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British American Tobacco

Tobacco giant faces criminal inquiry

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BAT files patent suits against Philip Morris’ IQOS products

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Health Minister met with British-American Tobacco reps, lobbyists

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Tobacco firms to begin airing court-mandated, self-critical ads

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British American Tobacco’s lab has been used by Australian Border Force to test evidence in black market cases

Australian Border Force (ABF) and Commonwealth prosecutors have been relying on evidence provided by Australia’s biggest tobacco company to charge black market traders.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-31/tobacco-giants-testing-evidence-for-border-force-cases/8856834

ABF has handed seized tobacco to British American Tobacco (BAT) to be tested in its laboratory, an ABC investigation has revealed.

BAT has analysed the product and then provided documentary or expert evidence which has then been produced in court.

It raises questions about independence and integrity and potentially breaches a major global agreement.

The World Health Organisation treaty limits tobacco companies’ involvement with law enforcement to only what is strictly necessary.

Tobacco companies argue they are being good corporate citizens by helping in the fight against the black market trade, but anti-smoking advocates say they are just protecting their bottom line.

Earlier this week, the ABC revealed big tobacco companies were propping up law enforcement by providing high-level intelligence and paying for surveillance technology.

There is a government agency called the National Measurement Institute that provides analysis for law enforcement.

A spokesperson for ABF said it used the agency “where possible”, but conceded there were times it had relied on the tobacco companies.

“There are instances in which tobacco companies have provided assistance in identifying counterfeit or illicit tobacco and have supplied statements for court proceedings,” the spokesperson said.

The Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions represents the agency in most court matters and, in a statement, said it “relies on evidence obtained from investigative agencies”.

“The identification of suitable experts is normally a matter for the relevant investigative agency … [and] is fully disclosed during the course of any prosecution.”

BAT confirms laboratory services loaned to ABF and others

When contacted by the ABC, BAT confirmed it had loaned its facilities to more than one law enforcement agency.

“That was about establishing whether the products were tobacco products, which is important to know before they can proceed with prosecution,” BAT spokesman Josh Fett said.

“We were pretty happy to help out, because the tobacco black market is huge.”

He said BAT approached law enforcement with the offer, and did not charge them for the service.

“I certainly don’t think there’s any conflict … it’s up to law enforcement agencies whose service they use and in these cases it was us,” he said.

“We have a clear interest in combating and assisting anyone that’s willing to fight criminals selling illicit tobacco in Australia, we don’t have any issue with helping anyone we can.”

Tobacco company ‘drafts warrant request’

The ABC has obtained more documents showing the level of the tobacco giants’ involvement in police operations.

An Imperial Tobacco PowerPoint presentation boasted its company and Philip Morris “assisted NSW Police to conduct raids” at six locations in Sydney in 2015.

PHOTO: The raids purportedly seized $60,000 worth of black market tobacco. (ABC News)

“Our role … provide a brief of evidence to police,” it read.

“Draft warrant request.

“Store seized product.”

PHOTO: Imperial Tobacco analysed the product for police. (ABC News)

PHOTO: Imperial Tobacco analysed the product for police. (ABC News)

Imperial Tobacco emailed the presentation to New South Wales Labor MP Paul Lynch in October 2015.

“I was astonished I must say, I had no idea that the cooperation between a large tobacco company and the police was as intense as it is,” he said.

“This is a relationship that’s way too close.”

He said NSW police needed to own up about the level of cooperation they had with the tobacco companies.

“The police have to be entirely transparent about what exactly they’re doing and upfront about the reality that tobacco companies are making profit out of their activities,” he said.

“Police need to behave as the police and conduct their own investigations, prepare their own briefs and execute their own warrants.

“That’s not a function of the state that should be farmed out to private corporations.”

Police, Imperial Tobacco decline to answer questions

New South Wales police declined to answer the ABC’s questions about the cooperation and declined to specifically comment on the tobacco industry.

They sent a statement saying they regularly worked with many industries.

“Their involvement is non-operational,” the said.

“Just as a member of the community may provide information to law enforcement about crime impacting the community, so too will industry.”

Imperial Tobacco Australia also declined to answer the ABC’s specific questions.

It also sent a statement, in which it says [the industry] will continue to provide intelligence on the black market.

“Imperial Tobacco Australia makes available to relevant enforcement and prosecuting authorities our personnel who hold expert knowledge in respect of tobacco products.

“It is our view that the cooperation of our industry with enforcement and prosecuting personnel is vital to combatting serious and organised crime that is responsible for much of the trade in illicit tobacco.

“The documents you refer to were designed to give transparency and shine a light on this alarming issue.”

Management overhaul follows BAT’s acquisition of Reynolds America

Tobacco firm British American Tobacco (BAT) said on Thursday it had overhauled its organisational and management structures following the successful acquisition of Reynolds America.

https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/companies/2017-08-31-management-overhaul-follows-bats-acquisition-of-reynolds-america/

The company has now created three regions to encompass activities, with sub-Saharan Africa now paired with the Americas.

The new structure would enable better, more integrated resource allocation and decision making across geographies and categories, BAT said.

Jack Bowles, regional director, Asia-Pacific, would be appointed to the newly created role of chief operating officer for the international business, excluding US, BAT said in a statement. This would take effect on October 1.

Ricardo Oberlander, regional director for the Americas, would lead the Americas and sub-Saharan Africa region.

Tadeu Marroco, regional director, Western Europe, would be appointed director for Europe and North Africa.

Johan Vandermeulen, regional director for Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa, would be appointed director for Asia-Pacific and the Middle East.

The tobacco firm has come under pressure recently, after news in August that UK authorities would investigate allegations of misconduct made against BAT over its African activities. That news came after the US Food and Drug Administration said it was considering regulating the level of nicotine in cigarettes to nonaddictive levels.

In mid-morning trade the company’s share price was down 0.11% to R800.33. The company has lost 16.03% in the past three months, but remains up 2.91% so far this year.

Big tobacco bullies the global south. Trade deals are their biggest weapon

The industry has a long history of using trade to force their products into new markets. This has led to at least a 5% increase in cigarette deaths

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/17/big-tobacco-trade-deals-new-markets-bat

Cigarette packets often carry the warning to “protect children: don’t make them breathe your smoke”. In 2014, the Kenyan government attempted to do just that – banning the sale of single cigarettes, banning smoking in vehicles with a child and keeping the tobacco industry out of initiatives aimed at children and young people.

But as the Guardian reported last week, British American Tobacco, in an effort to keep Kenyans breathing their smoke, fought the regulations on the grounds that they “constitute an unjustifiable barrier to international trade”.

In fact, big tobacco has a long history of using trade and investment rules to force their products on markets in the global south and attack laws and threaten lawmakers that attempt to control tobacco use.

Back in the 1980s, as cigarette consumption fell off in North America and western Europe, US trade officials worked aggressively to grant American companies access to markets in Asia, demanding not only the right to sell their products, but also the right to advertise, sponsor sports events and run free promotions. Smoking rates surged.

In the 1990s, World Trade Organisation agreements led to a liberalisation of the international tobacco trade, with countries reducing import tariffs on tobacco products. The impact, according to a joint study of the World Health Organisation and the World Bank, was a 5% increase in global cigarette consumption and accompanying mortality rates.

Big tobacco’s lawyers were quick to discover the value of “next generation” trade agreements. In the 1990s, Canada dropped a plain packaging initiative after US manufacturers threatened a suit using the first next-gen trade deal, the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta). A few years later, Philip Morris threatened Canada again after it prohibited terms such as “light” and “mild” cigarettes. Philip Morris argued it would be owed millions in compensation for damage to its brand identity.

Philip Morris was able to credibly wield this threat because of the extraordinary powers that Nafta grants international corporations: the right to sue governments in private tribunals over regulations that affect their profits.

A toxic combination of far-reaching and poorly defined “rights” for investors, eye-watering legal costs, and tribunals composed of corporate lawyers with the power to set limitless awards against governments makes investment arbitration and the modern “trade” agreement a formidable weapon to intimidate regulators.

And what big tobacco learned in the global north it has been replicating in the global south, where threats carry greater force against poorer countries that may lack the resources to see down a legal challenge.

In 2010, Philip Morris launched a $25m claim against Uruguay after it introduced graphic warnings on cigarette packs. Though Uruguay successfully defended the measure, it still faced millions in legal costs. And Philip Morris effectively won, as Costa Rica and Paraguay held off introducing similar measures.

Such are the fears around big tobacco’s aggressive use of trade and investment rules that the US-negotiated Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal featured a carve-out excluding big tobacco from investment protections – an explicit admission of the problem.

But this does not go far enough. The important thing to realise is that the problem goes beyond big tobacco. Big oil, big pharma and big mining follow the same playbook, launching investment arbitration cases to defend their business models from governments that would regulate to protect public health, the local environment or the climate.

Rather than target individual companies or sectors, we must push our governments to reform trade and investment rules that grant such extraordinary powers to corporations. That means removing special investor rights and investment courts from trade agreements. It means removing limits on the freedom of governments to protect public health, labour and human rights and the environment.

Of course, this is easier said than done. Robert Lighthizer, US trade representative, served as deputy in a Reagan administration that pressured countries to open their tobacco markets to US exporters in the 1980s.

Vice-President Mike Pence’s record includes opposing smoking regulation, taking huge campaign donations from big tobacco, and denying the causal link between smoking and lung cancer. The EU commission, meanwhile, has been criticized for its meetings with big tobacco while it was negotiating EU-US trade talks.

The good news is that from Brazil to India to Ecuador, countries are stepping away from outdated trade and investment rules. In the UK, the Labour party manifesto opposes parallel courts for multinationals and proposes to review the UK’s investment treaties.

But until we scrap the powers that we grant big tobacco and others to frustrate and bypass our laws, efforts around the world to protect public health will continue to go up in smoke.

ANTI-TOBACCO : THE PR DAUTZENBERG DENOUNCES THE ACTIONS OF BAT

After the revelations from Reuters about the methods of lobbying from Philip Morris International, it is the turn of British American Tobacco (BAT) to suffer the blowback of its business strategy. And it was Professor Bertrand Dautzenberg, pulmonologist at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in paris and secretary general of the Alliance against tobacco, which denounces the strategy of BAT.

https://sivertimes.com/anti-tobacco-the-pr-dautzenberg-denounces-the-actions-of-bat/54893

In a message posted on Twitter and an article in the Figaro, he denounces the attempt to approach the world leader in tobacco, which has sent a registered letter inviting him to discuss ” new product to reduced harm “, to ” change the software regarding the fight against smoking “.

Disagreement on the substance…

Ploom Japan Tobacco, iQos, Philip Morris, Glo BAT : these new devices are the link between the cigarette and the electronic cigarette. They do not use combustion but still contain tobacco. An electrical resistance heater at a low temperature, which would, inter alia, to delete the inhalation of tar and carbon monoxide, according to the manufacturers.

A statement that the Pr Dautzenberg contests. “The industry we swear that this heated tobacco is less toxic than cigarette smoking, but this is not proven at all, and there must be a little bit of burning still, since they found traces of carbon monoxide in the fumes, he said in Le Figaro. Today, tobacco kills one of its faithful consumers. Even if the tobacco said to be less of a risk” not to kill that one in three or one in ten, or even one in a hundred, it’s still unacceptable. “

The doctor also points out that this type of reflection had been carried out on cigarettes light. A reflection at the time supported by a part of the medical community, before it can be recognized that the risk was ultimately the same. Cigarettes light favored only other cancers of the respiratory tract.

Big Tobacco Accused of ‘Dirty War’ Against Smoking Prevention in Africa

In the past, Big Tobacco has been accused of covering up the true extent of the health risks associated with smoking, as well as fighting government restrictions. Now, a new investigation suggests that Big Tobacco is using strong-arm tactics to resist regulations in many parts of Africa.

http://www.care2.com/causes/big-tobacco-accused-of-dirty-war-against-smoking-prevention-in-africa.html

The Guardian reports that after reviewing court documents and other materials, it has uncovered a systematic wave of bullying and intimidation by British American Tobacco. And BAT is soon to close a deal that would make it the world’s leading tobacco company.

The exposé highlights attempts made by BAT to defang, or resist outright, regulation and restriction. For example, the company used threats of economic damage to fight higher taxes on cigarettes, a plan that is standard in the U.S. and much of Europe.

The Guardian reports:

In one undisclosed court document in Kenya, seen by the Guardian, BAT’s lawyers demand the country’s high court “quash in its entirety” a package of anti-smoking regulations and rails against what it calls a “capricious” tax plan. The case is now before the supreme court after BAT Kenya lost in the high court and the appeal court. A ruling is expected as early as next month.

The Guardian has also seen letters, including three by BAT, sent to the governments of Uganda, Namibia, Togo, Gabon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia and Burkina Faso revealing the intimidatory tactics that tobacco companies are using, accusing governments of breaching their own laws and international trade agreements and warning of damage to the economy.

But we have seen these tactics before.

Starting as early as the 1970s, health warnings about cigarettes began to grab national attention. At that time, tobacco companies used every advertising and legal mechanism they could to prevent further regulation and to avoid plain packaging. As a result, some 70 years after the health dangers of cigarettes came to light, we are only now restricting tobacco in a way that seems appropriate to its risks.

While tobacco companies are in retreat in the West, African, Latin American and now Asian markets have become key areas of interest. As well as exploiting labor in these regions, tobacco companies now want to ensure that their products last long after the West has rejected cigarettes.

For its part, British American Tobacco has always claimed to abide by strict codes of conduct. The company has defended its use of the courts as a means to clear up ambiguous interpretations in local regulation and to ensure international regulations are being followed where appropriate.

British American Tobacco maintains that it does not oppose regulation per se and believes that reasonable restrictions on tobacco are warranted as, tobacco is a harmful product.

However, campaigners have long said that BAT falls short of that standard. Many African nations have signed on to the World Health Organization’s treaty on tobacco control, but that status still needs to be ratified, meaning that no uniform policies exist. Sub-Saharan Africa in particular has shown its vulnerability to manipulation by outside businesses with money.

The Guardian exposé highlights this clearly in one extract regarding tobacco regulation in Kenya:

Extract – letter
“If these measures are brought into effect, the economic and social impact will be extremely negative. They could even threaten the continuation of our factory which has operated in Bobo Dioulasso for more than fifty years with more than 210 salaried employees.”

Excerpt from letter from Imperial Tobacco to the prime minister of Burkina Faso, 25 January 2016, concerning new regulations on plain cigarette packaging and large graphic health warnings.

The Sunday Times has previously reported on an investigation which found that BAT sold cheaper, highly addictive cigarettes to Africans in the 1990s. The company also allegedly marketed smoking without sufficient health warnings.

BAT may dispute such claims or suggest that these are simply past infractions. However, more recent reports claim that people affiliated with BAT have attempted to bribe African officials to advance tobacco products in sub-Saharan Africa and to avoid certain regulations.

As of 2016, these allegations — made both by former BAT employees and by outside investigators — even prompted lawmakers in the U.S. Congress to call for a full investigation to determine whether BAT breached any laws due to its involvement in Africa.

Overall, tobacco use remains low across Africa. A major “Lancet” study published in 2010 puts cigarette smokers at about 14 percent of the total population — far below that seen in the Americas. However, data suggests that the rate of smoking uptake is rising at an alarming rate — by as much as four percent per year.

Will the Guardian’s revelations prompt further action against British American Tobacco? That remains to be seen, but we must do everything we can to help African nations get the full facts on tobacco’s health impacts and resist Big Tobacco’s strong-arm tactics.

The Guardian view on big tobacco: stop the spread

Companies like British American Tobacco are using the same tactics they used in the global north to delay legislation in the global south

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/12/the-guardian-view-on-big-tobacco-stop-the-spread

Global corporations work hard to persuade the public of their commitment to corporate social responsibility. British American Tobacco, for example, declares on its website that “as the world’s most international tobacco group, we are in a position to take the lead in defining and demonstrating what a socially responsible tobacco company should be”. It goes on to set out five core beliefs that underpin its “high standards of behaviour and integrity”. The evidence that the Guardian is publishing this week – at the start of a two-year project intended to show just how the global tobacco industry works – suggests that the distance between the words and the deeds of this huge and powerful company is about the size of the distance from the developed to the developing world.

A generation of campaigners in western Europe and north America are familiar with the devious tactics that are now in play in Africa and Asia. The wickedly slow pace of change from 1949, when the link between smoking and cancer was first established, to the introduction of plain packaging in the UK nearly 70 years later, owes everything to the sustained campaign the industry fought against regulation that would limit the harm of smoking. It was fought in the public domain, in carefully placed reports that undermined medical research or questioned the impact of proposals like plain packaging. And it was fought privately, in privileged access to politicians, sometimes indirectly by other interested parties. The most notorious example was the Ecclestone affair in 1997, when a Labour pledge to ban tobacco advertising at all sports events was suddenly and inexplicably withdrawn. It soon emerged that the Formula One boss, Bernie Ecclestone, had donated £1m to Labour, and that there were hopes of more to come.

In the course of those 70 years of delay, millions of people will have taken up smoking and a significant number will have suffered and died because of it. Now the tobacco companies are fast exporting the insidious tactics that worked for so long in the markets of the global north to new ones in the global south. More than half of BAT’s sales are now in emerging markets.

Take the increasingly prosperous East African country of Kenya: its government signed the World Health Organisation’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in 2004, before it was officially adopted. Yet nearly 15 years later, multinational tobacco firms are still fighting to delay the introduction of anti-smoking laws. As one recent study found, the slower the process of legislation, the greater the scope for tobacco company influence. The WHO reports how companies sponsor sporting events for children, for example, and hand out cigarettes in shopping centres regardless of people’s age. Already, proportionately more Kenyan children are smoking than adults.

It’s not all about the companies. Part of the story is the low priority given to public health: in a country of 45 million people like Kenya, the anti-smoking budget is $45,000. But these are places where tobacco can do business. Tobacco taxes are vital revenue, so the tobacco companies claim that regulation will erode the tax base and provide new opportunities for the black market. And part of it is corruption, the purchase of influence.

As Bath University’s Tobacco Tactics website details, big tobacco’s attempts to delay the introduction of laws to limit the harm of tobacco across Africa follow a familiar pattern: the companies influence politicians, they intimidate tobacco farmers, and they use unrestrained advertising to promote smoking. The companies insist they are only ensuring that legislation is proportionate. These are weasel words. Their tactics are well-funded, well-rehearsed and slick. They worked for years in the old markets. But if tactics can be exported, so can campaigns. BAT is about to become one of the FTSE 100’s top three companies. Reputation matters. Shareholders have leverage – and they should prepare to use it.