Search results: tobacco

Hennessey quotes from a speech by Steven Parrish, of the Steve Parrish Consulting Group describing parallels between tobacco and food litigation.

From the first lawsuit filed against [tobacco] industry member in 1953 to mid-1990s, the industry never lost or settled a smoking and health product liability suit. In the mid ‘90s the eggs hit the fan because the industry for all those decades had smugly thought it had a legal problem. But over time, it came to realize it had a society problem. Litigation was a symptom of the disease, not the disease itself.

…When it came time to resolve the litigation, we couldn’t just sit in a room and say, ‘how much money do you want?…A lot had nothing to do with money. It had to do with reining the industry in…We spent so much time early on talking to ourselves about greedy trial lawyers, out-of-touch regulators, media-addicted elected officials and public health people who didn’t know how to run a business. At the end of the day, it didn’t matter. We would have been much better off recognizing these people had legitimate agendas.”

… Maybe there are some parallels, but I urge people not to succumb to the temptation to say, ‘cigarettes kill you, cigarettes are addictive. But mac and cheese, coffee, and Oscar Meyers wieners don’t. That may be true, but there are still risks for the industry.

There’s this idea, which has picked up steam in the media, that large food companies are manipulating ingredients to hook people on food. It hasn’t been manifest in litigation yet, but we’re seeing it with legislative initiatives, like Mayor Bloomberg in New York City saying sugar hooks people and causes diabetes. We’ve seen some with GMOs, though most of that legislation is about consumers’ right to know. But there’s this overarching concept that Big Food is somehow manipulating our food supply and as a result, giving us non-food.

Sounds like the message is getting across loud and clear.

Thoughts?

Anti-tobacco advocates have been worried for years that concerns about obesity would draw funding away from anti-smoking initiatives (see previous posts).  Their fears are justified, as described in today’s New York Times and in a recent editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Years of experience have taught anti-smoking advocates that countering the marketing efforts of cigarette companies required constant vigilance.  It also taught them that cigarette companies take immediate advantage of any weakening of resistance to their efforts.

Cigarettes remain the leading cause of preventable deaths among Americans.  Cigarette marketing aimed at children remains a national—and international—public health scandal.

Health should not be a zero-sum game.  Anti-obesity advocates have much to learn from anti-smoking advocates.  How about joining forces to improve the health of Americans?

I’ve just read an enlightening paper in the July issue of the American Journal of Public Health (see Note below) about the tobacco industry’s role in and funding of “We Card,” a program ostensibly aimed at discouraging smoking among young people by encouraging retail cigarette sellers to “card” underage buyers.

The paper is an analysis of internal food company discussions about this program in cigarette company documents released as part of the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement.  These documents are now publicly available on the University of  California San Francisco (UCSF) website.

This analysis demonstrates that the actual purpose of tobacco industry support for the program was to make the industry look good (public relations) and to convince legislators and health officials that regulation would be unnecessary.

The industry effectively recruited astonishing numbers of private business, retail, and trade groups (expected) and state health, legal, and police agencies (which should have known better) as partners in this program.  The paper lists these groups in tables that take up nearly five pages.

As the paper explains:

Economic theory predicts that industry self-regulation will achieve social benefits far smaller than those gained from government regulation, although governments increasingly view self-regulation as a means to achieve public goals without public spending. However, industries and governments may have competing agendas, suggesting that public health advocates should be wary of self-regulation strategies…. This program’s success in reaching tobacco retailers and attracting independent allies has made We Card one of the tobacco industry’s major public relations achievements. However, despite industry claims that the program is effective, internal industry evidence suggests that We Card has not reduced tobacco sales to minors and that it was not designed to do so. Instead, We Card was explicitly structured to improve the industry’s public image and to thwart regulation and law enforcement activity.

The authors’ conclusion: “Policymakers should be cautious about accepting industry self-regulation at face value, both because it redounds to the industry’s benefit and because it is ineffective.”

Proponents of food industry self-regulation and of partnerships and alliances with food companies should read this study carefully.

Note: Only the Abstract is available to non-subscribers.  The reference is Apollonio DE, Malone RE, The “We Card” Program: Tobacco Industry “Youth Smoking Prevention” as Industry Self Preservation.. Am J Public Health 2010;100:1188-1201.

The Rudd Center at Yale is devoted to establishing a firm research basis for obesity interventions.  Its latest contribution is a paper in the Milbank Quarterly from its director, Kelly Brownell, and co-author Kenneth Warner, an equally distinguished anti-smoking researcher from the University of Michigan.  Its provocative title: The perils of ignoring history: Big Tobacco played dirty and millions died.  How similar is Big Food?

The paper is getting much attention.  A spokesman for the American Dietetic Association, a group well known for its close ties to food companies, emphasizes that food is not tobacco.  Of course it’s not.  But food companies often behave like tobacco companies, and not always in the public interest.  The Milbank paper provides plenty of documentation to back up the similarity.  Worth a look, no?

April 3 update: Evidently, FoodNavigator.com thinks so.  It is asking readers to file 100 word comments on issues raised by the paper by April 8.   And here are the comments.

The World Health Organization’s declaration on prevention of non-communicable diseases (NCDs—heart disease, type 2 diabetes, etc) was in the news this week (its source is here).

First, because of what it says and does not say:

These things are miserable to read.  You have to start with the “recognizes.” Here are two:

Recognize also that the main modifiable risk factors of noncommunicable diseases are tobacco use, harmful use of alcohol, unhealthy diets, physical inactivity and air pollution and are largely preventable and require cross-sectoral actions;

Recognize also that obesity is driven by multiple factors, including the unaffordability and unavailability of healthy diets, lack of physical activity, sleep deprivation, and stress;

But after all that, the declaration merely suggests [my comments]:

(i) promoting increased availability and affordability of nutritious food and information on healthy eating including through promoting efficient, inclusive, resilient and sustainable agrifood systems [how?]

(ii) improving policies and taking measures to reduce industrially-produced trans-fatty acids to the lowest level possible and reduce excessive levels of saturated fats, free sugars and sodium [by what means?]

(iii) providing nutritional information to consumers, such as through front-of-pack labeling;

(iv) putting in place public food procurement and service policies for healthy diets;

(v) protecting children from the harmful impact of food marketing, including digital marketing [How?  By what means?]

(vi) protecting, promoting and supporting optimal breastfeeding practices, including by regulating the marketing of breastmilk substitutes [at last, regulation] and

(vii) promoting adequate physical activity, including sports and recreation, and reducing sedentary behavior, including through
increasing access to public spaces.

What’s missing here?  Policy!

• Where, for example, is soda taxation?  [The WHO says it wants soda taxes to increase by 50% as part of its 3 by 35 initiative, but the declaration mentions taxes on tobacco and alcohol, not sodas].
• Where is regulation of marketing to kids?
• Where is reduction of ultra-processed foods?
• Where are warning labels?

Whatever.  All of this could be moot.

Second, because the U.S. will not sign on to the declaration

The reasons are quite different.

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, oddly since he wants to Make America Healthy Again, objected to the declaration.  He says he cannot “support W.H.O. policies that…promoted abortion and “radical gender ideology.”  This too is odd because neither is mentioned in the declaration.

He is also quoted as saying,

More specifically, we cannot accept language that pushes destructive gender ideology…Neither can we accept claims of a constitutional or international right to abortion. The WHO cannot claim credibility or leadership until it undergoes radical reform. The United States objects to the political declaration of non communicable diseases.

Again, odd because MAHA has a political agenda to end NCDs.

But I am more concerned about the failure of WHO to propose stronger measures.  Earlier drafts, apparently, contained stronger language.

Third, because conflicts of interest could be involved

What’s going on here?  Could this have something to do with it? Alarm as WHO accepts increasing amount of dark money from donors.

The WHO Foundation, according to Who funds the WHO Foundation? A transparency analysis of donation disclosures over the first 3 years of its operation, takes large donations from corporate and philanthropic groups and individuals without revealing who they are.

Oh dear.

Resources

• New York Times 
• Food Fix 

I could hardly believe it when I saw this item: Taiwan state distillery taps food market with alcohol-based instant noodles.   Taiwan’s state distillery has diversified into the food industry with alcohol-based instant noodles, blending beverage expertise with ready-to-eat innovation… Read more

The Taiwan Tobacco and Liquor Corporation (TTL)’s

most well-known products are Taiwan Beer which is considered an icon in Taiwanese culture and also the most popular beer locally; as well as traditional Chinese Hua Tiao wine.

The latter has been used in TTL’s instant noodle innovation to create its viral TTL Hua Tiao Chicken Noodles, which incorporate not only significant Hua Tiao wine content but also Chinese herbs and meat chunks.

“These are not your average instant noodles – Hua Tiao wine elevates the noodles to another level, as it is traditionally known for its antioxidant content as well as benefits for digestion and blood circulation….”We already have the alcohol in production, and we are indeed well-known for our liquors, so it made a lot of sense to us.”

I’ll bet.

I suppose young people will have to be carded to be allowed to eat it.  Whatever.  You can’t make this stuff up!

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The New York Times Magazine has published an astonishing investigative report about the FDA, totally worth reading: Inside the Collapse of the F.D.A.  How the new health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is dismantling the agency.

She begins with RFK Jr’s opening salvo on Twitter (X):

FDA’s war on public health is about to end,” Kennedy wrote. “This includes its aggressive suppression of psychedelics, peptides, stem cells, raw milk, hyperbaric therapies, chelating compounds, ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, vitamins, clean foods, sunshine, exercise, nutraceuticals and anything else that advances human health and can’t be patented by Pharma. If you work for the FDA and are part of this corrupt system, I have two messages for you. 1. Preserve your records, and 2. Pack your bags.

Her major point:

It was easy to paint the F.D.A. as a supervillain (an aggressive suppressor of sunlight, vitamins and exercise, to borrow Kennedy’s language), in part because the truth was so much more complex.

What’s impressive about this piece is its dealing with the complexities.  Here’s the critical one.

On the one hand, the agency’s regulators have a truly enormous remit: Which drugs, medical devices, food, pet food, dietary supplements, tobacco products and cosmetics we can buy — one in every five dollars we spend, by official estimates — comes down to the decisions they make. On the other hand, the agency itself is profoundly under-resourced…In fact, its federal budget is roughly the size of the budget of the local school district in Montgomery County, Md., where it is based.

I could go on quoting but everyone should read this piece to realize what is at stake in the current destruction of the FDA—a lot.  We need the FDA, and we need it to be much, much stronger, not weaker.

I want to add one point not discussed in the article: unlike the other agencies in the U.S. Public Health Service, which get their funding from congressional health committees, the FDA gets its funding from congressional agriculture committees.  This dates back to 1906 when the forerunner of the FDA was created as part of the USDA.   When the FDA was transferred to the forerunner of Health and Human Services, its funding remained with agriculture committees, which could not care less about its functions.

The article is long.  If you don’t want to read the whole thing, here are the take-home lessons:  What to Know About the Collapse of the F.D.A. 

Politico reports: White House invites 46 farm, food groups to discuss MAHA report

The MAHA report, as I’ve written, could have enormous implications for food system businesses.  The problems it describes with the health of America’s children call for policies that could reduce profits for companies that, for example, produce seed oils, food products with color additives, and ultra-processed foods in general.

The secretaries of HHS and USDA have promised to soon issue dietary guidelines to reduce intake of such foods.

Food companies making products targeted by such views are unlikely to be happy with the report.  If past history is any indication, they will lobby for exceptions, exemptions, and delays, and will insist that the proposed measures have no scientific basis (which some indeed do not), violate the First Amendment, and will cost jobs—the playbook that worked for such a long time for the tobacco industry.

The Politico report is behind a paywall, but Helena Bottemiller Evich obtained a list of who has been invited and writes the details in FoodFix: White House holds flurry of industry meetings in wake of MAHA drama. 

Her list shows separate meetings for fruit and vegetable producers and trade groups, and those for meat and dairy, restaurants, grocers, beverage companies (Big Soda), commodity groups, and Big Ag.

Oh to be a fly on those walls.

It’s hard for me to believe that this administration will do anything to reduce business interests, and early indications are that RFK Jr is merely calling for companies to take voluntary actions, and individuals to take personal responsibility—neither of which is likely to have any chance of Making America Healthy Again.

I look forward to seeing what they do with the dietary guidelines and the next MAHA Commission report on policy—both expected by the end of the summer, apparently.  Stay tuned.