Eric LeGresley

Complicity in contraband: British American Tobacco and cigarette smuggling in Asia

Objectives: To examine the complicity of British American Tobacco (BAT) in cigarette smuggling in Asia, and to assess the centrality of illicit trade to regional corporate strategy. Methods: Analysis of previously confidential documents from BAT’s Guildford depository. An iterative strategy combined searches based on geography, organisational structure, and key personnel, while corporate euphemisms for contraband were identified by triangulation. Results: BAT documents demonstrate the strategic importance of smuggling across global, regional, national, and local levels. Particularly important in Asia, contraband enabled access to closed markets, created pressure for market opening, and was highly profitable. Documents demonstrate BAT’s detailed oversight of illicit trade, seeking to reconcile the conflicting demands of control and deniability. Conclusions: BAT documents demonstrate that smuggling has been driven by corporate objectives, indicate national measures by which the problem can be addressed, and highlight the importance of a coordinated global response via WHO’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.

British American Tobacco and the “insidious impact of illicit trade” in cigarettes across Africa

Objectives: To provide an overview of the complicity of British American Tobacco (BAT) in the illicit trade of cigarettes across the African continent in terms of rationale, supply routes and scale. Methods: Analysis of internal BAT documents and industry publications. Results: BAT has relied on illegal channels to supply markets across Africa since the 1980s. Available documents suggest smuggling has been an important component of BAT’s market entry strategy in order to gain leverage in negotiating with governments for tax concessions, compete with other transnational tobacco companies, circumvent local import restrictions and unstable political and economic conditions and gain a market presence. BAT worked through distributors and local agents to exploit weak government capacity to gain substantial market share in major countries. Conclusions: Documents demonstrate that the complicity of BAT in cigarette smuggling extends to Africa, which includes many of the poorest countries in the world. This is in direct conflict with offers by the company to contribute to stronger international cooperation to tackle the illicit tobacco trade.

Perceptions of industry responsibility and tobacco control policy by US tobacco company executives in trial testimony

Objective: Trial testimony from the United States provides a unique opportunity to examine strategies of the American tobacco industry. This paper examines congruence between the arguments for tobacco control policy presented by representatives of the American tobacco industry at trial and the stages of responsibility associated with corporate social responsibility principles in other industries. Data sources: Trial testimony collected and coded by the Deposition and Trial Testimony Archive (DATTA). Study selection: All available testimony was gathered from representative senior staff from major tobacco companies: Brown & Williamson, Philip Morris, RJ Reynolds, and Liggett. Data extraction: Transcripts from each witness selected were collected and imported in text format into WinMax, a qualitative data program. The documents were searched for terms relating to tobacco control policies, and relevant terms were extracted. A hand search of the documents was also conducted by reading through the testimony. Inferred responsibility for various tobacco control policies (health information, second-hand smoking, youth smoking) was coded. Data synthesis: The level of responsibility for tobacco control policy varied according to the maturity of the issue. For emerging issues, US tobacco company representatives expressed defensiveness while, for more mature issues, such as youth smoking, they showed increased willingness to deal with the issue. This response to social issues is consistent with corporate social responsibility strategies in other industries. Conclusion: While other industries use corporate social responsibility programmes to address social issues to protect their core business product, the fundamental social issue with tobacco is the product itself. As such, the corporate nature of tobacco companies is a structural obstacle to reducing harm caused by tobacco use.

Analysis of British American Tobacco's questionable use of privilege and protected document claims at the Guildford Depository

Background Tobacco companies have a documented history of attempting to hide information from public scrutiny, including inappropriate privilege claims. The 1998 Minnesota Consent Judgement created two depositories to provide public access to discovered documents. Users raised concerns about the access conditions and ongoing integrity of the Guildford Depository collection operated until 2015 by British American Tobacco (BAT). Methods A metadata search of the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library identified inconsistent privilege claims, and duplicates of documents withheld by BAT from public visitors. A review of the validity of claims, for documents obtained through these searches, was conducted against recognised legal definitions of privilege. Findings BAT has asserted inappropriate privilege claims over 49% of the documents reviewed (n=63). The quantity of such claims and consistency of the stated rationale for the privilege claims suggest a concerted effort rather than human error. Conclusions There was insufficient attention given to the operation of the Guildford Depository by the original plaintiffs, including to the subsequent use of privilege claims. Appropriate access to these documents, commensurate with the terms of legal settlements creating the collection, was critical given their public interest value for enhancing understanding of industry strategies and activities, informing of policy interventions, and for holding the industry to account. Future legal settlements should prevent defendants from subsequently withholding disclosed documents, aside from those legitimately privileged, from public view. Control of publicly disclosed documents should not be placed back into the hands of defendant tobacco companies. Plaintiffs also need to invest adequate resources into policing claims of legal privilege.

To 'enable our legal product to compete effectively with the transit market' : British American Tobacco's strategies in Thailand following the 1990 GATT dispute

The opening of the Thai tobacco market, following action brought by the US Trade Representative under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, is seen as a key case study of the tensions between trade and health policy. Interpretations of the dispute cast it, either as an example of how trade agreements undermine national policy-making, or how governments can adopt effective public health protections compliant with international trade rules. As a UK-based company, British American Tobacco has been regarded as peripheral to this dispute. This paper argues that its close monitoring of the illegal trade during this period, the role of smuggling in the companys global business strategy, and its management of the relative supply and pricing of legal and illegal products after market opening provide a fuller understanding of the interests and roles of transnational tobacco companies and the government in this dispute. The findings have important policy implications, notably the role of effective governance in countries facing pressure to open their tobacco sectors, need to better understand corporate-level activities within an increasingly globalised tobacco industry, and need to address the intertwined legal and illegal trade in implementing the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products.

Legal does not mean unaccountable: suing tobacco companies to recover health care costs

Pivotal achievements such as plain packaging may feed complacency and policy inertia. Unless the momentum of tobacco control is maintained with further innovative approaches, the industry will inevitably develop new strategies to undermine measures in place, and public health gains will be at risk. We have seen this before in Australia, during the period of relative regulatory inactivity after the introductionof tobacco advertisingbans at state and national levels in the 1980s and early 1990s.