Projects per year
Abstract
Objectives: To examine the volume, relevance and quality of transnational tobacco corporations' (TTCs) evidence that standardised packaging of tobacco products 'won't work', following the UK government's decision to 'wait and see' until further evidence is available. Design: Content analysis. Setting: We analysed the evidence cited in submissions by the UK's four largest TTCs to the UK Department of Health consultation on standardised packaging in 2012. Outcome measures: The volume, relevance (subject matter) and quality (as measured by independence from industry and peer-review) of evidence cited by TTCs was compared with evidence from a systematic review of standardised packaging. Fisher's exact test was used to assess differences in the quality of TTC and systematic review evidence. 100% of the data were second-coded to validate the findings: 94.7% intercoder reliability; all differences were resolved. Results: 77/143 pieces of TTC-cited evidence were used to promote their claim that standardised packaging 'won't work'. Of these, just 17/77 addressed standardised packaging: 14 were industry connected and none were published in peer-reviewed journals. Comparison of TTC and systematic review evidence on standardised packaging showed that the industry evidence was of significantly lower quality in terms of tobacco industry connections and peer-review (p (p=0.0045).
Conclusions With few exceptions, evidence cited by TTCs to promote their claim that standardised packaging ‘won't work’ lacks either policy relevance or key indicators of quality. Policymakers could use these three criteria—subject matter, independence and peer-review status—to critically assess evidence submitted to them by corporate interests via Better Regulation processes.
Conclusions With few exceptions, evidence cited by TTCs to promote their claim that standardised packaging ‘won't work’ lacks either policy relevance or key indicators of quality. Policymakers could use these three criteria—subject matter, independence and peer-review status—to critically assess evidence submitted to them by corporate interests via Better Regulation processes.
Original language | English |
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Article number | e003757 |
Pages (from-to) | 1-9 |
Number of pages | 9 |
Journal | BMJ Open |
Volume | 4 |
Issue number | 2 |
Early online date | 15 Jan 2014 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 12 Feb 2014 |
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- 1 Finished
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UK Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies
Gilmore, A. (PI) & Griffin, C. (CoI)
1/09/13 → 31/07/19
Project: Research council
Datasets
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Data from: A critical evaluation of the volume, relevance and quality of evidence submitted by the tobacco industry to oppose standardised packaging of tobacco products.
Hatchard, J. (Creator), Gilmore, A. (Project Member), Evans-Reeves, K. (Project Member), Fooks, G. (Project Member) & Ulucanlar, S. (Project Member), Dryad Digital Repository, 13 Mar 2014
DOI: 10.5061/dryad.7dm1p/1, http://datadryad.org/resource/doi:10.5061/dryad.7dm1p/1
Dataset