[Intl-tobacco] Report re: 1st Tobacco Industry Academy Awards

[robert weissman]

From: Anna White <awhite@essential.org>

Dear all,

The closing plenary session of the 13th World Conference on Tobacco or
Health (WCTOH) included the first ever "Tobacco Industry Academy Awards"
sponsored by the world's first and only truthful tobacco company,
Licensed to Kill, Inc!

Over 70 tobacco industry examples from more than 30 countries were
chosen as final nominees under the following award categories: Best Ploy
to Circumvent the Law, Best Exploitation of a Special Population, Best
Industry Ally, Best Effort to Conceal Corporate Ir-Responsibility, and
Best Initiative to Recruit "Replacement" Smokers.

In case you missed the show, you can check out the video of it at:
http://www.2006conferences.org/26-media.php# (scroll down to bottom;
fast forward to 7:54)
Note: The video does not show the tobacco industry examples featured in
the "Awards." To view these, click through the slide show on the right
side.

"Rex Lungze" served as Master of Ceremony for the "Awards," which also
featured appearances by the musical group "The Lung Chokers" and
Licensed to Kill's CEO "Rich Fromdeth", who bestowed the "Deathtime
Achieve Award" -- a golden lasso -- on the Marlboro Man (who promptly
died). http://www.flickr.com/photos/gyatnetwork/197409082/

While the "Awards" was a parody, all of the tobacco industry examples
profiled were unfortunately real -- from Imperial Tobacco's removable
warning labels (Australia) to British American Tobacco's donation of a
water-less water tower (Niger) to Philip Morris's sponsorship of trendy
promotional events around a Formula 1 race (Malaysia).

The show ended abruptly when a reincarnated Marlboro Man stepped onto
the stage to accept the "Best Effort to Recruit Replacement Smokers"
award on behalf of Philip Morris for the company's "Marlboro Adventures"
in the western U.S. states of Utah and Montana. Youth advocates chanting
"Hey Hey Ho Ho Big Tobacco's Got to Go" converged on the stage, kicked
the tobacco industry representatives off, then proceeded to highlight
their efforts to counter the tobacco industry around the world and in
Washington, DC during the WCTOH.

Check out the "Tobacco Industry Academy Awards" program at:
http://www.essentialaction.org/tobacco/event/wctoh06/TIAAProgram.pdf

Again, you can view the video of the "Tobacco Industry Academy Awards"
and youth advocacy segment at: http://www.2006conferences.org/26-media.php#

The final nominees and category winners of the "Academy Awards" may
still be newsworthy -- especially if they included examples from your
country (or even just companies that operate in your country)*. Feel
free to send out a press release about any of the "Academy Awards"
nominees and winners to media in your country. If you need to extract
photos to pass on to the media, you can download the presentation (25
MB) at:
http://www.essentialaction.org/tobacco/temp/TobaccoIndustryAcademyAwards_fi=
nal.ppt

Note: If you use any of the photos, please credit the original source,
as detailed in the slide notes.

Below, please find an article that nicely summarizes the "Tobacco
Industry Academy Awards." The article may be reprinted, according to the
authors' guidelines.

Photos of the "Academy Awards" should soon be available on the WCTOH
website at:
http://www.13thwctoh.org/t-gallery.php?gal=3D23#

In the meantime, you can find some among the photos taken by youth
advocates at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gyatnetwork/

all the best,
Anna

Global Partnerships for Tobacco Control
Essential Action
P.O. Box 19405
Washington, DC 20036
Tel: +1 202-387-8030
Fax: +1 202-234-5176
Email: awhite@essential.org (or awhite@essentialinformation.org)
http://www.essentialaction.org/tobacco

* The final nominees included the following...

Companies: Altadis, British American Tobacco, Imperial Tobacco, Japan
Tobacco International, Philip Morris

Countries: Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada,
China/Hong Kong, Georgia, Germany, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, Israel,
Kenya, Malawi, Malaysia, Mexico, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Romania,
Senegal, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Ukraine, Uruguay, USA

####

THE TOBACCO INDUSTRY ACADEMY AWARDS
By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

Everywhere you look, Big Tobacco is proclaiming, "We've changed."

Number two global seller British American Tobacco brags that it has
risen to 31st on the "2006 Companies that Count" listing, a British
ranking of supposedly socially responsible companies.

Proclaims BAT's Director of Corporate and Regulatory Affairs Michael
Prideaux, "If a business is managing products which pose a risk to
health, we believe it is all the more important that it does so
responsibly."

R.J. Reynolds, which is now owned in large part by BAT, is a newcomer to
the social responsibility game, but trying to catch up fast. "At the
core of our beliefs is the knowledge that we produce a product with
significant and inherent risks," writes company CEO Susan Ivey in RJR's
2006 "Corporate Social Responsibility Report." "With that understanding,
our core values and guiding principles =85 speak to responsible marketing,
our approach to tobacco risk reduction and product stewardship."

No company can outdo Philip Morris on this front. "By the end of the
1990s, our tobacco companies better understood the expectations placed
upon them," the company asserts on its website.

"Corporate responsibility is a core business objective," contends Andre
Calantzopoulos, CEO of Philip Morris International. "From youth smoking
prevention to open discussion of tobacco issues to research into reduced
risk products, we're reshaping our company to meet society's expectations."

Philip Morris takes the idea of remodeling itself so seriously, it even
changed its name. No longer is the parent company Philip Morris -- now
it is Altria.

But to get a glimpse of what Big Tobacco is actually doing (rather than
saying) around the world, you need to shift attention away from the
industry's self-aggrandizing propaganda.

The industry's "extreme makeover" was, in equal measure, mocked and
exposed at the "Tobacco Industry Academy Awards," held in conjunction
with the triannual World Conference on Tobacco or Health, which finished
this past weekend in Washington, D.C.

The awards ceremony was a biting parody (you can see video at
http://www.2006conferences.org/26-media.php#), but unfortunately all of
the nominations and awards were based on actual industry activities over
the last three years.

The award recipients:

Best Ploy to Circumvent a Law: Imperial Tobacco. With Australia
mandating large warning labels on cigarette packs, Imperial innovated
the idea of "peal off" warnings.

Among the runners up: Philip Morris and BAT. Anticipating an advertising
ban
in Senegal, Philip Morris has painted entire storefronts
in its familiar red-and-white. Among BAT's nominations was for its
conduct in Uzbekistan, where an analysis of internal company documents
shows the company overturned legislation that banned advertising and
smoking in public places as part of a deal to buy a formerly state-owned
company.

Best Effort to Conceal Corporate Ir-Responsibility: BAT, for providing
free mini-stalls to sell cigarettes to Sri Lankan tsunami victims.

Among the runners up: BAT again, for providing a highly publicized water
tower to a town in Niger. The problem: It is a waterless water tower,
with the pumps that were supposed to fill the tower not connected to any
electrical source.

Best Initiative to Recruit New Smokers: Philip Morris, for a worldwide
competition that brings young adults from around the world (chosen from
more than a million applicants) to Marlboro Country -- the U.S. West.

Among the runners up: Philip Morris, for sale in Malaysia of "kiddie
packs" -- packs of 14 cigarettes that are cheaper than a regular pack. A
ban on kiddie packs has been delayed at industry urging.

Best Exploitation of a Special Population: British American Tobacco's
Benson & Hedges.
An uncovered training video for "tobacco girls" -- who approach men
"young and old" on streets and at bars and offer to light a Benson &
Hedges cigarette for them -- shows the young women being tutored to
start the day with a "good wash," followed by careful grooming and
application of makeup. A "good impression will be transferred to the
brand and international company you represent," the video instructs.

Among the runners up: Philip Morris, for hawking "Maori Mix" brand
cigarettes in Israel. (Maoris are the indigenous people of Aotearoa/New
Zealand.) Confronted at the company's shareholder meeting this past
April, CEO Louis Camilleri apologized to a Maori anti-smoking activist
for the misappropriation of the Maori name.

Best Industry Ally: Liu Xiang, an Olympic gold medal-winning hurdler
from China, is a leading image ambassador for China=92s biggest cigarette
maker, Baisha Group.

Among the runners up: The Bandung Municipal Administration in Indonesia,
for partnering with Philip Morris on a "school improvement" program, and
U.S. President George Bush for refusing to send the Framework Convention
on Tobacco Control to the Senate for ratification. More than 130
countries have now ratified the tobacco treaty.

That last is the good news. For one thing has really changed about the
tobacco industry. Around the world, its legitimacy is declining and a
growing public health movement is imposing meaningful rules to curb
industry predation.

Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime
Reporter, <http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com>. Robert Weissman is
editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor,
<http://www.multinationalmonitor.org> and director of Essential Action
<http://www.essentialaction.org>, which helped organize the tobacco
awards ceremony. Mokhiber and Weissman are co-authors of On the Rampage:
Corporate Predators and the Destruction of Democracy (Monroe, Maine:
Common Courage Press).

(c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

_______________________________________________

Focus on the Corporation is a weekly column written by Russell Mokhiber
and Robert Weissman. Please feel free to forward the column to friends
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