Profits Over People

This report summarises a year long investigation of over 10,000 pages of previously secret internal tobacco company documents, mainly from Philip Morris and British American Tobacco, who combined share most of the market share in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). These documents were downloaded off a company website and BAT (British American Tobacco) documents were obtained from the Guildford Depository in the United Kingdom.

The report shows that the tobacco companies:

• were intensely competitive but collaborated in campaigns against common threats to the industry;
• hired scientists throughout the region to misrepresent the science linking secondhand smoke to serious diseases, while cloaking in secrecy any connection of these scientists with the tobacco industry;
• designed "youth smoking prevention" campaigns and programmes primarily as public relations exercises aimed at deterring meaningful regulation of tobacco marketing;
• had detailed knowledge of smuggling networks and markets and actively sought to increase their share of the illegal market by structuring marketing campaigns and distribution routes around it; and
• enjoyed access to key government officials and succeeded in weakening or killing tobacco control legislation in a number of countries.