Philip Morris considered health warnings on exports

[Robert Weissman <rob@essential.org>]

For release, 				For more information, contact
September 9, 1998, 11:00 a.m. 		Robert Weissman, 202-387-8030


PHILIP MORRIS PAPERS SHOW COMPANY CONSIDERED 
VOLUNTARY HEALTH WARNINGS ON CIGARETTE EXPORTS

Philip Morris has considered adding U.S.-style health warnings on all of
its exported cigarettes, newly discovered company documents show. 

In a July 24, 1991 memo, unearthed by Essential Action, a Ralph
Nader-founded corporate accountability group, Murray Bring, counsel to
Philip Morris and a lawyer at Arnold  & Porter, a top Washington, D.C.
firm suggested to Michael Miles, then Philip Morris incoming CEO, "that we
should consider placing health warnings on all of our exported
cigarettes."

Bring added that when Geoffrey Bible -- the current CEO of Philip Morris
-- headed Philip Morris International "he had just about concluded that it
would be sensible to place warnings on all exported cigarettes." Others,
he wrote, including former CEO Hamish Maxwell, did not "objec[t] to the
concept, in principle," but "have felt that we should not make this
concession without getting something for it in return. For example, we
might be able to use it as a bargaining chip in legislative negotiations."

The document is available on the House of Representatives Commerce
Committee web site <www.house.gov/commerce> under the Bates Number
2023003838. Bring followed up in October 1991 with another note to Miles,
urging again that Philip Morris, quietly and voluntarily, add health
warnings to its exports. The Bates Number for that document is
2023003853/3854.

"It is time to put an end to Big Tobacco's double standard" said Robert
Weissman, co-director of Essential Action. "Congress should adopt
legislation, such as that introduced by Representative Lloyd Doggett, to
force the tobacco companies to adhere, at a minimum, to the same labeling
and marketing standards overseas as at home," Weissman said. "In the
meantime, Philip Morris should act on the suggestion made by one of its
top lawyers nearly a decade ago, and voluntarily place U.S.-style health
warnings on its exports, as well as on those cigarettes it produces
overseas." END