BMJ 1999;319:1522 ( 11 December )

News extra

Canada releases documents showing secrets of tobacco industry.

David Spurgeon Quebec

Canada’Äôs health minister, Allan Rock, has released 1200 pages of documents from a six million page tobacco industry cache in Guildford, England, that show how tobacco companies used advertising to get young people to smoke and investigated ways to encourage people addicted to tobacco to continue smoking.

Canadian health officials, who travelled last May to British American Tobacco’Äôs Guildford headquarters, examined documents relating to Imperial Tobacco, a subsidiary of the company and Canada’Äôs largest tobacco firm. The documents were housed in a depository established in 1998 as the result of a court order in a legal suit between the state of Minnesota, and Imperial Tobacco. The government plans to use some of the material to defend itself in a lawsuit launched by the tobacco industry, which claims that a recent federal law outlawing "lifestyle" advertising through sponsorship, is unconstitutional.

"Never before have governments had such access to internal tobacco industry documents," said Mr Rock. "I find their contents very disturbing. They reinforce the need for aggressive, sustained campaigns to inform Canadians not only about the health hazards of smoking but also about the marketing strategies and tactics of the tobacco industry."

The health minister also announced that he was hiring Jeffrey Wigand as a consultant for Canada's antismoking campaign. Dr Wigand is a scientist who formerly worked in the tobacco industry; he revealed some of his employer's tactics in a deposition in a lawsuit brought in Mississippi to recover the medical costs of smoking related illnesses from tobacco companies. Dr Wigand is portrayed as a hero in the current Hollywood movie, The Insider.

The Guildford documents show that the industry conducted extensive research into ways to enhance and fortify the nicotine in cigarettes and tried to cope with the shrinking market for the product by using sophisticated "lifestyle" advertisements aimed at young people. It also introduced "light" cigarettes to try to prevent health conscious smokers from quitting.

The industry's research focused on the psychology of young smokers. One Imperial Tobacco document said: "ITL [Imperial Tobacco Limited] has always focused its efforts on new smokers, believing that early perceptions tend to stay with them throughout their lives. ITL clearly dominates the young adult market today and stands to prosper as these smokers age and as it maintains its highly favourable youth presence."

Imperial Tobacco said that there was nothing new in the documents and that they were taken out of context. It claimed it has never tried to increase the total size of the cigarette market or to target young non-smokers