The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA

Abstract #47895

Joaquin Barnoya, MD, MPH and Stanton A Glantz, PhD. Institute for Health Policy Studies, University of California, San Francisco, 3333 California St., Suite 265, San Francisco, CA 94143-0936, 415/ 476-2265, jbarnoya@medicine.ucsf.edu

The tobacco industry, for more than 20 years, has generated controversy on the issue of secondhand smoking (SHS or environmental tobacco smoke, ETS) as a health danger. After facing strong SHS regulations in the United States, the industry developed programs in Europe in order to avoid future regulations in the region. To determine the strategy used by the industry in Latin America we searched tobacco documents online. Philip Morris International (PMI) and British American Tobacco (BAT), through their law firm Covington & Burling (C&B), have been manipulating the public and Latin American governments opinion since the late 1980's. An "ETS consultants program" was started in Latin America in conjunction with the "Latin Project" which sought to generate scientific "data" minimizing SHS as a health hazard and producing low estimates of exposure in order to argue against possible SHS restrictions. Consultants hired were scientists with a wide range of expertise affiliated with Latin American universities. Just as with other consultants around the world, industry funding was not disclosed, rather the program was managed by C&B. The strategies used by the industry in Latin America has included hiring consultants, financing and publishing research on SHS, and lobbying, have been successful in hindering development of public health programs on SHS. Latin American health professionals need to be aware of this industry involvement and take steps to counter it to halt the tobacco epidemic in Latin America. Funding: Legacy Foundation, National Cancer Institute Grant No. 1 R01 CA87472-01

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