The power of the tobacco and alcohol industries over our health

The tobacco and alco­hol indus­tries’ lob­by­ing exploits social net­works and influ­ences pub­lic policy. For more than twenty years, their mar­ket­ing tech­niques have been stud­ied by Karine Gal­lopel-Mor­van, sci­entif­ic dir­ect­or of the RECLAMS net­work (Réseau éclair­age sur le lob­by­ing et ana­lyse du mar­ket­ing des indus­tri­els). Her research high­lights dis­in­form­a­tion strategies and prob­lem­at­ic prac­tices that con­tin­ue to affect young people, with no regard for pub­lic health. 

Karine Gal­lopel-Mor­van. About twenty years ago, I com­pleted a PhD in mar­ket­ing on per­suas­ive advert­ising, spe­cific­ally the use of music in advert­ising. I found the sub­ject fas­cin­at­ing from an intel­lec­tu­al point of view, but I was already uncom­fort­able with the com­mer­cial uses that could be made of my work. After defend­ing my thes­is, I quickly switched to social mar­ket­ing [Editor’s note: a field that uses com­mer­cial mar­ket­ing tech­niques to encour­age beha­viours deemed bene­fi­cial to indi­vidu­als’ well-being or good health] and prevention. 

At the time, I was a smoker: in my research, I began to won­der wheth­er fear was an effect­ive lever for encour­aging people to quit smoking. Anti-smoking organ­isa­tions then asked me to eval­u­ate the effect­ive­ness of pre­ven­tion mes­sages on cigar­ette pack­ets. Since then, I have con­tin­ued to work on these issues, which I quickly expan­ded to include mar­ket­ing and lob­by­ing by the tobacco and alco­hol indus­tries, com­mer­cial prac­tices that block the adop­tion of effect­ive pub­lic health measures.

The term appeared in sci­entif­ic lit­er­at­ure about ten years ago, but the concept has been known for a long time. Com­mer­cial determ­in­ants of health are the activ­it­ies of com­pan­ies selling risky products that dir­ectly or indir­ectly affect people’s health and the envir­on­ment. A report by the WHO Region­al Office for Europe, dat­ing from 2024¹, gives an idea of the scale of the prob­lem: it found that tobacco, alco­hol, fossil fuels and ultra-pro­cessed foods are respons­ible for around a quarter of deaths in Europe (2.7 mil­lion per year) and a third of deaths world­wide (19 million). 

Bey­ond the Évin law, France has imple­men­ted numer­ous meas­ures that have led to a very sig­ni­fic­ant decrease in tobacco con­sump­tion: smoking bans in pub­lic places, reg­u­lar tax increases, advert­ising bans, plain pack­aging, health warn­ings, etc. There is a wealth of sci­entif­ic lit­er­at­ure on this sub­ject, show­ing that these vari­ous meas­ures reduce smoking, as has happened in France.

For alco­hol, it is more com­plic­ated polit­ic­ally. Our research has shown, for example, that the advert­ising restric­tions pro­posed by the Évin law reduce the appeal of alco­hol and the desire to drink among young people², par­tic­u­larly those under the age of 22. Since its adop­tion, the alco­hol industry has been work­ing to under­mine this law through sus­tained and struc­tured lob­by­ing³, with spe­cif­ic adapt­a­tions to the French context.

The basis of lob­by­ing is to devel­op argu­ments that min­im­ise the harm­ful effects of the products sold or under­mine the effect­ive­ness of pre­vent­ive meas­ures that are proven to work accord­ing to sci­entif­ic lit­er­at­ure. These argu­ments are then dis­sem­in­ated to elec­ted offi­cials, journ­al­ists and the gen­er­al pub­lic. Indus­tries do not hes­it­ate to engage in dis­in­form­a­tion in this con­text, fin­an­cing pseudo-sci­entif­ic stud­ies or pay­ing recog­nised experts to dis­tort sci­entif­ic truth to sup­port their interests. 

Some of these prac­tices were made pub­lic by the Mas­ter Set­tle­ment Agree­ment, con­cluded after many US states sued the tobacco industry in the 1990s. It was then revealed that the accused com­pan­ies had joined forces in mar­ket­ing, research and lob­by­ing to min­im­ise the harm­ful effects of smoking on health, manip­u­late the nicot­ine con­tent of cigar­ettes and tar­get young and even very young audi­ences, while con­tinu­ing to defend themselves.

These prac­tices have nev­er stopped. The tobacco industry con­tin­ues to tar­get young people with con­ven­tion­al cigar­ettes in devel­op­ing coun­tries, while offer­ing new tobacco products (e‑cigarettes, fla­voured cigar­ettes, snus with tobacco, heated tobacco, nicot­ine pearls, etc.) in more afflu­ent coun­tries, where young people are turn­ing away from tra­di­tion­al cigar­ettes. To improve its image, the tobacco (and alco­hol) industry is com­mit­ted to CSR, to make people believe that it is con­cerned about the envir­on­ment­al, social, eth­ic­al and health con­sequences of its activ­it­ies. This includes organ­ising pseudo-pre­ven­tion campaigns.

Abso­lutely. In France, pro-tobacco lob­by­ing is over­whelm­ingly car­ried out by tobacco retail­ers⁴ rather than by the industry itself, which does not have a good image. We see a sim­il­ar phe­nomen­on with the alco­hol industry: whenev­er there is a mes­sage to con­vey to elec­ted offi­cials or the gen­er­al pub­lic, it is not con­veyed by the large spir­its com­pan­ies that dom­in­ate the mar­ket, such as Per­nod Ricard and Diageo, but by organ­isa­tions that are sup­posed to rep­res­ent winegrow­ers, such as Vin et société, which poses two types of prob­lems. Firstly, this organ­isa­tion is very opaque, and we do not know who it actu­ally rep­res­ents. Secondly, wine, presen­ted as a cul­tur­al product dis­tinct from alco­hol and part of French her­it­age, is used as lever­age to obtain exemp­tions for the entire industry. 

Yes, but only if they are sig­ni­fic­ant, at least 10%. The tobacco industry is always lob­by­ing to keep increases below this threshold. Among their argu­ments is often the idea that if the price of tobacco is increased, the black mar­ket will grow by 30–40%. This fig­ure comes from stud­ies pro­duced by the con­sult­ing firm KPMG, fun­ded by the tobacco industry. It is widely repor­ted by the media and elec­ted offi­cials. How­ever, object­ive ana­lyses by cus­toms author­it­ies, which record the num­ber of seizures, and sur­veys con­duc­ted by Santé Pub­lique France on con­sumer sup­ply sources show that illi­cit trade is closer to 15%, regard­less of the level of tax­a­tion. This is a typ­ic­al case of lob­by­ing based on pseudo-sci­entif­ic stud­ies, as I men­tioned earlier. 

In the­ory, the Évin law applies to social media plat­forms and influ­en­cers. In real­ity, a great deal of con­tent that does not com­ply with the law’s require­ments cir­cu­lates on social media. And some­times this con­tent has a very short lifespan, which makes it even more dif­fi­cult to identify. 

In a recent study⁵, we ana­lysed the videos of 15 bar­tenders with large fol­low­ings on Tik­Tok (2 mil­lion sub­scribers on aver­age). Our res­ults show a massive and pos­it­ive pres­ence of alco­hol in the videos pos­ted, in viol­a­tion of the law.

Of the 345 videos ana­lysed, totalling more than 270 mil­lion views:

• 92% fea­ture alco­hol, mainly spirits.
• 73% dis­play alco­hol brands, des­pite TikTok’s rules pro­hib­it­ing their promotion.
• Nearly 20% asso­ci­ate alco­hol with sweet products (candy, ice cream).
• 13% use codes that appeal to young people (car­toons, cul­tur­al references). 

This con­tent is widely access­ible to minors (13–19 year olds rep­res­ent 12% of the platform’s declared users) and nor­m­al­ises a fun and attract­ive image of alcohol.

But there may be hope thanks to AI. In 2023, WHO Europe launched an arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence tool to com­bat the online pro­mo­tion of harm­ful products, includ­ing tobacco and alco­hol, and invited inter­net users to send screen­shots to train it. Oth­er auto­mated tools could be developed to facil­it­ate the detec­tion of con­tent that viol­ates the law. 

Interview by Anne Orliac