Gary J Fooks

• Professor in Criminology at University of Bristol

Government support to business during the COVID-19 pandemic was consistently justified on the basis of general interests, such as ‘protecting jobs and livelihoods’ and helping to ‘ease the financial burden for businesses and the UK population’. But these rather abstract, universal goals potentially gloss over important questions about the redistrib...

Until recently, the commercial determinants have remained largely absent from conceptual frameworks of the social determinants of health, despite their clear importance to health and well-being. This is especially challenging because even a single large industry sector can have a profound, intersectional impact on sociocultural and physical environ...

Until recently, the commercial determinants have remained largely absent from conceptual frameworks of the social determinants of health, despite their clear importance to health and well-being. This is especially challenging because even a single large industry sector can have a profound, intersectional impact on sociocultural and physical environ...

The recent concerns raised about commercial determinants of health are not new. Numerous organizations around the world are working on these issues. These groups have emerged in response to specific issues and contexts and bring with them a diversity of interests, worldviews and strategies for change. In creating the ‘Governance, Ethics and Conflic...

Research shows the prominence afforded to political actors in BBC journalism strongly reflects the balance of power in Westminster, with major political parties, and the ruling party in particular, tending to predominate. This article examines the extent to which these patterns of news access and exposure are also evident in BBC journalists’ follow...

The World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) draft Decision-Making Process and Tool to assist governments in preventing and managing conflicts of interest in nutrition policy marks a step-change in WHO thinking on large corporations and nutrition policy. If followed closely it stands to revolutionise business-government relations in nutrition policy. Ra...

Introduction Article 5.3 WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) aims to prevent tobacco industry interference with public health policy. The degree of protection depends on several factors: the interpretation of Article 5.3 by governments; the presence of codes of practice; and the effectiveness of industry lobbying versus public health...

Background: Sugar sweetened beverages (SSB) are a major source of sugar in the diet. Although trends in consumption vary across regions, in many countries, particularly LMICs, their consumption continues to increase. In response, a growing number of governments have introduced a tax on SSBs. SSB manufacturers have opposed such taxes, disputing the...

Introduction Transnational tobacco company (TTC) submissions to the 2012 UK standardised packaging consultation are studied to examine TTC argumentation in the context of Better Regulation practices. Methods A content analysis was conducted of Philip Morris International and British American Tobacco submissions to the 2012 UK consultation. Industr...

European Union (EU) law-making has played a key role in promoting social equity in the UK through safer working conditions, enhanced rights for workers, and by reducing environmental pollution. Concerns over its effect on business competitiveness have long been a major driver of Euroscepticism, underpinning criticism of the EU by influential opinio...

Background: The World Health Organization (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) stands to significantly reduce tobacco-related mortality by accelerating the introduction of evidence-based tobacco control measures. However, the extent to which States Parties have implemented the Convention varies considerably. Article 5.3 of the FCTC,...

Objectives To investigate opposition to standardised tobacco packaging in the UK. To increase understanding of how transnational corporations are adapting to changes in their access to policymakers precipitated by Article 5.3 of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). Design Case study web-based documentary analysis, using NVivo V.10....

Background: Tobacco industry interference has been identified as the greatest obstacle to the implementation of evidence-based measures to reduce tobacco use. Understanding and addressing industry interference in public health policy-making is therefore crucial. Existing conceptualisations of corporate political activity (CPA) are embedded in a bu...

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Introduction: The Dutch implementation of the black border provision in the 2001 European Union Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) is studied to examine the implications of tobacco industry involvement in the implementation phase of the policy process. Methods: A qualitative analysis was conducted of Dutch government documents obtained through Fre...

Background: The tobacco industry has long sought affiliation with major sporting events, including the Olympic Games, for marketing, advertising and promotion purposes. Since 1988, each Olympic Games has adopted a tobacco-free policy. Limited study of the effectiveness of the smoke-free policy has been undertaken to date, with none examining the t...

Aim To systematically review, using a qualitative, narrative synthesis approach, articles examining alcohol industry efforts to influence alcohol marketing policy, and compare with those used by the tobacco industry. Methods Literature searches were conducted between April and July 2011, and updated in March 2013. Articles were included if they: m...

The tobacco industry's future depends on increasing tobacco use in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs), which face a growing burden of tobacco-related disease, yet have potential to prevent full-scale escalation of this epidemic. To drive up sales the industry markets its products heavily, deliberately targeting non-smokers and keeps pri...

Over the past fifteen years, an interconnected set of regulatory reforms, known as Better Regulation, has been adopted across Europe, marking a significant shift in the way that European Union (EU) policies are developed. There has been little exploration of the origins of these reforms, which include mandatory ex ante impact assessment. Drawing on...

Globalisation has increased corporate tax competition amongst states and facilitated widespread corporate tax avoidance. Some of the largest businesses now pay little or no tax: in some cases with the active assistance of governments. This article examines contemporary corporation tax policies, outlines some of the key methods corporations use to m...

Background Standardised packaging of tobacco products has been a contested policy issue in the UK since 2011. The measure would entail prohibition of brand imagery, colours and promotional text from tobacco products and packaging, with a key objective being to reduce youth smoking uptake. It has been opposed by transnational tobacco companies. By m...

Background: Standardised packaging (SP) of tobacco products is an innovative tobacco control measure opposed by transnational tobacco companies (TTCs) whose responses to the UK government's public consultation on SP argued that evidence was inadequate to support implementing the measure. The government's initial decision, announced 11 months after...

To systematically review, using a qualitative, narrative synthesis approach, articles examining alcohol industry efforts to influence alcohol marketing policy, and compare with those used by the tobacco industry. Literature searches were conducted between April and July 2011, and updated in March 2013. Articles were included if they: made reference...

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. Content analysis. We analysed the evidence cited in submissions by the UK's four largest TTCs...

The Framework Convention of Tobacco Control (FCTC) provides a basis for nation states to limit the political effects of tobacco industry philanthropy, yet progress in this area is limited. This paper aims to integrate the findings of previous studies on tobacco industry philanthropy with a new analysis of British American Tobacco's (BAT) record of...

In 2012, the UK Government consulted on standardised packaging (SP) of tobacco products. Four transnational tobacco companies (TTCs) submitted large responses opposing SP, criticising evidence cited and citing alternative evidence to support their case. We examine the problems faced by policy makers assessing large volumes of diverse evidence submi...

Background The UK’s public consultation on ‘plain packaging’ of tobacco products generated an unprecedented volume of responses. Given the track record of the tobacco industry’s misuse of science to oppose policy change, and the fact that plain packaging has only recently been introduced in a single jurisdiction – Australia, December 2012 – how can...

Since scholarly interest in corporate social responsibility (CSR) has primarily focused on the synergies between social and economic performance, our understanding of how (and the conditions under which) companies use CSR to produce policy outcomes that work against public welfare has remained comparatively under-developed. In particular, little is...

Tobacco companies are increasingly turning to trade and investment agreements to challenge measures aimed at reducing tobacco use. This study examines their efforts to influence the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a major trade and investment agreement which may eventually cover 40% of the world's population; focusing on how these efforts might en...

Tobacco companies are increasingly turning to trade and investment agreements to challenge measures aimed at reducing tobacco use. This study examines their efforts to influence the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a major trade and investment agreement which may eventually cover 40% of the world's population; focusing on how these efforts might en...

In the course of the last decade, the tobacco industry has attempted to increase the political salience of the illicit trade in tobacco products (illicit trade) (box 1).1 ,2 Tobacco companies have claimed that sharp rises in tobacco taxation and innovative regulation, such as standardised packaging and product display bans, are drivers of the illic...

Since scholarly interest in corporate social responsibility (CSR) has primarily focused on the synergies between social and economic performance, our understanding of how (and the conditions under which) companies use CSR to produce policy outcomes that work against public welfare has remained comparatively underdeveloped. In particular, little is...

The products sold by these corporations may be unique but their conduct is unlikely to be and these two issues should not be confused. Whether a company sells cigarettes or alcohol, its main goal is to maximize shareholder returns. Policies that could reduce such returns are, therefore, antithetical to its interests.

State-owned tobacco companies, which still account for 40% of global cigarette production, face continued pressure from, among others, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), to be privatised. This review of available literature on tobacco industry privatisation suggests that any economic benefits of privatisation may be lower than supposed, because...

Recent attempts by large tobacco companies to represent themselves as socially responsible have been widely dismissed as image management. Existing research supports such claims by pointing to the failings and misleading nature of corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. However, few studies have focused in depth on what tobacco companies...

Tobacco market liberalization can have a profound impact on health. This article analyzes internal documents of British American Tobacco (BAT), released as a result of litigation in the United States, in order to examine the company's attempts to influence negotiations over China's accession to the World Trade Organization. The documents demonstrat...

European policymakers have recently become increasingly committed to using Impact Assessment (IA) to inform policy decisions. Welcoming this development, the public health community has not yet paid sufficient attention to conceptual concerns about IA or to corporate efforts to shape the way in which IA is used. This essay is a thematic analysis of...

The case of Enron, and the long list of corporate collapses that followed in its wake, have uncovered a corporate America beset by deception, false accounting and bankruptcy. This paper is concerned with the limits to detecting corporate fraud through auditing. In particular, it attempts to explain these limits in terms of the historical developmen...

Until the eighties the system of commercial fraud investigation and prosecution was extraordinarily undeveloped. By the end of the eighties this system had been transformed. What took place was nothing short of a fundamental rethink of financial regulation and commercial fraud control. By the nineties, however, this process had gone into reverse. T...

Criminal investigation into "mis-sold" financial products in the UK is rare. Prosecution is rarer still. This is despite the fact that mis-selling - whether it be pensions, endowment mortgages or payment protection insurance - is a widespread and recurring phenomenon. The absence of criminal prosecution asks us to believe is that although the finan...

Processes of regional trade integration may have an important impact on firms’ strategies and forms of organization. This article provides an empirical case study of the impact of regional trade integration in the Andean Pact in the 1990s on the strategies and organization of British American Tobacco (BAT), using internal tobacco industry documen...

Portuguese translation of the abstract by Sandra Tavares Moreira. (0.07 MB DOC)

Spanish translation of the abstract by Sandra Tavares Moreira. (0.08 MB DOC)

French translation of the abstract by Florence Berteletti Kemp. (0.11 MB DOC)

German translation of the abstract by HW. (0.03 MB DOC)

Italian translation of the abstract by Massimo Giornetti. (0.03 MB DOC)

Impact assessment (IA) of all major European Union (EU) policies is now mandatory. The form of IA used has been criticised for favouring corporate interests by overemphasising economic impacts and failing to adequately assess health impacts. Our study sought to assess how, why, and in what ways corporations, and particularly the tobacco industry, i...

The Framework Convention on Tobacco Control1 (FCTC), which has now been ratified by 166 countries, is the first global public health treaty to be developed by the World Health Organization and represents a crucial milestone for tobacco control. In recognition of systematic, often covert tobacco industry efforts to undermine tobacco control policy,...

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has promoted the lifting of trade restrictions on tobacco and the privatization of state-owned tobacco industries as part of its loan conditions. Growing evidence shows that tobacco industry privatization stimulates tobacco consumption and smoking prevalence in borrowing countries. Privatized tobacco companies...

This report provides an overview of occupational health interventions and sentencing strategies practiced in the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Sweden, the USA, the Canadian states of Alberta, Ontario and British Columbia, and the Australian states of New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria and critically reviews the evidence relating to their effec...

Until the eighties the system of commercial fraud investigation and prosecution was extraordinarily undeveloped. By the end of the eighties this system had been transformed. What took place was nothing short of a fundamental rethink of financial regulation and commercial fraud control. By the nineties, however, this process had gone into reverse. T...

The case of Enron, and the long list of corporate collapses that followed in its wake, have uncovered a corporate America beset by deception, false accounting and bankruptcy. This paper is concerned with the limits to detecting corporate fraud through auditing. In particular, it attempts to explain these limits in terms of the historical developmen...

Introduction The concept of risk has long since developed from an abstraction solely concerned with attempting to predict the consequences of modern society to one which is now used to articulate them (Douglas, 1992). This is no less true in the context of studies on homelessness where the concept of risk generally finds its expression in two relat...