Legacy Tobacco Documents Library

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The Legacy Tobacco Documents Library (LTDL) is a digital archive of tobacco industry documents, funded by the American Legacy Foundation and created and maintained by the University of California, San Francisco, Library and Center for Knowledge Management. The LTDL contains over 7 million documents, created by the major US tobacco companies, related to the tobacco industry’s advertising, manufacturing, marketing, sales, and scientific research activities for the last century.

Researchers interested in tobacco control issues and public health policies use the Library extensively to investigate tobacco industry strategies regarding smoking regulations, tobacco and air quality legislation, scientific research, and cigarette marketing. Journalists, students, and public health activists use LTDL to learn about the tobacco industry as well.

For examples of how this collection of documents has been utilized, see the UCSF Library Tobacco Documents Bibliography which cites publications and scholarly articles based on research and analysis of tobacco industry documents.


History

In 1994, the Attorneys General of four states - Mississippi, Minnesota, West Virginia, and Massachusetts - separately filed lawsuits against the tobacco industry in an effort to secure reimbursement for health care expenditures arising from tobacco-related illnesses. During the course of this litigation, 42 other states joined in similar legal actions. In 1998, a Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) was signed by the Attorneys General of 46 states and the nation's four major tobacco companies: Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds, Brown & Williamson, and the American Tobacco Company. The MSA effectively settled the outstanding lawsuits by requiring yearly payments by the tobacco companies to the States and placing restrictions on the advertising and marketing of tobacco products. The MSA provisions also created and currently fund the American Legacy Foundation, an anti-smoking advocacy group, which in turn funded the creation of the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library as well as its ongoing maintenance and collection activities.

As part of this Master Settlement Agreement, the tobacco companies were ordered to release the internal documents produced for the case for public access in both a physical depository in Minnesota and on their own document websites. They are also obliged to make available any documents produced for litigation on smoking and health until 2008. The National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) provides oversight and enforcement of this operation.

In 2002, NAAG gave the UCSF Library a large number of document index records and images with which to create the LTDL. Currently, the collections are added to through the use of spidering (also known as "web crawling") applications that identify and download index records and document images directly from the tobacco companies’ websites.

Collections

The LTDL collects and maintains the internal documents of the tobacco companies and their trade organizations that were a party to the Master Settlement Agreement as well as documents from other litigation or companies not party to the settlement.


MSA-mandated collections:

American Tobacco
Brown & Williamson
Council for Tobacco Research
Philip Morris
RJ Reynolds
Tobacco Institute


Additional Collections:

UCSF Brown & Williamson –
Thousands of pages of Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation documents were donated unsolicited to the UCSF Tobacco Control Archives in 1994. These documents consist primarily of scientific studies on the addictive nature of nicotine and other health effects of tobacco smoke. Brown & Williamson sought to permanently remove the disputed material from the Library with a suit filed in San Francisco Superior Court. The University of California contended that all of the documents were in the public domain and should be available to scholars and other interested parties. In May 1995, the Superior Court ruled that these documents should be made available for public review. Brown & Williamson appealed that decision, but the California Supreme Court rejected the company's appeal allowing UCSF to release the documents. The 1999 film, The Insider, provides additional background to this collection.


Mangini ("Joe Camel") Documents –
This collection consists of internal documents from the RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company, produced as part of the discovery process in the 1994 civil case Mangini v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. A majority of the documents span the period 1970s - 1990s, when RJ Reynolds Tobacco developed the Joe Camel advertising campaign.


The Multimedia Collection -
This collection contains more than 5,000 tobacco industry video and audio tapes including recordings of focus groups, internal corporate meetings, depositions of tobacco industry employees, government hearings, corporate communications, and commercials. Many of the acquired tapes are available for viewing or listening on the Internet Archive.


Liggett & Myers -
This collection contains approximately 400,000 pages of Liggett & Myers (L&M) internal documents. In 1997, Liggett & Myers, the smallest of the five major tobacco companies, became the first to settle lawsuits in 22 states and to help state prosecutors litigate against the nation's biggest cigarette manufacturers by providing evidence of industry strategies and tactics. Because of their early compliance with prosecutors, L&M was not included in the Master Settlement Agreement stipulation for creation of company document websites, meaning these documents exist nowhere else in electronic format.


Tobacco Depositions and Trial Testimony Archive (DATTA) -
DATTA contains transcripts from tobacco-related litigation, collected from a variety of sources by the Center for Tobacco Use Prevention and Research in Okemos, Michigan.

External Links


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