The spider’s web of the tobacco lobby in Italy| Tabaccologia

Abstract

In this special issue of Tabaccologia, dedicated to the conspiracy, deception and interference of the tobacco
industry (Big Tobacco) to safeguard its business, we republish the article: “The spider’s web of the tobacco lobby.
Deep throats. What smokers (and non-smokers) don’t know”, which was published in Pneumorama in 2006,
in the aftermath of the “ope legis” declassification of the confidential and top secret documents of Philip Morris
(PMI) and other US sisters. The publication of this article was not easy due to the diffidence and lack of
courage of some directors such as that of the Italian Review of Respiratory Disease. Everything that was written
was supported by documents that were made public and published in print and online until 2010. Since then,
the tobacco companies’ websites have been carefully cleaned of tens of millions of often compromising documents; however (and thankfully) the University of San Francisco, in a surprise move, has saved everything on the their web site. But I was not discouraged. I then presented the article to Antonio Schiavulli, then publisher and director of Pneumorama, who with courage and determination, took it upon himself to publish it, with the superstitious promise that... In case of any legal “trouble”, he would bring me oranges every day! As you can read, the article, later published on Pneumorama [1] and which we are republishing here in two languages, takes a journey into the Italian connivance, at the political, mass media and scientific levels with SMEs. For thefirst time, we understood why we had to wait 50 years for a real and effective anti-smoking law.