Articles

Background During the night of 17-18 October 2012, the Brussels offices of three tobacco control advocacy organisations were broken into. It concerned the offices of the Smoke Free Partnership (SFP), the European Respiratory Society (ERS), and the European Public Health Alliance (EPHA). 123 The burglaries came shortly after European Union (EU) Health Commissioner John Dalli resigned…

Tomas Hammargren used to work for Nicoventures Limited, a British American Tobacco (BAT) subsidiary, where his role was that of “key opinion leader Engagement”.9 Background Hammargren’s background lies in the pharmaceutical industry, where he worked for 25 years. He then worked a few years for the Swedish Embassy in Japan, promoting investment in Sweden. Upon his return…

Tom Miers is a British writer and public policy consultant who worked for the tobacco industry funded group Forest and its campaign The Free Society.12 Forest’s Simon Clark announced Miers was joining in March 2011 as commissioning editor for The Free Society (TFS) and would “speak at various events and act as spokesman for TFS…

Toe Su Aung was the General Counsel at London-based BATMark Limited, heading up the Anti-Illicit Trade unit.15 BATMark is a British American Tobacco (BAT) subsidiary that deals with all aspects of trademarks owned by BAT. Aung left BATMark in 2014 and co-founded public affairs consultancy Elipe.16 Career with the Tobacco Industry Aung joined tobacco company…

Tobias Ghersetti used to work for public relations firm Bell Pottinger. Relationship with the Tobacco Industry Whilst employed at Bell Pottinger, Ghersetti worked on the Imperial Tobacco account.31 In 2011, when the impact assessment was being carried out on the revision of EU Tobacco Products Directive (TPD), Bell Pottinger tried to secure Imperial Tobacco access…

The Tobacco Workers’ Alliance (TWA) was a tobacco industry funded lobbying group that operated between 1997 and 2006. An Industry Front Group The TWA claimed to campaign for the jobs of workers in the UK tobacco industry, but was funded by the tobacco industry supported Tobacco Manufacturers’ Association (TMA), a fact it sometimes failed to disclose.32 For instance,…

An Excess of 30 Billion Cigarettes In 2009, The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) undertook a special investigation into Ukraine’s “lost” cigarettes. Due to the spiralling black market, Ukraine is rivalled only by Russia as the top source of non-counterfeit brand cigarettes smuggled to Europe. According to the ICIJ: Each year, the world’s four top multinational tobacco companies –…

Background In the UK the latest figures available show that despite the British Government’s 10 year campaign to eradicate tobacco smuggling, the problem still costs the taxpayer an estimated £2.2 billion a year. According to HM Revenue & Customs, “the illicit tobacco market in the UK has changed significantly since 2000. Historically it was made up of genuine UK…

Tobacco companies have facilitated the smuggling of their own cigarettes and roll your own tobacco for decades. Internal company documents reveal that in the 1990s smuggling was an integral part of tobacco companies’ business strategies. By the late 1990s and early 2000s, the tobacco industry’s involvement in smuggling had been exposed leading to public investigations, court cases and extremely negative…

The Tobacco Retailers’ Alliance (TRA) is a tobacco industry funded campaign group, representing UK independent retailers selling tobacco. Until May 2008, it was known as the Tobacco Alliance (TA). History of the Tobacco Retailers’ Alliance The TRA’s website says it is a “coalition of 26,000 independent shopkeepers who all sell tobacco products” and adds that it is “funded…