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Tobacco Industry "Charitable" Donations Question of the Month
Last year, for example, Philip Morris spent $142 million in the U.S. to advertise the company's "good deeds," e.g. delivering meals to elderly women, sheltering victims of domestic violence, supporting the arts, and conserving the environment. Each ad ends with, "Working to make a difference. The people of Philip Morris." As many people have aptly noted, the company spends more advertising its charitable donations than on the donations themselves! And who can forget BAT's multi-million dollar donation to Nottingham University for an "International Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility"? Philip Morris and BAT are making a difference all right. Just take a stroll through your local hospital or cemetery. The answers to this month's question will deepen our understanding of the tobacco industry's worldwide use of charitable donations to deflect attention away from the deadly reality. Question: What institutions, organizations, programs, and causes does the tobacco industry support in your community, state, and/or country? Please include the company name and describe where/how it advertises its "good deeds." Share and compare answers with your global partner, and don't forget to send a copy to Essential Action! Based on your findings, you and your partner may want to do a follow-up activity, e.g. visit local groups in your respective communities that accept tobacco industry money to educate them about the tobacco industry's ulterior motives and international misdeeds*. Please find below some additional background material re: what the tobacco industry says publicly - and privately - about its charitable donations. * Last Friday Essential Action visited four Washington, D.C.-based groups that accept money from Philip Morris (National Network to End Domestic Violence Fund, Congressional Hunger Center, DC Central Kitchen, and the National AIDS Fund) to deliver copies of Infact's "Making a Killing" video and to share examples Philip Morris's misconduct around the world. We were struck by the deep ambivalency many people with whom we spoke felt about accepting Philip Morris money. If this activity interests you and your partner, contact us for tips and suggestions! CHARITABLE DONATIONS - WHAT PHILIP MORRIS SAYS PUBLICLY Excerpt from Philip Morris Corporate Contributions Guidelines: Why We Give The clearest demonstration of our beliefs is in our grantmaking. Feeding the hungry and helping them to become self-sufficient...giving hope to a victim of domestic violence...comforting someone living with AIDS...nurturing the creative spirit and educating students of all ages...protecting nature's water and food resources. We seek to understand the needs of our society and use our resources to contribute to society's well-being. We care about people who are less fortunate, and we are committed to improving the quality of their lives. As a result, our mission is to repond effectively and compassionately to requests for assistance, particularly in key areas - hunger, domestic violence and culture - where we focus our giving. Taken together, our grants reflect our values, encourage human aspirations and address basic human concerns. [for a photocopy of this pamphlet or PM's other brochures on AIDS, Domestic Violence, Culture, Environment, and Hunger, please contact Essential Action]
From Anne Landman, ALA-Colorado: When it comes to organizations being confronted with the decision of whether or not to take tobacco industry money, nothing sums it up better than the following brief comment scrawled by the Tobacco Institute's Martin Gleason on a document about how the industry dealt with the U.S. Fire Service over the issue of fire-safe cigarettes: "Cont[inue] support for hostiles -- innoculation" This telling comment indicates that the tremendous financial support the tobacco industry gave to the the U.S. fire service carried with it the expectation that it would neutralize their opposition. Source: Accidental Fire Issue The following excerpt of a seminar held at a Philip Morris corporate affairs world conference explains why it is so important for the tobacco industry to befriend other organizations through donations. Third parties are part of Philip Morris' defense strategy: "....So the whole question of getting third-party assistance and enlisting this whole third-party concept in our defense structure is to give us clout, to give us power, to give us credibility, to give us leverage, to give us access where we don't ordinarily have access ourselves... ...It's like a savings account. The analogy is an important thing. One has to keep making deposits into the savings accounts. Goodwill deposits, deposits of getting to know people, deposits of listening to their problems...And you make those deposits into the savings account so that when you have to make a withdrawal, the bank balance is there. You can never put yourself in the position of having to go to a third party, an uninvolved party on an immediate basis and hope they drop everything and come to your defense. It isn't going to work. You have to try to understand whom you have to neutralize in advance, who is a potential threat to you and then how do you make common cause with that category of individuals or companies or group or whathaveyou so that you can neutralize them. Example. The self-extinguishing cigarette. Who would normally be involved in the self-extinguishing cigarette on the other side of the fence? Probably the fire-fighting community. As you know in the United States, we have put a huge amount of time into helping all the organized groups of professional and volunteer fire-fighters. They get such help from us that is monumental. And then when we need them to stand up and say, not cigarettes that cause fire in 99.9 percent of the cases, we get their cooperation. But that's because we have cultivated them and helped them achieve some of their goals and we have seen that they are a potential enemy that has real credibility. That's the greatest credibility, your potential enemy. We had turned them around and made allies, third party defenders for ourselves. All of this involves a process of logic. To find common ground, to find your natural friends; to find your natural enemies and if possible, the ways in which you can neutralize them..." Source: Workshop - Dealing with the Issues Indirectly: Constituencies
"Philip Morris: Killing to Make a Difference" by Kenny Bruno
(March 22, 2001) |