ANALYSIS OF TOBACCO INDUSTRY INTERNAL DOCUMENTS: AUSTRALIA

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In 1998, the Minnesota court ordered US tobacco companies to place over 30 million pages of hitherto secret internal documents on the www. Many thousands of these explicitly concern Australian tobacco control. This project will locate, catalogue, review and disseminate the strategic national, regional and international significance of these industry documents. Since the documents have been released, three legal cases have for the first time succeeded against the industry and the tobacco industry agreed to a $US208 billion settlemnt with the US states -- the largest settlement in legal history. Detailed critical examination of industry documents addressing issues such as product formulation, health research, advertising and marketing, and political lobbying against tobacco control, holds great promise to provide unprecedented insights into local tobacco industry ambitions, research, marketing, public relations and lobbying activities, and counter-measures against tobacco control. These insights will be invaluable to public health scientists, policy advocates, lawyers and historians both in Australia and internationally. They will also provide a large amount of news material, essential to continuing efforts at keep tobacco control as a neon public and political issue deserving action.