UN accuses tobacco firms of spying plot

Multinational tobacco companies, including British American and Philip Morris, worked for years to discredit the World Health Organisation and subvert its programmes intended to curb smoking, says a United Nations report published yesterday.

Multinational tobacco companies, including British American and Philip Morris, worked for years to discredit the World Health Organisation and subvert its programmes intended to curb smoking, says a United Nations report published yesterday.

Tobacco industry executives infiltrated the WHO and used other UN agencies to acquire information about it. They also lobbied delegates from developing countries to resist antitobacco resolutions.

"The tobacco company's own documents show that they viewed the WHO... as one of their foremost enemies," said the report by a group of independent experts.

Citing tobacco industry documents released during litigation in the United States, the four-member committeeurged WHO member countries to investigate industry attempts to infiltrate their own health efforts. The report found that tobacco companies often covered up their role - for example by secretly funding "independent" experts to conduct research, appear at conferences and lobby WHO scientists with the intention of distorting, discrediting or influencing studies.

"The tobacco companies hid behind a variety of ostensibly independent quasi-academic, public policy and business organisations whose tobacco industry funding was not disclosed," the experts said. Derek Yach, head of the WHO's tobacco free initiative, added that, as a result, "we haven't seen the full impact of tax, legislative actions on advertising and marketing, improved focus on quitting, all of which means that we probably have substantially more smokers in the world today and substantially more deaths than we would have in the absence of these activities".

The WHO has made the fight against smoking a top priority. It aims to conclude a global accord to cut cigarette consumption and stem the rising death toll by May 2003.