Daily Doc: BAT, Feb 26, 1981: BATS's Smoking and Health Issues handbook
Daily Doc: BATS's Smoking and Health Issues handbook
Title: Millbank Public Affairs Smoking and Health Handbook to Employees, British American Tobacco Co. (BAT)+
BAT, Feb 26, 1981
Bates #: BATES
March 15, 2000
According to this document, the British American Tobacco Company (BAT) attempted to prepare a guidebook for employees to help them handle questions about smoking and health issues. The comments from this editor on a draft of the handbook are remarkable. Note that even in the eighth draft of this booklet, the emphasis is on eliminating incriminating contradictions, avoiding liability, minimizing the contributions that doctors have in the debate and keeping from inflaming the passive smoking debate.
Understandably, it appeared to be a very tricky booklet to write. They had already been through seven previous drafts.
CITATION
Title: Millbank Public Affairs Smoking and Health Handbook to Employees, British American Tobacco Co. (BAT)+
Type of Document: memo
Author: Descoteaux, Michael
Recipient: Gibb, R.M.
Date: 19810226
Site: U.S. Centers for Disease Control Document site, Minnesota Select Set http://outside.cdc.gov:8080/BASIS/ncctld/web/mnselect/sf
Page count: 5
URL: http://outside.cdc.gov:8080/BASIS/ncctld/web/mnimages/DDW?W%3DDETAILSID%3D778%26M%3D1%26K%3D778%26R%3DY%26U%3D1
QUOTES
Bonjour Bob,
Thank you for sending me the eighth draft of this proposed handbook. I find it most interesting that BAT would undertake such a project and...perhaps we could consider adopting it for our own employees one way or another.
The following are my comments as they propped up during my reading of the text:
...3. Page 5, last paragraph: "It follows that the reductions currently observed must be largely associated with the early post-1960 move to filter cigarettes." This whole section creates a major problem in my view, one of inconsistency. If, in the first part of the handbook, BAT expresses the opinion that smoking does not cause certain diseases or is not a contributing factor, how can they point out that a reduction in the incidence of the same diseases is a probably reflection of the newly developed filtered or lower "tar" delivery cigarettes. It seems to me that it is a case of having your cake and eating it too. In my opinion, the lower disease incidence forecast, if it is to be pointed out by the industry, is a validation of the accusations against tobacco as a contributing factor to these diseases.
5. Page 7, last paragraph: They say that nicotine can be a stimulant or tranquilizer depending on the needs of the smoker. I think they should really say that this depends on the dose absorbed by the smoker rather than his needs.
6....Finally, I am somewhat concerned with the last sentence [about carbon monoxide] not only for smokers but for the implications in the passive smoking debate. This is not the only place where BAT has a statement about doctor's advice and I think they should word their statement somewhat differently, perhaps along the following lines, "Nevertheless, some doctors advise patients suffering from illness which could be aggravated by an increased carbon monoxide level in their blood to abstain from smoking."
7. Page 10, first paragraph: I am very surprised to find BAT mentioning that there indeed exist some people who are allergic to tobacco smoke. My impression was that no allergy to tobacco smoke had ever been identified...I would suggest that they crosscheck this information very closely as allergy is one of the many arguments that anti-smokers use in the passive smoking debate.
8. Page 10, last paragraph: I am amazed that BAT would agree with the advice of doctors concerning pregnant women....BAT's argument could open the door to claims for warnings on cigarette packages, for example, and has very important implications in the passive smoking debate.
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