The National Committee Against Smoking (CNCT) reveals the results of a study on the influence exerted by the tobacco industry on public health policies.
Defend your personal interests to the detriment of the general interest. This is what denounces the National Committee against smoking (CNCT), in partnership with 60 Million Consumers, by revealing how much tobacco manufacturers manage to impose “their” law to the detriment of the general interest.
The CNCT therefore draws up an inventory of the lobbying practices of the tobacco industry and its allies in France. This study was carried out with the financial support of the National Cancer Institute and the Ministry of Health.
“Documented and presented in a factual manner, the interference practices of the tobacco industry are a reality in France. This situation is all the more formidable as the modalities of action are all-out and often diffuse. », Explains Emmanuelle Béguinot, director of the CNCT.
Disinformation and instrumentalisation
The Committee cites the results of its “Lobbying & Influence” observatory on the interference practices of the tobacco industry. They are mainly reflected in the invitation of political leaders and officials to events, to the instrumentalization of tobacconists through the intermediary of representative bodies. The CNCT also denounces the disinformation of political decision-makers, journalists and the general public, the intrusion of the tobacco industry into the world of research with its consequences in terms of the selection of research topics.
These forms of interference thus take multiple forms, direct and indirect. The CNCT therefore accuses the tobacco industry of influencing the political decision in this way in a way favorable to its interests and not to the general interest.
A possible change
Measures have been adopted by France and by nearly 180 other countries around the world. The president of the CNCT, Yves Martinet, indicated that France is committed to implementing them. ” It is important today that these protective measures become reality. It is in particular the stake of including them in the next National Program of Reduction of Smoking prepared by the Minister of Social Affairs, Marisol Touraine. He adds.
These measures specifically provide for greater transparency in the essential relations to be established between public authorities and tobacco manufacturers as well as their representatives, greater transparency on the part of tobacco manufacturers, with information relating to their lobbying expenditure, marketing, their multiple internal studies.
They also provide for the absence of public funding for any activity which would be directly or indirectly supported by the manufacturers or their representatives, the refusal of any voluntary partnership with an industry whose interests France recognizes are irreconcilable with those of the health of the populations. as well as a lack of direct or indirect support from the state.
.
