How do tobacco companies misrepresent themselves?
Fronting is the game
In an attempt to block effective tobacco control legislation and programmes from being implemented, time and again, the industry uses independent ’front groups’.
In the past these have included:
- hospitality,
- gambling and gaming,
- advertising,
- packaging,
- transport,
- chemical production,
- tobacco retailing,
- agriculture and tobacco growers,
- labour unions, and
- investment advisers
Other potential allies include recipients of tobacco sponsorship and research funds. Industry sponsorship of sporting and cultural events has been defended as being essential to their existence. But countries that have banned sporting and cultural sponsorship by the tobacco industry have not experienced a collapse or even any serious disruption of those activities.
These groups would appear in the news media and at legislative hearings, where they seek to reframe tobacco control policies as economic issues rather than public health initiatives.