The 13th World Conference on Tobacco OR Health

Objective: For years, tobacco companies worldwide have developed and executed document “retention” policies that actually encourage destruction of internal documents. Many of the documents destroyed under these policies contained the results of scientific research regarding smoking's addictive nature and its link to disease. We sought to learn more about these policies and to recommend laws and policies that would discourage document destruction.

Methods: We searched previously secret tobacco industry documents to uncover evidence of document destruction tactics at the world's largest tobacco companies.

Results: Had tobacco companies not destroyed certain documents, the worldwide public health and medical communities may have gained crucial knowledge about smoking's dangers much earlier than they did. This could have resulted in lower morbidity and mortality rates among smokers and potential smokers. Instead, the companies' document destruction tactics prevented public knowledge while insulating the companies from liability and allowing them to continue marketing their deadly products without recourse. To protect the public's access to crucial information on health-related topics that currently may be in tobacco company hands, adequate penalties must be in place for those companies that destroy documents with the goal of protecting their interests in litigation. Because the penalties that courts generally impose may not serve as adequate deterrents, this presentation will propose the imposition of independent civil and criminal liability on companies that destroy documents to prevent them from being used as evidence in court and will discuss examples of laws prohibiting such conduct in the United States and Australia.