck pigs each time their public trough gets smaller. [1] [2] [3]

Additionally, pushed by greedy anti-tobacco lobbyists, governments such as the provincial ones in Canada, are salivating at the prospect of striking gold like their southern neighbors did through the MSA and are now taking legal actions against the tobacco industry to seek damages for the costs of treating smoking-related illnesses. [4]. If a couple of Canadian provinces are successful, expect a global pandemic of government law suits against the tobacco industry one or more countries at a time.