British American Tobacco (BAT)'s strategy for global expansion combined complicity in smuggling with high level political influence across Asia, new research reveals.
A series of papers published in the journal Tobacco Control, based on analysis of previously secret internal BAT documents, reveal extensive evidence, both of the critical role of contraband in corporate strategy and the company's oversight of widespread smuggling activities across Asia, and its attempts to undermine health policy. The papers look at BAT's activities over the past two decades during which transnational tobacco companies have expanded into Asia's emerging markets as traditional western markets have declined.
The papers have been co-written by tobacco control policy experts from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) in an international collaboration with other researchers. The documents used are being made available through the Guildford Archiving Project, efforts that are improving public access to millions of pages of documents from BAT.
The articles published today explore the strategies used by BAT to pursue rapid growth in key Asian markets, raising serious questions about corporate conduct: