Health Experts Across Canada Urge Ottawa To 'Denormalize' Tobacco Industry

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by JAMES MCCARTEN
October 30, 2004.

TORONTO (CP) - Some of Canada's most influential doctors, health experts and anti-smoking lobbyists will launch a campaign Monday urging Ottawa to strip the tobacco industry of a powerful public relations asset: its public image as a legitimate, mainstream business.

The strategy, called "tobacco industry denormalization," was adopted as a key element of a national tobacco control plan agreed to by the provinces and the federal government in 1999.

But the group accuses the government of being reluctant to fully implement the strategy, which was recommended to the federal health ministry two years ago by the Ministerial Advisory Council on Tobacco Control.

"Epidemics normally trigger extraordinarily aggressive responses from governments," the group writes in a letter dated Monday to Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh, a copy of which was obtained by The Canadian Press.

"Unfortunately and tragically, the tobacco industry has been protected from such responses by a belief by some within government and by the general public that the tobacco industry is a normal, legal industry selling a normal, legal product, an industry entitled to be accepted within the mainstream of normal business."

The letter is signed by more than 50 Canadian doctors, prominent anti-tobacco crusaders and public health officials, including Dr. Fraser Mustard, a leading academic and medical pioneer who founded the Canadian Institute of Advanced Research.

Ignoring the industry's role in the "tobacco epidemic" would be like "failing to discuss the behaviour of mosquitoes in a malaria epidemic or the role of rats in an outbreak of bubonic plague," said Ottawa medical officer of health Dr. Rob Cushman, one of a host of public-health officials who have signed on to the campaign.

"From a public health perspective, it makes as much sense."

Canadian tobacco companies continue to participate in foreign trade missions, deduct marketing expenses from their taxes and enjoy the investment support of prominent Canadian pension funds - all of which lend legitimacy to the industry, said Garfield Mahood, executive director of the Non-Smokers' Rights Association.

The government's traditional strategy has long been to concentrate its anti-smoking resources on trying to discourage those who buy and smoke cigarettes, instead of the companies who make them.

"Governments must move away from their 'blame-the-victim' approach to tobacco control," Mahood said. "They must transfer responsibility for the tobacco epidemic away from individual behaviour and teen misjudgment and onto the predatory corporate misbehaviour of the tobacco industry."

Mahood, whose group is spearheading the campaign, said he's hopeful that Dosanjh will be receptive to the idea of what would amount to a paradigm shift in Canada's tobacco control strategy.

On Friday, Dosanjh sent a strong signal that he plans to take a hard line with the industry as he called for quick passage of an international anti-tobacco treaty.

"Our government has a bias; cigarettes are lethal when used as intended," Dosanjh said. "Our bias is in favour of health."

The Ministerial Advisory Council on Tobacco Control recommended tobacco industry denormalization to then-minister Anne McLellan in 2001 after predecessor Allan Rock enthusiastically endorsed the idea in 1999.

But the report got little attention from McLellan and several members of the council resigned amid accusations that their wings had been clipped by the minister.

"When Anne McLellan was in there, nothing moved on tobacco," Mahood said. "When it did, it moved in the wrong direction."

Other participants in the campaign include University of British Columbia health economist Robert Evans; University of Toronto public health professor Dr. Mary Jane Ashley, a former tobacco control council member; and Heart and Stroke Foundation chief executive Sally Brown.

The strategy "involves nothing more than telling the truth about tobacco industry behaviour," the letter reads. "There are no legal blocks to governments telling the truth."

In the letter, the group urges Dosanjh to embark on "national mass-media campaigns" and public education programs that adopt the new, get-tough approach to the industry.

A number of U.S. states, including California, Massachusetts and Florida, have for years been using the strategy in an effort to diminish society's tolerance of tobacco as a legitimate product.

A 2001 report commissioned by Health Canada recommended a program of denormalization focused on the "manipulations" of the tobacco industry, the addictiveness of nicotine and the dangers of second-hand smoke.

"The tobacco industry's own documents could be used in these ads to present a compelling story of the manipulative and unethical behaviour of the tobacco industry," the report said.

"Such a campaign will invite controversy, so it is essential that the public relations aspects of the campaign be well managed."

� The Canadian Press, 2004