Healthy Skepticism Library item: 1991

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Philip Morris Muzzled Marketing of Cessation Products
Join Together 2002 Aug 15
http://www.jointogether.org/news/headlines/inthenews/2002/philip-morris-muzzled-of.html

Full text:

A report by health-policy researchers found that the tobacco industry pressured drug companies into limiting their marketing campaigns for smoking-cessation products, the Associated Press reported Aug. 13.

According to the report by Lisa Bero and Bhavna Shamasunder, researchers at the University of California at San Francisco, in the 1980s and 1990s the tobacco industry tried to undermine the marketing campaigns for nicotine-based gum and a skin patch.

The researchers found that the tobacco industry pressured a Dow Chemical pharmaceutical subsidiary to scale back on educational materials tied to Nicorette nicotine gum. The materials encouraging doctors to urge their patients to quit smoking.

At the time, Philip Morris was a major purchaser of Dow’s tobacco-crop chemicals, and suspended purchases of Dow products in the midst of the pressure campaign.

Similar tactics were used on Ciba-Geigy, which sold the Habitrol nicotine patch. The company also made tobacco pesticides.

The report’s findings are based on documents posted on a website containing documents that were part of the 1998 national tobacco settlement.

Brendan McCormick, a Philip Morris USA spokesman, said the documents cited in the report do not reflect the company’s current beliefs that cigarette smoking “causes serious health effects in smokers and is addictive.”