RCP president Professor Dame Jane Dacre has criticised Philip Morris International (PMI), the world’s biggest tobacco firm, after it was accused of staging ‘a disgraceful PR stunt’ by offering to help NHS staff quit smoking to help mark the NHS’s 70th birthday.
We are deeply suspicious of the motives of Philip Morris International in their opportunistic attempt to become involved in smoking cessation in hospitals. The NHS needs to be much better at helping patients going to hospital to give up smoking, but it shouldn’t accept help from the tobacco industry. The best way Philip Morris could help people stop smoking is to stop making cigarettes altogether.
The RCP has a long history of campaigning for tobacco control, since our landmark 1962 report Smoking and Health highlighted the link between smoking and lung cancer.
The RCP’s recent report on treating tobacco dependency in the NHS, Hiding in plain sight, estimated that NHS staff who smoke have 56% more days off sick than colleagues who do not, costing the NHS £101 million per year and a further £6 million in treatment costs. Furthermore, the RCP’s 2016 report Nicotine without smoke: tobacco harm reduction concluded that e-cigarettes are likely to be beneficial to UK public health.
Doctors, MPs and health campaigners joined the RCP in condemning PMI’s latest scheme.
Action on Smoking and Health, the anti-tobacco charity, said: 'This is a disgraceful PR stunt. PMI is pretending partnership would benefit the NHS, when actually it would give them a massive commercial advantage. They could promote their own harm-reduction products as NHS-endorsed.'
Bob Blackman MP, chair of the all-party group on smoking and health, intends to raise his concerns during a parliamentary debate on the government’s tobacco control plan: 'They have the cheek to say they want to support the 70th anniversary of the NHS, but it’s clearly just a commercial opportunity to use the NHS to promote their heated tobacco products.'
Steve Brine, the public health minister, said PMI’s proposal was ‘entirely inappropriate’ and that he would tell NHS trusts not to get involved. 'Our aim to make our NHS – and our next generation – smoke-free must be completely separate from the commercial and vested interests of the tobacco industry … '.
Philip Morris International will be well aware that its actions are entirely inappropriate and we will be contacting all NHS trusts to remind them of their obligations.
Paul Burstow, chair of the Tavistock and Portman NHS mental health trust in London and formerly Liberal Democrat health minister in the coalition government, said: 'The proposal PMI is making is merely an attempt to rebrand itself as a socially responsible entity, something parties to the FCTC like the UK should not collude with … Any such collaboration with the tobacco industry would be completely inappropriate and a breach of the UK government’s obligations as a party to the WHO FCTC.'
Countries that are signatories to the World Health Organization’s (WHO's) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), including Britain, must ensure that tobacco manufacturers play no role in public health. According to the FCTC guidance: 'Parties should not accept, support or endorse partnerships and non-binding or non-enforceable agreements as well as any voluntary arrangement with the tobacco industry or any entity or person working to further its interests'.