As someone who has spent decades doing public health research and advocacy on tobacco and other issues, I have been the object of several attacks and intimidation efforts, including, among other things, attacks on my professional credibility, litigation, and pressure on funders. Fortunately, thanks to a strong support network, including from the University of California, I was able to continue my work.
Now Karen Evans-Reeves and colleagues from several other universities has published an excellent review of the global literature, Intimidation against advocates and researchers in the tobacco, alcohol and ultra-processed food spaces: a review, that sums up how tobacco, ultraprocessed food and alcohol industries have tried to silence work that could reduce their profits. In reading this paper, I was struck about the common strategies these companies use around the world and the fact that, while they may have slowed progress toward public health, they have rarely stopped it.
This is an important paper that everyone working to reduce the adverse public health impacts of healthy products needs to read so they can anticipate possible attacks and be ready for them. This is especially important for students, fellows and junior faculty and researchers so that are not caught off guard when attacks materialize.
Here is the abstract:
Unhealthy commodity industries (UCIs) engage in corporate political activity, using diverse practices, including intimidatory tactics, to thwart, delay and dilute regulations that threaten their businesses. While examples of such intimidation exist across multiple sectors, no attempt has been made to synthesize these. Furthermore, much of the literature focuses on intimidation of policy-makers. Less is known about the types of intimidation experienced by advocates and researchers and their responses to this intimidation. This scoping review explores the literature across the tobacco, alcohol and ultra-processed food spaces for instances of intimidation and categorizes them inductively and deductively based on a framework of intimidation types. Similarly, responses to intimidation were mapped onto a pre-existing framework. We found intimidatory tactics towards advocates and researchers in every sector. Public discreditation, followed by legal threats and action, complaints and freedom of information requests were most frequently mentioned and often attributed to UCIs or their third parties. Surveillance, threats of violence, violence, burglary and bribery were less prevalent in the literature and their perpetrators were unknown. Those intimidated reported carrying on as normal, defensive action (changing/adapting work, taking security precautions) or, as was most reported, offensive action (exposing intimidation, correcting misinformation, taking legal action). The similarity of intimidation across sectors suggests that UCIs engage in similar intimidatory tactics regardless of sector. Understanding more about the scale of intimidation and how it impacts the work and wellbeing of those affected is essential, as is learning more about the ways researchers and advocates can effectively pre-empt and respond.
The full citation is: Evans-Reeves KA, Matthes BK, Chamberlain P, Paichadze N, Gilmore AB, Mialon M. Intimidation against advocates and researchers in the tobacco, alcohol and ultra-processed food spaces: a review. Health Promot Int. 2024 Dec 1;39(6):daae153. doi: 10.1093/heapro/daae153. PMID: 39569485; PMCID: PMC11579607. It is available here.
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