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Smokeless Tobacco Council

The Smokeless Tobacco Council (STC) is a tobacco industry–sponsored research organization that concentrates on smokeless tobacco. Like CTR, the Smokeless Tobacco Council is supported by contributions from individual tobacco companies (see chapter 2). Also like CTR, the STC appears to fund many proposals not on the basis of scientific peer review, but on the basis of interest to tobacco company lawyers.

In September 1978 Ernest Pepples, counsel for B&W, recommended that B&W join the Smokeless Tobacco Council:

I think it would be polite to join and would recommend contributing $5000 per annum. ... The primary purpose of such membership, however, would be to know what the Smokeless Tobacco Council is doing as a protective measure both for our interest in that product area and against the possibility that some research they do could impact on our cigarette business. {1500.06}

B&W appears to have joined the STC because it wanted to keep abreast of what the STC was doing. Furthermore, as described in more detail below, the individual companies were concerned that research on smokeless tobacco might indicate that the smokeless tobacco products were less hazardous than cigarettes.

J. K. Wells, a B&W lawyer, attended an STC meeting after B&W joined. In a November 9, 1979, memo to Ernest Pepples {1502.01}, Wells summarizes what went on at the meeting.

Tim [Finnegan of the law firm Jacob, Medinger, and Finnegan] reported that Dr. H. Russell Fisher appeared at the annual meeting of the AMA [American Medical Association] in Chicago and protested on the floor the adoption of an AMA resolution which urged the media to refuse smokeless tobacco advertising, especially television and radio . [Dr. Fisher also received roughly $2,500 through a Special Account 4 consultancy to prepare testimony for the Waxman/Hatch hearings in 1982.]


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Dr. Fisher's appearance was cleared beforehand with Fred Panzer [a public relations expert with CTR].

... efforts had been made to find scientists in other areas of the country [outside the southeast] willing to do research in the area of health and smokeless tobacco, but ... no interested scientists had been found.

...

Tim gave an update on the Douglas v. US Tobacco [case], now pending in Ft. Smith, Arkansas. ... Tim believes the plaintiff will have a difficult time winning the wrongful death claim [involving Red Seal snuff] because the cause of death was listed as secondary, but primary site pelvic cancer [sic ].

The approach to research used by the STC is based on the concept that the only serious line of scientific attack on smokeless tobacco at the present time in the United States is clinical observation studies (in contrast to epidemiological studies). [The memo goes on to give the usual attacks on epidemiology.]

...

I discussed with Tim privately whether research had been or was being done to identify the constituents or by-products of smokeless tobacco and whether any research was planned dealing with NNN [N-nitrosonornicotine, a laboratory carcinogen present in smoke and smokeless tobacco]. Tim said that ... [n]one is planned because the prevailing theory is that the best position for the STC is on the question of the effect on the human body of the whole product and to identify various constituents, many of which might be defined as tumorigenic in other contexts[,] would weaken the industry's position. In other words, it is 'the other side's' duty to produce allegations that certain constituents result from the use of smokeless tobacco and are harmful [emphasis added]. {1502.01, pp. 1–2}

As Well's report indicates, the STC funded scientists who would work closely with the industry to combat policies to regulate smokeless tobacco and to attack and dispute scientific findings about smokeless tobacco. Furthermore, the STC steered away from funding research, such as that on NNN, that might have suggested a harmful effect of tobacco. The STC's refusal to fund work on NNN, an obligatory component of tobacco with a high likelihood of being harmful, was particularly significant. The STC meeting also served the purpose of keeping the participants informed about ongoing litigation related to smokeless tobacco.

In 1985 the STC responded to a request by Joseph W. Cullen, of the US Public Health Service, for scientific evidence on the health consequences of using smokeless tobacco. Cullen was chairman of the Advisory Committee on the Health Consequences of Smokeless Tobacco, which was preparing a Surgeon General's report on the topic. A letter to Dr. Cullen from Michael Kerrigan, president of the STC, contains the


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same arguments that are being used today to combat the EPA risk assessment of environmental tobacco smoke (1, 11) (see chapter 10).

[T]he industry is concerned that the conclusions and resulting report by the Advisory committee are preordained. ...

Enclosed are statements submitted in those forums [of Waxman's subcommittee] by many eminent scientists who, after close review of the literature and, in many cases, from their own work, have concluded that smokeless tobacco has not been scientifically established to cause human disease and is not addictive. ...

[T]o date no one knows the cause or causes of oral cancer and ... much more research is needed before any conclusions can be drawn. ...

The need to identify the areas where more knowledge is required is important. ... [T]he industry is continuing to fund independent research into questions of smokeless tobacco and health. ...

[E]nclosed is a compilation of citations to a substantial portion of the world's literature pertaining to smokeless tobacco and oral cancer. {1503.02, pp. 1–3}

In short, the STC, using the same strategy that CTR was using, paid scientists to produce data that would dispute scientific findings on tobacco, to review and criticize the scientific literature on tobacco, and to perpetuate controversy about the adverse effects of tobacco. Nothing in the documents suggests that the STC would support research that could possibly contradict the industry position that smokeless tobacco is not harmful. The research by the STC-supported scientists revealed in the documents was used in attempts to influence policy makers involved in regulating tobacco and to inform lawyers involved in litigation.


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