Concealing information

The 1990's have been the decade for confronting the tobacco industry on their past performance; what they did and did not know about the addictiveness of nicotine, how they ignored scientific evidence, challenged findings contrary to the industry view, and concealed or hid much of their own in-house scientific findings and executive recommendations for marketing and selling tobacco products. Documents recovered in 1997 from the US tobacco manfacturer, Liggett Group, indicate the tobacco industry as a whole may have used its lawyers to hide information about the health effects of smoking. The documents clearly suggest tobacco industry lawyers met at one stage, within the legal framework of Committee of Counsel, to shield themselves from liability by allowing the lawyers to block potentially damaging scientific research from being conducted or becoming public. Any potentially damaging material was stamped as attorney-client privilege.