Astroturfing

Smokers’ rights groups:
To create an impression of spontaneous, grassroots public support.
WHO Definitions of Tobacco Industry Tactics for resisting tobacco control.¹

Astroturfing is the term used for the faking of a grassroots movement, when in reality the agenda and strategy is controlled by a hidden company or organisation. In that sense, it is one of the typical Third Party Techniques – a very specific use of Front Groups, consisting of individuals pretending to be voicing their own opinions on their own initiative, mimicking genuine activist groups.

Fake Grassroots in the 1990s

One of the world’s leading PR companies, Burson-Marsteller, had a long involvement with the tobacco industry. In 1992, the PR company set up a unit specialised in grassroots lobbying called the Advocacy Communications Team. The following year, in 1993, this team created the National Smokers Alliance on behalf of Philip Morris. The tobacco money allowed this “grassroots” alliance to use full-page advertisements, direct telemarketing and other high-tech campaign strategies to build its membership to a claimed 300,000 by 1995.

There was also an overlap of staff: The Alliance’s president was the vice president of Burson-Marsteller, and other Burson-Marsteller executives were actively involved in the organisation. However, the names of the NSA’s corporate funders and organisers were kept off the group’s materials, according to PR Watch.²

Just like a real grassroots group, the National Smokers Alliance had a folksy but strident newsletter for its membership, called The NSA Voice to disseminate the pro-smoking message. According to its June 1994 issue, the NSA was paying hundreds of young activists, mostly unemployed college students, to sign up NSA members in bars and bowling alleys in Washington, Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore, Chicago, Cleveland, New York Seattle and other cities.

One NSA mailing, sent first class to hundreds of thousands of smokers, urged that letters be sent to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to defeat new regulations that would “BAN SMOKING IN ANY SITE WHERE WORK IS CONDUCTED” (capitalization in the original).²

Burson-Marsteller’s team developed a PR strategy whereby anti-smokers were called “anti Americans.” NSA’s newsletter advised, “If ‘Anti’ America is pushing a discriminatory smoking ban in your workplace, speak up,” and “check the laws in your state with regard to the protection of individual rights”.²

This strategy from the 1990s resonates in the freedom of speech argument against pictorial warnings on cigarette packets in the United States today, and the idea that the freedom to smoke is a civil liberty. (also pages on Forest and on Privacy International).

Fake Grassroots Activities in the 21st Century

United States: JUUL Labs’ “Switch Network”

JUUL Labs is a San Francisco based e-cigarette company that is 35% owned by tobacco giant Altria. In 2019, the company launched a website which urged JUUL consumers to “advocate for responsible policies” (see Image 1).³ Visitors to the site were encouraged to sign petitions, engage with elected officials and testify at state or local hearings, to “…protect your vapor access”. Visitors to the site were actively recruited to the campaign. According to ‘’CNBC News’’, public affairs company Locust Street called and emailed JUUL consumers on behalf of the e-cigarette company, asking them to sign up to the website.⁴ At the time, JUUL Labs was fighting a proposed e-cigarette sales ban in its home city San Francisco,⁵ and there were several calls at local and national level to ban flavoured e-cigarettes.⁶

Europe: EU Citizens’ Initiative “Let’s Demand Smarter Vaping Regulation”

In February 2019, Valerio Forconi, Head of European Union (EU) Corporate Affairs and registered lobbyist for Imperial Tobacco, was directly involved in the launch of a campaign under the European Citizens’ Initiative with the name “Let’s demand smarter vaping regulation!”⁷. This campaign advocated the removal of article 20 of EU Tobacco Products Directive 2014/40/EU, which “requires EU Member States to introduce restrictions on the advertising of electronic cigarettes”.⁸

The European Citizens’ Initiative is a democratic tool intended to benefit individuals, or groups of individuals, by bringing to the European Commission’s attention proposals for new laws. While there are rules in place which prohibit companies from using this process, there are no specific rules against tobacco company employees doing so as individuals.⁹ Although it appeared to have been set up by a group of individuals, Imperial Tobacco paid €10,000 towards the campaign.⁷ Imperial has significant interests in e-cigarettes.  In April 2019 a website followed, “promoted by” Imperial Brands, which referred to the initiative as a “grassroots” campaign.¹⁰ For details see Imperial Brands’ Use of the EU Citizens Initiative . See also Instinctif Partners, the public relations company that worked with Imperial Tobacco on the campaign.

Australia: Alliance of Australian Retailers

In August 2010, in a textbook example of astroturfing, a group called the Alliance of Australian Retailers (AAR) launched a media campaign against Australia’s proposed plain packs law. The AAR claimed to represent “the owners of your local corner stores, milk bars, newsagents and service stations” and wanted to “make the voices of small retailers heard, and to oppose plain packaging until it is overturned”. ¹¹
However, leaked documents revealed that this was not a genuine grassroots campaign – on the contrary, it received funding from:¹²

* Imperial Tobacco Australia: $1,080,860

* British American Tobacco: $2,200,000

* Philip Morris: $2,161,720

Furthermore, Chris Argent of Philip Morris had regular input into the running of the AAR. Health groups launched an awareness-raising campaign under the banner “Guess who’s pulling the strings?” (Image 2).¹³ The AAR’s astroturf campaign split retailers, with major supermarkets Coles and Woolworths repudiating the campaign and the Australian Association of Convenience Stores withdrawing from it.

For more detail, see the page on the Alliance of Australian Retailers.

TobaccoTactics Resources

• Front Groups
• Third Party Techniques
• Tobacco Industry Tactics