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Operation Berkshire is the name of a program initiated in 1976 by seven of the world's major tobacco companies aimed at promoting "controversy" over smoking and disease. At the invitation of the Chairman of Imperial Tobacco, the CEOs of the tobacco companies met in secret in June 1977 in the United Kingdom "to develop a defensive smoking and health strategy, to avoid our countries and/or companies being picked off one by one, with a resultant domino effect."〔 William K. Howell director and vice President of Philip Morris is credited with the marketing success of Marlboro cigarettes, after introducing the Marlboro man to the International world. 〕 They agreed to create a front organization, the ''International Committee on Smoking Issues'' (ICOSI) (renamed the ''International Tobacco Information Centre'', INFOTAB, in 1981), which operated through an internationally coordinated network of national manufacturers' associations to retard measures for tobacco control. The purpose of ICOSI/INFOTAB is best described in a document entitled "Conspiracy Notebook" produced by Brown & Williamson in the context of the US racketeering lawsuit against tobacco companies:〔
Tobacco companies because of their participation in National Cancer Institute Tobacco Working Group opposed to funding of such projects as cessation tobacco programs and also withheld knowledge about the effects of cigaretts.〔http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1001798〕 The conspiracy was discovered in November 1998, as part of the Master Settlement Agreement between the U.S. tobacco industry and various states' attorneys general. U.S. tobacco companies were compelled to publicly disclose approximately 40 million pages of previously confidential documents. During the course of the Minnesota Attorney General litigation (State of Minnesota, et al.) the district court ordered the domestic parties to establish a document depository in Minnesota for the documents produced in that action. Operation Berkshire was created as a unified defensive strategy among international tobacco companies. The code name was initially suggested in a confidential memorandum to the then President of Philip Morris International, Hugh Cullman, by the then Chairman of Imperial Tobacco in the UK, A. G. (Tony) Garrett. The plan formed when major tobacco companies met together to form a unified defense against anti-smoking legislation. They agreed that they would not voluntarily make certain concessions about smoking and, if legislation was passed to force them, they would agree to sue. In particular, they decided that they would not concede the point that smoking has adverse health effects and would instead attempt to create controversy, lest they be held legally liable for the deaths of smokers. They also formulated coordinated activities to promote the social acceptability of smoking. Similar behavior was demonstrated by the top seven biggest U.S. tobacco company CEOs, dubbed the "seven dwarfs",〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/10/4/398.full.pdf+html )〕 testifying together before the U.S. Congress during a hearing on the regulation of tobacco products on April 14, 1994, in which they collectively denied, under oath, the addictive nature of nicotine,〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://senate.ucsf.edu/tobacco/executives1994congress.html )〕〔http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQUNk5meJHs〕 despite at least one published New York Times report at the time claiming that it has the ability to be more addictive than heroin, cocaine or amphetamines. ==See also== * Project SCUM * Master Settlement Agreement * The Insider (film) * "Truth" ad campaign 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Operation Berkshire」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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