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Cancer Control Research

Abstract

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Reducing tobacco related disease necessitates understanding its vector: the tobacco industry. This application continues using previously secret tobacco industry documents to understand how the tobacco industry promotes smoking and opposes public health measures designed to reduce the burden of tobacco induced cancer, heart disease and other diseases. It addresses tobacco industry influence on the scientific process, industry knowledge of the health and social effects of secondhand smoke, using the industry's targeted marketing strategies to improve health communications, and exposing industry efforts to subvert tobacco control policies. Specific aims are: (1) Continue to describe and assess the tobacco industry's evolving strategies to influence the conduct, interpretation, and dissemination of science and how the industry has used these strategies to oppose tobacco control policies. (2) Analyze the tobacco industry's coordinated use of quantitative biological assays and qualitative sensory assessment assays of secondhand smoke to produce a more socially acceptable cigarette. (3) Study of the industry's use of biological assays to assess the carcinogenicity and other toxicity of secondhand tobacco smoke and contrast their private research with what they made public. (4) Explore the use of tobacco marketing research to develop targeted advertising for young adults, and identify successful principles for tobacco marketers that can be used to develop more effective tobacco prevention and cessation strategies for this group. (5) Analyze the development of tobacco advertising targeting women to identify themes, and techniques that work to sell cigarettes, and to identify insights that may be useful to mobilize women to resist these marketing efforts, as well as to improve tobacco control programs. (6) Analyze evolving tobacco industry strategies to oppose tobacco control policies at the local, state, and international level, with particular emphasis on the industry's ongoing involvement with the hospitality and gaming industries, and efforts to oppose the World Health Organization's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. (7) Continue to locate and distribute tobacco industry documents relevant to the other Aims of this project to other investigators and the public via the Internet, with particular emphasis on the Guildford Depository and "orphan" collections. The research utilizes systematic search and analyses of tobacco industry documents in electronic databases. Results of this research will guide the development of more effective tobacco control strategies.