The 13th World Conference on Tobacco OR Health

Objective: This presentation analysed internal tobacco industry documents that describe the industry's response to the Community Intervention Trial for Smoking Cessation (COMMIT), a multi-center community-based tobacco intervention project funded by the National Cancer Institute from 1988 to 1992.

Methods: A search of documents from the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library was performed, using logical search terms and adjacent document numbers.

Results: The documents analyzed suggest that the tobacco industry reacted to COMMIT in four basic ways: by closely monitoring trial activities, confronting COMMIT in communities where it was most active, distorting COMMIT findings on underage smoking data reported in the media, and using COMMIT activities as practice to strengthen their attack against the subsequent ASSIST trial, falsely accusing both studies of illegal political lobbying with taxpayers' money. Conclusions. The tobacco industry closely monitored COMMIT activities and organized local responses to findings and activities perceived as threatening to the industry's public image or interests. Although we could not document a concerted attack by the tobacco industry that impacted the results of the COMMIT trial, the data suggest that the industry used COMMIT as a learning opportunity to mount a well-orchestrated and potentially damaging response to the larger American Stop Smoking Intervention Study for Cancer Prevention Trial (ASSIST).