Tobacco is the leading preventable cause of death and the leading cause of cancer deaths. It is also the leading controllable risk factor for heart disease. Recent litigation against the tobacco industry has made millions of pages of previously secret tobacco industry documents public. These documents cover all aspects of the tobacco business, from scientific studies of nicotine addiction to the health effects of active and passive smoking to political activities of the tobacco industry. These documents give scientists and public health officials an unprecedented opportunity to understand how the industry functions in order to develop better techniques for preventing and reducing tobacco use, promoting cessation, and providing people with smoke-free environments. These documents are available at many locations around the world (and some are available on the Internet). In many cases, however, they are poorly indexed or not indexed at all. We will use a combination of web-based methods plus visiting the various locations around the world where these documents are available on paper to identify, collect, index, and make them available to others. We will analyze them, with a particular focus on: (1) how the tobacco industry seeks to influence scientific process, particularly as it relates to the health effects of secondhand smoke, (2) the policy making process (both through legislative and regulatory channels), particularly as it relates to protection of nonsmokers from secondhand smoke, (3) how the industry uses its influence on young adults to recruit and solidify new smokers and how this information can be used to design better tobacco control programs, and (4) how the tobacco industry seeks to influence community groups and the media, particularly in African American communities, to prevent these groups from engaging in health promoting activities. The resulting information will permit public health authorities to design and implement more effective tobacco control programs based on the extensive research and program development that the tobacco industry has done to promote smoking.
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