ASH news release: Embargo: 00.01 Friday 28^th May 2004 

Health campaigners have scored a major victory in the war of words with tobacco giant BAT by creating a website which will  host millions of pages of sensitive and incriminating documents related to BAT's activities.  Researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) have been working steadily since 2000 to painstakingly reproduce a major collection of BAT's internal documents, currently housed at the company's warehouse in Guildford, so that they can be accessed by the general public worldwide.  Details of the project, known as the Guildford Archive Project can be viewed at:  www.lshtm.ac.uk/cgch/tobacco/guildford.htm

Commenting on this major achievement, Deborah Arnott, Director of ASH said:  

“Despite a legal requirement to provide public access to these documents, BAT has deliberately made this process as difficult as possible.  Without the determined action of these dedicated researchers, these documents may never have come to light.  This new resource will be a vital aid to health campaigners and policy-makers worldwide, as well as being a means for the public to understand how BAT has deliberately misled people about the dangers of its products and the way it conducts its business.

“From the documents that have already been released we can see that BAT and other tobacco companies have continued to market death to young people, undermine public health policies, shred documents and be complicit in the smuggling of cigarettes.   The research by LSTHM will no doubt  reveal millions more  incriminating documents. 

“As countries around the world sign up to the internationally-agreed Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, these documents will help law-makers to better understand how tobacco companies have sought to influence government policy and to undermine tobacco control measures.   Armed with this information, governments will be better equipped to protect themselves from these tactics  and consequently reduce the  devastating health and economic impacts  of tobacco use.”

Notes and links:

The Guildford depository was set up during litigation brought against several tobacco companies by healthcare groups and the State of Minnesota in the United States. As part of the settlement, BAT agreed to provide public access to the internal documents it produced during the legal process.  These documents were to be made available at the Guildford depository for ten years.  However, since the opening of the depository in February 1999, BAT has contrived to make access as difficult as possible, such as limiting opening hours, not allowing on-site copying of documents, surveillance of visitors, and forcing visitors to wait for up to a year to receive photocopies.  

For other examples of BAT's unethical behaviour see ‘BAT's Big Wheeze' (pdf), ASH's response to BAT's latest report on corporate social responsibility.

plus other reports listed in the "conduct" section of our website.

Contact: Deborah Arnott  020 7739 5902 (w) 079 7693 5987 (m) ISDN available