One of the world’s leading tobacco manufacturing companies headed a contingent of chemical, food, oil and pharmaceutical firms who set out to skew EU policy, academics have claimed.
Writing in the Public Library of Science Medicine journal, researchers from the Universities of Bath and Edinburgh claim that British American Tobacco (BAT) spearheaded a campaign to ensure EU policy regarded business interest over public health.
The study, funded by the Smoke Free Partnership and Cancer Research UK, found BAT had altered the way that EU’s impact assessment system operated during the 1990s.
Impact assessment systems were designed to evaluate potential legislative changes, taking into account the affects the law would have on areas such as health, economics, industry and business.
According to the study, which reviewed over 700 internal BAT documents, the campaign succeeded in easing the regulation on businesses and paved the way for business-oriented impact assessment.
However, in 2005 the EU pressed ahead with a campaign to "denormalise" smoking across its member states and smoking bans were slowly rolled out across Europe.
In July 2007, England became smoke free when people were banned from smoking in all enclosed public areas by law.
Conveyors – screw conveyors – chain conveyors – belt conveyors