The 13th World Conference on Tobacco OR Health

In Brazil, according to World Health Organization , almost 200.000 people will die, each year, related to tobacco illnesses. Every year around 200.000 hectares of forests and jungle are destroyed worldwide to make room for tobacco plantations, not to mention the native trees that are cut down to cure the leaves.

However, despite figures like these, the British American Tobacco subsidiary, Souza Cruz, is very well succeeded in its campaign as a corporate citizen.

The interest in corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the media and business and its intrinsic link to the activities of the so-called “Third Sector” was one of the factors that led me (and my partner Paula Johns) to conduct the survey entitled “Corporate Social Responsibility: The New Face of Tobacco Industry”, between 2004 and 2005, in Brazil.

Instead of a broad-based social debate, we have watched Souza Cruz and other tobacco industry co-opt the debate to convince society, NGOs, institutes specializing in this area, and others, that there is nothing wrong with applying the concept of CSR to the manufacture and marketing of a product that causes sickness, death, and a string of adverse social, environmental, and economic impacts.

In order to analyze the concept of CSR, interviews were made with the main Brazilian institutes and organizations with expertise in this area. A field research was made, by visiting the families involved in CEDEJOR, the social project of Souza Cruz, in South Brazil.