John Dollisson, CEO of Tobacco Institute of Australia 1983-87, then with Philip Morris International

I’ve often been asked by journalists, interviewers and friends what it was about tobacco control that kept me engaged and interested in it across the 45 years I’ve been active in research and advocacy for policies capable of driving down smoking and the diseases it causes. Some are probing to see if there was some road to Damascus epiphany I had early in life. The early death of a heavy smoking parent? No. Or perhaps some religious or neo-puritan calling to deny people the so-called pleasures of smoking? Hardly, I’m a very long term atheist, love wine and good whiskey, and like most people of my age, used cannabis for about half my 20s.

Some are keen to steer the conversation to what it is about working in tobacco control that “drives” me. I often wonder if people working in clinical medicine are ever asked the same question (“why have you kept working for so long as a kidney surgeon?”; “You’ve been a cardiologist for so many years, what is it that keeps you at it?”)

The answer to such questions from clinicians is self-evident. People with diseases and injuries that might be cured or alleviated are very keen to come into the orbit of specialists who can help them and are profoundly grateful when they succeed. Clinicians try to help people who want to be helped, so they are seldom asked to account for why they do what they do, unless they have somehow been exposed as behaving unethically or ineptly.

There is some common ground here with smoking. Some 90% of smokers regret ever starting; most smokers want and try to stop, sometimes often; and I’ve never met any parent who wanted their kids to smoke. “Prevention is better than cure” is regarded as a truism because prevention saves suffering from ever occurring. Everyone who has never been seriously injured in a car crash would rather this had never happened than endure surgery and rehabilitation after being injured.  Successful clinical interventions save lives one at a time while successful global public health policy can save millions of lives at a time.

Tobacco control is a multi-disciplinary pursuit. My colleagues over the years have been clinicians, epidemiologists, biostatisticians, social scientists like psychologists, economists and political scientists, pharmacologists, lawyers, mass communication specialists, agronomists, historians, investigative journalists and politicians. This has made it endlessly fine-grained and fascinating work.

But most working in it will readily agree about a factor that turns the temperature right up in motivating public health advocacy for the policies and mass reach campaigns that drive smoking down. The pinguid, dissembling types who do Big Tobacco and (today) Big Vape’s bidding. For over 70 years, the tobacco industry has been represented  by people whose goal has been to use every possible roadblock to tobacco control policies which seriously threatened tobacco sales.

Thankfully in Australia and many other countries, they have lost every single battle they ever fought.

Today, in déjà vu, we see vaping advocates currently in overdrive to cement the narrative that the health risks of ecigarettes are as benign as breathing steam in the shower and the dramatic rise of school vaping is simply a fad like hula hoops and yoyos that we should all relax about, as a leading vape promoter told the Daily Telegraph in 2021. With 13 year olds calling the Quitline for help with their vaping addiction, I may have missed it but I don’t recall yoyo or hula hoop helplines across the country.

Similarly and infamously, Big Tobacco publicly denied for decades that smoking was harmful, that nicotine was addictive and that children were in their marketing and promotional cross-hairs as essential to their present and future customer base.

In 2001, I was awarded a four year US National Cancer Institute grant and another from the National Health and Medical Research Council to sift through many millions of pages of internal tobacco industry documents made public through the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement between 46 US state governments and the tobacco industry. My research group published 38 papers from these grants, 16 here, 13 here and another 9 linked in my CV between 2001-2005 here.

The documents acted like violently emetic truth serum to the tobacco industry. Its galactic public lies across every conceivable tobacco policy area instantly stopped with the revelations about what they had long known to be the truth, now available for anyone to wave in their faces via their very own internal documents. The only one that persists today is their collective hand-on-heart denial that they slaver over the teen nicotine addiction  market, this being the sine qua non of both the smoking and vaping business models.

I’ve often been asked to nominate the very worst examples of this conduct. This recording of a debate I had with John Dollisson in 1984 on (now ABC chair) Ita Buttrose’s Sydney morning radio program on 2UE is very hard to beat. Dollisson was the Sydney-based head of and main spokesman for the fully tobacco industry funded Tobacco Institute of Australia (TIA) from 1983-87. This 2003 paper by one of my colleagues (now) Professor Stacy Carter, describes the history and activities of the TIA. Dollisson was heavily involved in trying to stop the advance of smokefree indoor areas and bans on tobacco advertising. But his bread and butter was attacking claims about smoking risks.

The full transcript of the 2UE conversation is below. The most disturbing part came when a smoker with lung cancer called in and said she believed her cancer was caused by “stress” as she was a highly nervous person, and that if she stopped smoking, she might die sooner. Dollisson told her it was “good to see you have taken an objective assessment” of her situation and that if other factors like genetics, stress, and indoor and outdoor pollution were taken into account, smoking’s role “was virtually removed”. Buttrose’s popular mid morning program would have been heard by tens of thousands of listeners.

Listen to their conversation here.

This figuratively and literally sickening excerpt from an ABC “Pressure Point” TV program also from 1984,  shows Dollisson and Philip Morris’ Bill Webb both faithful to the Big Tobacco script of the day. For those with the stomach, here’s the full 25 minute program.

Dollisson seems to have long moved on from tobacco. Here is his Linked In page which includes his post TIA 4 year stint with Philip Morris and their “Vice President, Corporate Affairs, World Wide”.

To my knowledge, Dollisson has never made any public statement showing any regret about his tobacco industry years. Industry employees often sign non-disclosure agreements. If he’s reading this, I’d be happy to give him space to do so.

About 35 years ago during the Irish ‘troubles’ I flew from London to Belfast and with 40 or so others, took a chartered bus down the east coast  to a convention centre overlooking the Irish Sea. On the return journey a couple of days later, our bus was stopped by the police. There was some sort of security operation going on. It was dark and the bus stayed on the side of the road for several hours with other vehicles till we were given the OK to proceed.

Needing something to help us pass what could have been  a long time in a bus with no lights allowed on, various people told travel tales, tall stories and charades. I  proposed a game that went on for at least an hour to gales of laughter.

Here are the rules. Everyone in the group has to try and think of something they have never done, which they guess that everyone else in the room has done. Absolutely anything qualifies, with the exception of naming places, countries, cities etc where you have never been. For each nomination you make that no one else in the room has ever experienced, you get a point, with the winner the person who has the most points.

The skill is thinking about experiences that you calculate to be widely experienced that makes it likely that your innocence is unique. Not having skydived is unlikely to win you a point, but never having played scrabble may well do so. Common foods and drinks are fertile grounds, as are common sports for the non-sporting, not having read popular books, authors, or seen popular movies or TV series. 

The game can be risky because some will nominate edgy, illegal or reprehensible activities which they guess most will not own up to. The Irish bus was full of public health researchers. Oxford University’s Sir Richard Doll was on the bus with his secretary. She got a highly acclaimed point right out of the blocks by saying she was confident she was the only person on the bus who’d never been to university. I knew that this also applied to at least one other person in the group who chose to keep silent. 

Admitting you’ve never had group sex, smoked dope or gone back to a supermarket and paid for an item that was missed by the check-out staff are all probably likely to produce highly unreliable results, depending on who’s playing the game.

Here are some points I usually score on when I play the game.

Snow skiing. Never been in an ambulance or broken a bone. Never stung by a bluebottle. Not read any science fiction book. Never worn sandals as an adult. Never voted conservative. Never ordered or accepted a glass of Baileys, Chartreuse, Tia Maria or Benedictine (after having had a previous sip). Never swam in the sea in mid-winter. Never read anything by Tolkein or JK Rowling. Never seen a single episode of Friends, Dallas, Dynasty, Sex in the City, South Park, the Simpsons and a bewilderlingy long list of other US produced TV fare since the 1970s.

My University has awarded former NSW premier Nick Greiner an honorary Doctor of Business (honoris causa) during a ceremony held in New York on  8 October, presided over by the University’s Vice-Chancellor and university President, Professor Mark Scott AO. 

“Across business and politics, Nick’s achievements are remarkable,” said Professor Scott. “Throughout his illustrious career, he has served the nation and helped the community through his work in policy and his environmental efforts. He continues to influence the next generation of leaders, the future of business and the important relationship between Australia and the United States.”

The University of Sydney’s website noted that “Mr Greiner’s achievements in business over the last 30 years have been significant. He has served as Chair or Deputy Chair of organisations including Harper & Row (Australasia), Bradken, Citigroup (Australia), Coles Myer Ltd, Rothschild (Australia), Stockland Trust, QBE Insurance and Castle Harlan Australian Mezzanine. In addition, he was Chairman of Infrastructure NSW and the European Australian Business Council.”

Significant in its absence here is that Greiner was also a board member and chair of the tobacco company WD & HO Wills (later amalgamated with Rothmans to become British American Tobacco Australia – BATA).

Greiner’s own website includes his BATA role, so it seems inconceivable that the University was unaware of this and has deliberately air-brushed Greiner’s tobacco history from its decision and communications.

In 2003, I led a group of academics and health and medical students in protesting the Greiner appointment, then chairman of BATA, to chair Sydney University’s graduate school of government. One senior paediatrician was so incensed he threatened to resign if the appointment went ahead.  I persuaded the University Senate to overturn the appointment. They agreed with me and Greiner resigned from the role. I wrote a detailed account of how this occurred as a case study in public health advocacy at the end of this paper in the BMJ’s Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

At the time, the then University Chancellor Kim Santow AO wrote to me that Griener’s appointment had nothing to do with his tobacco industry role but was all about his distinguished career in politics and public administration. This was a version of the Jeckyll and Hyde defense: the upstanding citizen by day, who strenuously denies his evening persona has any relevance to his overall reputation.

In 1982, Sydney University was the world’s first University to formally adopt a policy whereby neither the university, nor any staff member or student could accept any form of support, grant or scholarship from a tobacco company. This was subsequently strengthened in amendments. Careers fairs at the University have long excluded tobacco companies from pitching employment to students. Universities around the world have followed suit, including Harvard and the London School of Economics.

When Nicola Roxon, the former Australian Health Minister and Attorney General was awarded an honorary doctorate of laws in 2019, the then Vice Chancellor Michael Spence AC noted that:

“the honour was also a fitting continuation of the University’s role in tobacco control. The University of Sydney has a long history of engagement in tobacco control and was the world’s first university to implement a policy preventing staff and students from accepting grants from tobacco companies. This has been emulated by nearly all Australian universities and many others around the world.

At the University of Sydney, we share Ms Roxon’s genuine desire to build a better, healthier future for the world and we are so proud when our world-class research is used by policymakers to bring about real change”

Greiner’s parting shot at the University in 2003 was to say that “his departure points to broader problems in the university, including mismanagement.”

“It’s the ultimate sort of inmates-in-charge-of-the-asylum situation and I just didn’t think it was worth the hassle” he said.

To my knowledge, Greiner has never expressed a syllable of regret about his role with BATA. This is important. History records many prominent people who have gone out of their way to express remorse and regret about dark periods or events in their past. Civil society has codified five steps for contrition that we expect people to exhibit before society turns the page:

Greiner openly admits he worked at the very peak of a tobacco company, with his eyes wide open. But he has never taken the next four steps. Draw your own conclusions.

It has been decades since any tobacco executive has been awarded a civic honour like an Order of Australia or knighthood. For such a thing to happen today would be like a rabid dog winning London Crufts dog show. The World Health Organisation’s historic Framework Convention on Tobacco Control has been ratified by 181 nations. Its Article 5.3 precludes governments from any engagement with the industry. Two in three of the tobacco industry’s most addicted, “loyal” smokers die from tobacco caused disease. There are light years between that toll and that attributed to any other industry.

Sydney University’s gesture to Greiner might simply be a case of failed corporate memory in a new administration. Perhaps there is no one on the present Senate which would have signed off on the award who is aware of the history. Or perhaps there is and they didn’t care.

But the omission of his tobacco links from the university statement suggests this was done in full awareness. This is very regrettable.