Cigarette firm could face pressure to settle
Last Updated: Thursday, October 15, 2009 | 9:43 PM ET
CBC News
Imperial Tobacco Canada destroyed 60 internal studies, according to a review in the CMAJ. (Canadian Press)An anti-tobacco lobby group says revelations that Imperial Tobacco Canada attempted to destroy its own damning studies will put pressure on the firm to settle lawsuits by several provinces.
"What can they say? That our studies are wrong? They have no real answer," said Michael Perley, executive director of the Ontario Campaign for Action on Tobacco.
On Wednesday, the Canadian Medical Association Journal published online a review that examined 60 cigarette studies thought to have been destroyed by the Montreal-based firm.
The internal studies, done from 1967 to 1984, were destroyed in 1992 on orders from head office at British American Tobacco in the United Kingdom to avoid "exposing the company to liability or embarrassment," the authors of the review say.
But other copies kept in a U.K. depository were later discovered.
The 60 studies were among 70 million pages that cigarette firms were forced to disclose for a landmark anti-tobacco trial in Minnesota in 1998.
Perley could not say if the 60 studies were ever made public and presented to the jury.
"That's part of the reason this is such a dramatic discovery. Researchers could examine them and put them in some kind of context," said Perley. "The problem is making sense of them and creating a pattern of corporate behaviour."
The Imperial Tobacco studies had looked at ways to improve cigarette design and reduce toxicity. They compared filtered and unfiltered cigarettes, and looked at whether second-hand smoke was dangerous.
At the time, conventional wisdom was that filtered cigarettes were safer and that second-hand smoke was not a health hazard. However, the company's own studies showed the opposite. Not surprisingly, the cigarette firms did not voluntarily make them public.
Last month, Ontario launched a $50-billion lawsuit against Imperial Tobacco.
British Columbia and New Brunswick have also filed lawsuits against the company.
