Physicians fight for access to tobacco info, hope to show criminal negligence
CMAJ 2000;162:1468
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A group representing 500 antismoking physicians wants access to thousands of tobacco industry documents to help it "make sense of the science" and contribute to evidence that may lead to criminal charges against the companies.
As the British Columbia and Ontario governments sought to win civil suits against tobacco manufacturers, Physicians For a Smoke-Free Canada filed a suit Mar. 1 under the Freedom of Information Act to gain access to documents the BC government had gathered. The case should be resolved within 90 days, says executive director Cynthia Callard.
Ultimately, the physician group wants to use the information to assess whether the companies had a "wanton disregard for human health and safety," says Callard. If so, criminal charges could be the next step.
The BC government launched a suit against 3 Canadian tobacco companies in November 1998 over the cost of treating smokers. It alleges the industry knew smoking was harmful but didn't tell the public. The case was dismissed because BC laws prohibit the province from suing multinational companies. That legislation may be altered so the suit can proceed. The BC lawsuit follows a multibillion-dollar settlement in the US, under which 27 million pages of tobacco industry documents were released.
The documents the BC government is withholding come from the UK-based Imperial Tobacco Ltd., which manufactures 70% of cigarettes smoked in Canada. The parent company, British American Tobacco Co. Ltd., agreed to release the documents, but they can only be accessed in person in Guildford, England — a trip the physician group could afford to take only once.
The province says releasing the documents may interfere with the conduct of its court case, but Callard is concerned the papers may never come to light if the government settles out of court. She says many of the documents concern progress reports from tobacco research laboratories in Montreal.
The physician's group posted the documents it gathered from the UK depository at www.tobaccopapers.org. Health Canada documents from the same repository are at www.cctc.ca/ncth/guildford. — Barbara Sibbald, CMAJ
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