Action Against Access

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This article is part of the Tobacco portal on Sourcewatch funded from 2006 - 2009 by the American Legacy Foundation.

Action Against Access was a Philip Morris "youth" program designed to demonstrate self-restraint in marketing cigarettes to children and to help prevent further regulation of the tobacco industry.

A memo by former Burson Marstellar employee-turned-Philip Morris-consultant Jim Lindheim points out the actual purpose for PM/Altria's youth anti-smoking and access programs, like Action Against Access (AAA):

...By focusing on this [youth] approach, one can draw attention to the real reasons kids want to smoke, thereby robbing the other side of the ability to focus this issue on the wrong solutions...[1]

and

...the real objective here, as nearly all the presentations [of youth anti-smoking programs] point out, is to rob the other side of their ability to use this issue as a generalized club which would hurt us.

Programs like AAA also help raise the tobacco industry's credibility level and give legislators "cover" to vote in favor of tobacco industry's preferred legislation.

Additional document resources

Title: Task Force Mission
Date 19941200/E
Type: Report, chart, graph, table maps, photograph
Bates No. 2044336836/6868
Collection: Philip Morris
Pages: 33
URL: http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/mlq55e00
This document is a 1994 discussion of PM's plan to address smoking by minors, which turned into "Action Against Access." Goals for program include reducing the "number of hostile bills and regulatory efforts," "improving public recognition of our efforts" and "improving the press on minor's access."

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