ANALYSIS OF TOBACCO INDUSTRY INTERNAL DOCUMENTS: AUSTRALIA

1998年，明尼苏达州法院命令美国烟草公司在WWW上放置3000多万页迄今保密的内部文件。其中有数千条明确涉及澳大利亚的烟草控制。该项目将定位、编目、审查和传播这些行业文件在国家、地区和国际上的战略意义。自这些文件公布以来，三起针对烟草行业的法律案件首次成功，烟草行业同意与美国各州达成2080亿美元的和解--这是法律历史上最大的和解协议。对涉及产品配方、健康研究、广告和营销以及反对烟草控制的政治游说等问题的行业文件进行了详细的批判性审查，有望为当地烟草行业的雄心、研究、营销、公共关系和游说活动以及反烟草控制措施提供前所未有的见解。这些见解对澳大利亚和国际上的公共卫生科学家、政策倡导者、律师和历史学家都将是无价的。它们还将提供大量新闻材料，对于继续努力将烟草控制作为一个值得采取行动的霓虹灯公共和政治问题至关重要。

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.