• Government
• Profession
• Business
• Opinion
• Health

• Health reform
• H1N1
• P4P
• EMRs
• Medicare
• Liability
• AMA House
• » More

• Book Excerpt
• Business Pitch
• Meetings
• » More

• Contract Language
• Ethics Forum
• In the Courts
• Practice Management
• Technically Speaking
• » More

• Issue dates
• Regions
• Health plans
• Sections
• News briefs
• Columns
• Editorials
• Letters
• Writers
• Other years

• Search tips
• E-mail alert
• Radio
• RSS
• Mobile
• Subscribe
• Institutions
• Staff directory
• Advertising
• Permissions
• Reprints
• News media
• Site guide
• Useful links
• About
• Premium
• Contact

Old ties found between pharmaceutical, tobacco companies

Memos suggest drug firms "caved in" to tobacco money and pulled back on smoking cessation products.

By Susan J. Landers, amednews staff. Sept. 9, 2002.

• PRINT|
• E-MAIL|
• RESPOND|
• REPRINTS|
• SHARE

Washington -- A review of tobacco industry documents written in the 1980s and 1990s alleged that ties between that industry and pharmaceutical companies may have led to a scaling back of the marketing of such smoking cessation products as nicotine gum and patches,

"Financial ties between companies producing addictive tobacco products and companies producing drugs to treat or alleviate the addiction are a potential conflict of interest," wrote Bhavna Shamasunder and Lisa Bero, PhD, researchers at the Institute for Health Policy Studies at University of California, San Francisco.

Their findings, published in the Aug. 14 JAMA, did not astound Joel L. Nitzkin, MD, PhD, who chairs the Tobacco Control Task Force at the American Assn. of Public Health Physicians.

Dr. Nitzkin did express disappointment, however, in the pharmaceutical companies' response. "Had the pharmaceutical companies not caved in but taken a broader perspective on this issue, I think we could have used these nicotine replacement products much more liberally to help smokers to ease themselves in the direction of not smoking at all."

The researchers developed three case studies to illustrate the link between the pharmaceutical and tobacco industries. They drew from documents released by tobacco companies and posted on the Internet as a result of the Master Settlement Agreement reached in 1998 between major U.S. tobacco firms and most of the states.

One case study demonstrated how tobacco companies pressured drug companies to scale back the smoking cessation educational materials and resources that had accompanied the nicotine gum, Nicorette. [...]