Four decades of doubt and counting...The beginnings of the TIRC and their ‘Frank Statement to Cigarette Smokers’
In the early 1950s, the tobacco companies needed to respond to the emerging scientific research and resultant public concern that showed there was a link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer. The 1953 document “PRELIMINARY RECOMMENDATIONS FOR CIGARETTE MANUFACTURERS” (above) lays out the beginnings of what became the Tobacco Industry Research Committee (TIRC) and eventually the Center for Tobacco Research (CTR). The TIRC was conceived as an organization firmly grounded in the manipulation of science and creation of doubt about the health harms of cigarette smoking. Although the committee was promoted as a scientific endeavor, it was run by PR firm Hill & Knowlton on behalf of the tobacco industry and even had offices in the same building. In January 1954, one of the Committee’s first acts was to publish the “Frank Statement" (above) in over 400 newspapers throughout the United States as well as radio and TV reports. The Frank Statement claimed among other things that 1) there is no proof that cigarette smoking is one of the causes of lung cancer and that 2) there is no agreement among authorities about the actual cause of lung cancer.
With this statement, TIRC pledged to provide millions in monetary aid and assistance to the research effort utilizing unbiased ‘distinguished men of medicine, science and education’ to serve on the TIRC Board. Thus began the over 40 years of public promotional efforts and distortion of science to demonstrate there was no conclusive evidence of a link between smoking and cancer.
In late 2017, as a result of the 2006 federal court ruling under the RICO Act, cigarette manufacturers were ordered to place corrective statement ads through newspapers and broadcast television. These court-ordered corrective statements provided a bookend to the 1954 Frank Statement and announced what the industry actually knew about nicotine addiction and tobacco related disease for many years, despite its public denials. For the first time, millions of Americans were told the truth about the harmful effects of tobacco products, and this information was paid for by tobacco companies themselves.
Read the full documents at the Truth Tobacco Industry Documents Library:
https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/knyk0135
https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/hgwg0117
