#industry documents

The UCSF Industry Documents Library (IDL), a division of the UCSF Archives, has been preserving websites related to e-cigarette marketing. The archive illustrates trends in advertising and imagery, much of which mirrors earlier tobacco industry tactics. Learn more about the project on our blog.

Highlighting just a few of the over 14 million tobacco industry documents contained in the UCSF Truth Tobacco Industry Documents, a division of the UCSF Archives.

Could a sporting event like the Olympics ever encourage smoking? The games summon images of stamina, health, and strength, and for decades, the tobacco industry worked diligently to affiliate themselves with this major sporting event. Past Olympic games drew millions of eyes and the promotion and marketing opportunities were gold for the tobacco companies.

Read more about the Olympics and tobacco companies on our blog.

Flame retardants & Big #Tobacco:  Keep the pressure on and “focus on the fuels rather than ignition sources.” 

By refocusing attention on flammable furniture, Big Tobacco helped fuel the widespread use of toxic flame retardants in upholstered furniture.

In the latter half of the 20th Century, the tobacco industry was forced to face the problem of house fires and deaths caused by smoldering cigarettes.  One obvious solution would have been to manufacture cigarettes that were “self-extinguishing”.  The industry insisted it could not make self-extinguishing cigarettes that would appeal to smokers and instead promoted the idea of flame retardant furniture, shifting the blame to the couches, chairs and beds that were going up in flames.  Thus began a long and intricate campaign to collaborate with firefighters and fire marshals in an attempt to hold off any regulations or measures affecting cigarette design and instead focus efforts on pumping toxic chemicals into household furniture.

More documents to come on this topic...

Camel marketing team builds campaign around peer pressure - “Aspiration to be perceived as cool... is one of the strongest influences affecting the behavior of younger adult smokers”

This 1986 memo details a new Camel campaign to attract and keep less educated, younger, male smokers (18-24) by leveraging peer pressure and the desire to appear masculine and self-confident. 

Read the entire document on the UCSF Truth Tobacco Industry Documents Library: https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/ffjh0045

The Tobacco Industry - the O.G.s of ‘Alternative Truth’...

This document, authored by Helmut Wakeham, exec at Philip Morris, discusses how best to frame the purpose and scope of the Center for Tobacco Research (CTR).   Wakeham gives a few options including the perspective that CTR is the industry’s program to recruit and train a stable of expert scientific witnesses for use in public relations, legislative and litigation matters.  

Read the entire document at:

If...results with nicotine are similar to those...with morphine and caffeine... we will want to bury it.

These two documents are from the Philip Morris Records collection on the Truth Tobacco Industry Documents. The top document is a January 1977 proposal for a study on rats and nicotine withdrawal.  The bottom document is a memo approving this study but acknowledging results will be buried if they are negative for the industry.

Read the two documents on TTID:

PROSPECTUS FOR A STUDY OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF NICOTINE IN BLOCKING POST-STRESS LEARNING DEFICIENCIES IN RATS https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/lnkc0131

Peer-reviewed articles as marketing - ‘Medical Communication Companies’ as ghostwriters for Big Pharma 

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the pharmaceutical company, Wyeth, maker of hormone replacement therapies (HRTs) among other drugs, was facing competition as well as an increasing skepticism of HRTs benefits. Wyeth turned to "medical communication companies” like DesignWrite to create a series of articles and conference presentations that would expand the HRT market and provide reassurance to women and their doctors. Over almost a decade, DesignWrite produced over 50 peer-reviewed publications, scientific abstracts and posters, journal supplements, and symposia for Wyeth, all supposedly authored and led by physicians in the field.  This document and over a thousand more were produced during the lawsuit PREMPRO PRODUCTS LIABILITY LITIGATION, MDL DOCKET NO. 4:03CV1507 WRW (W.D. Arkansas) and made available to the public by a United States Federal judge in response to a request by PloS Medicine and The New York Times in 2009.