The tobacco industry used highly placed government contacts in Malaysia to thwart numerous initiatives against cigarette advertising between 1982 and 2000, an Australian-based researcher has claimed.

Mary Assunta, a Malaysian researcher and PhD candidate at the University of Sydney, said tobacco companies were able to use established relationships with senior government officials to achieve their ends.

In one case, they went up as high as the deputy prime minister's office to counter a proposed ban on direct advertising of cigarettes over state-owned RTM television channels.

Such moves arose out of industry concern that the government would restrict cigarette advertising and introduce other forms of control, as part of global moves in the 1980s to counter the adverse health effects of smoking.

Assunta, who made her findings available to malaysiakini , said she carried out research between November 2001 and March 2003, basing this on searches of internal documents of tobacco companies issued mainly from 1970 to 2000. Her most recent report was completed on Nov 18.

These are among 40 million pages of documents that have been made public since 1998 as a result of a court settlement known as the Attorneys General Master Settlement Agreement, where 46 US states settled their lawsuits against the tobacco industry to recover tobacco-related healthcare costs.

These settlements required the tobacco companies to make annual payments to the states in perpetuity - for the first 25 years, this is estimated at US$206 billion.

Under the multi-state settlement, tobacco companies also agreed to finance a $1.5 billion anti-smoking campaign and disband industry trade groups, which the states maintain conspired to conceal damaging research from the public.

Those involved in the settlement are Philip Morris (now known as Altria), Brown & Williamson (British American Tobacco's subsidiary in the US), RJ Reynolds, Lorillard, American Tobacco Company, The Tobacco Institute and Council for Tobacco Research.

Grace period won

Tracing industry actions in Malaysia, Assunta said these began in January 1982, when the government proposed that guidelines would be imposed on cigarette advertising over RTM radio and television channels with effect from March 15.

However, three weeks before the enforcement date, the executive director of the Council of Malaysian Tobacco Manufacturers (CMTM) - whose members are British American Tobacco, Japan Tobacco and Godfrey Philips - met with "a very senior person" in the deputy prime minister's office to "establish the status" of the guidelines.

The confidential document, which had already reached the desk of then deputy premier Musa Hitam, was retrieved by CMTM's "senior inside contact" earning the industry an additional week to respond.

Eventually, this was stretched to five months. In addition, the initial grace period also derailed a cabinet discussion, and likely a decision, on implementing the ban on advertising.

The cabinet committee on drugs decided to hold back all discussions on the issue "until industry inputs have been submitted", according to a RJ Reynolds document.

Assunta described this as "a new height" of interference into government procedure.

Ban revoked

The tobacco industry then stepped up direct lobbying of top government officials in several ministries over the next four months, in order to win support for arguments. These found a sympathetic ear in the Trade and Industry Ministry (as it was then known).

When CMTM's then executive director Ariff Bador met with the principal assistant director of the industry division, he was asked to furnish supporting arguments "either against a complete ban or more punitive restrictions" against tobacco use.

Assunta said the ministry would use this as basis for its decision not to push for a total ban on cigarette advertising over RTM.

The RJ Reynolds document, she said, also revealed that CMTM was also assured that the Primary Industries and Agriculture Ministries would be urged to take a similar position.

The lobbying ended with the authorities either "objecting outright or taking a neutral position, as in the case of the Education, Information and Health Ministries", according to Assunta.

In the end, she said, the government revoked its decision to implement the ban. The industry noted that, at the following cabinet meeting, "the matter was not even discussed".

Further documents unearthed by Assunta helped explain the industry's game plan. In 1981, a global template had been circulated by Phillip Morris International to its Asian subsidiaries.

As a policy, it called for the utilisation of "established contacts" within the health and finance ministries to provide "early warning" on government actions.

The document labelled anti-tobacco politicians and bureaucrats as "ambitious politicians, medical authorities and government officials" who will "seek to make a name for themselves by introducing legislation, publishing articles, etc in detriment to tobacco industry interests".

'Flexible' implementation

In August 1982, however, the government moved to ban direct advertising of cigarettes over all television and radio channels.

Its circular on 'Cigarette Advertising Ban and Anti-Smoking Campaign' was implemented, but not without heads of department being verbally told to be "flexible" about this.

Tobacco companies reacted by resorting immediately - and legitimately - to indirect advertising such as via sponsorship of events and use of cigarette brand names for travel, fashion and music-related products and services.

Separate companies were set up - Camel Adventure Gear, Salem Power Station record stores, Peter Stuyvesant Travel, and Marlboro Classics among them - under "trademark diversification initiatives" backed by multi-million dollar advertising budgets.

In the same breath, however, tobacco companies maintained that these initiatives were not for marketing cigarettes. They were therefore able to circumvent direct advertising restrictions and compulsory health warnings.

Malaysian television was even used by Philip Morris, the makers of Marlboro, in 1987 to sidestep Singapore's ban on both direct and indirect advertising of tobacco brands.

Tobacco companies were clearly appreciative of the fact that advertisements on Malaysian television had a "spillover effect" into Singapore (which could receive transmission).

Comprehensive legislation

Malaysia's Health Ministry finally decided to put its foot down 10 years later in 1992, in a bid to close the legislative lag behind neighbours Singapore and Thailand over tobacco control.

It announced that it was drawing up recommendations to prohibit all direct and indirect tobacco advertising.

The same year, Deputy Health Minister Farid Ariffin also disclosed that the travel business carried out by two companies associated with the tobacco industry were in fact non-existent.

RJ Reynolds had been advertising its Salem High Country holidays on television daily, when it did not have travel packages to the destinations advertised, said Assunta.

The Control of Tobacco Product Regulations 1992 proposed by the Health Ministry, would be the country's first comprehensive piece of tobacco control legislation, said Assunta.

Despite pressures against the move, the ministry insisted that it was determined to enforce the regulations by the end of 1992.

But little did the ministry know that most of the crucial provisions would be watered down by the time the cabinet approved the regulations a year later.

Assunta said she believed this had largely to do with the industry's influence, in view of what it called an "alarming" change in the political climate towards smoking.

Tomorrow: Contradictions between policy and practice