Last week Clive Bates, former director of ASH and now a leading advocate of reduced risk products, tweeted:
Idea: somehow find a billion dollar foundation to set up a system to meticulously track and challenge the false and misleading statements of WHO, CDC, Bloomberg-funded proxies, and call out the junk science and press releases of influential academics and medical society chancers.
I would be surprised if Clive’s reference to a ‘billion dollar foundation’ was entirely innocent.
He didn’t elaborate though and none of the people who subsequently commented took the hint so let me spell it out.
There already exists a ‘billion dollar foundation’ that could do the work outlined by Clive (assuming his plan is to challenge the scaremongering about e-cigarettes and other reduced risk products).
It’s called the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World and it was launched in New York in September 2017. (I know, because I was there.)
Supporting the initiative is the tobacco giant Philip Morris International which has pledged to donate one billion dollars to the Foundation over twelve years (€83 million per year until 2029).
Announced twelve months later, in September 2018, one of the Foundation’s core projects is the Smoke-Free Index which has recently and very quietly been renamed the Tobacco Transformation Index.
(Frankly, I’m not surprised. Given the nature of the project, calling it the ‘Smoke-Free Index’ was an obvious hostage to fortune and I’m sure I’m not the only one who thought so.)
According to the Foundation’s website:
The Tobacco Transformation Index will provide quantifiable evidence over time of what steps the largest tobacco companies are taking toward achieving a world free of combustible cigarettes and other high-risk tobacco products and any actions they take to impede that progress.
This resource will evaluate 15 of the largest tobacco companies in the world. Previously known as the Smoke-Free Index, the Tobacco Transformation Index is the first action of the Foundation’s Industry Transformation initiative, a core strategy of the Foundation’s overall mission to achieve a smoke-free world within this generation.
When I first wrote about the project (Was that it? Smoke-Free Index fails to ignite) I made the point that:
I do wonder what PMI’s competitors think of the company funding a body that intends to hold their feet to the fire, forever monitoring their activities in the name of some ‘smoke-free’ utopia.
I wonder too if by committing a billion dollars to the Foundation, PMI has created an albatross that could seriously embarrass both the company and its investors in the years ahead.
For example, if their public statements are anything to go by, senior PMI executives clearly think their company is leading the race towards a ‘better’, smoke-free future.
They boast that they are disrupting not just the industry but their own company.
But what happens if and when PMI lags behind some of its rivals? (Talk is cheap and actions speak louder than words.)
Will the Foundation’s Smoke-Free Index point the finger at the company that is bankrolling it?
We’ll find out in September when the first Tobacco Transformation Index is scheduled to be published, two years after the project was announced.
In the meantime I urge the Foundation to take up Clive Bates’ idea and set up a sister project that, in his words, would ‘meticulously track and challenge the false and misleading statements of WHO, CDC, Bloomberg-funded proxies, and call out the junk science and press releases of influential academics and medical society chancers.’
They won’t, of course, because the Foundation is desperate to win the approval of the very organisations it should be calling out for their lies and disinformation.
So instead of taking on the real obstacles to change and transformation it prefers to focus on 15 tobacco companies, many of them direct commercial rivals to their sole funder.
The reality is that however hard the Foundation tries to win the blessing of its detractors within the global health industry, it will never be accepted by WHO, Bloomberg and co because of that pesky link with PMI.
Anyway, I can’t wait to see how PMI fares when the first Tobacco Transformation Index is published by the Foundation in September.
My guess is that the company will be near the top of the transformation table - if indeed there is a table - but will they dare place PMI in first place?
Even if it’s merited by scrupulously impartial third party analysis, the cynics will have a field day.
There is of course another issue that needs to be addressed and it’s this.
When Clive Bates talks of the need for a ‘billion dollar foundation to set up a system to meticulously track and challenge the false and misleading statements of WHO, CDC, Bloomberg-funded proxies, and call out the junk science and press releases of influential academics and medical society chancers’, he is obviously talking about a project that will combat the disinformation on e-cigarettes and other risk reduction products.
But what about the many false and misleading statements about combustible tobacco, or the junk science on second and even third-hand (sic) smoke?
The truth is, while e-cigarettes, heated tobacco and snus may pose a significantly smaller risk than combustibles, some of the arguments used to denormalise smoking - and smokers - are equally open to question and examination.
Unfortunately that doesn’t seem to concern many anti-smoking, pro-vaping campaigners because they’re as keen on a smoke-free world as any public health professional and the end justifies the means.
Adults who enjoy smoking and don’t want to quit are unimportant. If they can be persuaded (or forced) to stop smoking, because it’s ‘good’ for them, it doesn’t matter whether it’s by fair means or foul.
I get that on current evidence smoking combustible tobacco poses a much greater risk than vaping regulated e-cigarettes, but that doesn’t excuse some of the wilfully exaggerated claims about the risks of smoking.
Whether it’s smoking or vaping, all false and misleading statements should be challenged.
Those of us with memories longer than the last decade will never forget the lies and fear-mongering that preceded workplace smoking bans, graphic health warnings, plain packaging and the rest.
Excuse, therefore, any sense of schadenfreude when I hear the same people who promoted the ‘quit or die’ mantra, or helped create an unfounded fear of ‘secondhand’ smoke, complain when similar tactics are used to undermine reduced risk products.
They say you reap what you sow and this is a classic example. The health risks of smoking and vaping may be light years apart but having used junk science to denormalise smoking in public places and stigmatise the consumer don’t whinge when a product you support is targeted by the same public health organisations you were once happy to endorse.
The war on smoking set a precedent for future public health campaigns and vaping advocates in tobacco control will just have to face the consequences of the template they created and are responsible for.
Update: Charles Gardner, who I understand works for the Foundation, tweets:
Holding big tobacco's feet to the fire is just as important as holding public officials and octagenarian philanthropists to account for misinformation.
That’s all very well but I see little evidence that the Foundation is doing anything to address the latter. Is there a report or project I’m unaware of?