Evidence on article 5.3 of FCTC (tobacco industry interference in tobacco control activities) in India- a qualitative scoping study

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Abstract

Background

The Tobacco Industry (henceforth TI) yearns to portray itself as being “socially responsible” and fights for the decision-making positions; that are it used to deter, delay or dilute tobacco control measures. There is little documented evidence of Tobacco Industry Interference (henceforth TII) from India, the scope of their interference and challenges faced by the experts for effective tobacco control. This research study seeks to cover this significant gap in the literature on the TI of India.

Methods

A cross-sectional qualitative research design, based upon in-depth interviews ( N = 26), was used to explore the key stakeholders’ opinions regarding TII in India. The interviews used a set of questions to collect information about the participant’s roles and responsibilities in tobacco control, the nature of TII faced by the participants, means of influence by TI, barriers and challenges to tobacco control efforts.

Results

Most of the respondents were engaged in tobacco control, training, advocacy and awareness generation activities for 5–10 years or more. The respondents defined the TI and its scope as per their experience with the help of the power ranking methodology. Most of them perceived TI as ‘manufacturers’ while others consider them as ‘advertisers’, ‘public relation companies’, ‘wholesalers’, ‘vendors’, and ‘Government firms with TI stocks. The research team identified six significant domains: influencing the policy and administrative decisions, Interference in the implementation of tobacco control laws and activities, false propaganda and hiding the truth, manipulating front action groups (FAG), rampant tobacco advertising and promotion activities and others under which TII activities were classified. Most respondents believed that TI players were interfering in the policy decisions, implementing the tobacco control laws and activities and manipulating the FAG. A detailed taxonomic classification of the TII strategies that emerged from our analysis was linked to article 5.3 of FCTC.

Conclusions

The study documented a significant level of TII in different domains, with stakeholders acting at various hierarchical levels. Thus providing insight into the tactics of the TI in order to enable stakeholders to anticipate and pre-empt the kinds of alliances the TI may attempt to build; stimulating academicians and researchers to undertake in-depth analysis into various strategies and therefore underscoring the need to ensuring transparency in official interaction with the TI and its representatives.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12889-021-11773-x.

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Most cited references 43

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Consolidated criteria for reporting qualitative research (COREQ): a 32-item checklist for interviews and focus groups.

A Tong, P SAINSBURY, J. Craig (2007)

Qualitative research explores complex phenomena encountered by clinicians, health care providers, policy makers and consumers. Although partial checklists are available, no consolidated reporting framework exists for any type of qualitative design. To develop a checklist for explicit and comprehensive reporting of qualitative studies (in depth interviews and focus groups). We performed a comprehensive search in Cochrane and Campbell Protocols, Medline, CINAHL, systematic reviews of qualitative studies, author or reviewer guidelines of major medical journals and reference lists of relevant publications for existing checklists used to assess qualitative studies. Seventy-six items from 22 checklists were compiled into a comprehensive list. All items were grouped into three domains: (i) research team and reflexivity, (ii) study design and (iii) data analysis and reporting. Duplicate items and those that were ambiguous, too broadly defined and impractical to assess were removed. Items most frequently included in the checklists related to sampling method, setting for data collection, method of data collection, respondent validation of findings, method of recording data, description of the derivation of themes and inclusion of supporting quotations. We grouped all items into three domains: (i) research team and reflexivity, (ii) study design and (iii) data analysis and reporting. The criteria included in COREQ, a 32-item checklist, can help researchers to report important aspects of the research team, study methods, context of the study, findings, analysis and interpretations.

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Scoping studies: towards a methodological framework

Lisa O'Malley, Hilary Arksey (2005)

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Is Open Access

The Policy Dystopia Model: An Interpretive Analysis of Tobacco Industry Political Activity

Selda Ulucanlar, Gary Fooks, Anna B Gilmore (2016)

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 business perspective and do not attend to CPA’s social and public health costs; most have not drawn on the unique resource represented by internal tobacco industry documents. Building on this literature, including systematic reviews, we develop a critically informed conceptual model of tobacco industry political activity. Methods and Findings We thematically analysed published papers included in two systematic reviews examining tobacco industry influence on taxation and marketing of tobacco; we included 45 of 46 papers in the former category and 20 of 48 papers in the latter (n = 65). We used a grounded theory approach to build taxonomies of “discursive” (argument-based) and “instrumental” (action-based) industry strategies and from these devised the Policy Dystopia Model, which shows that the industry, working through different constituencies, constructs a metanarrative to argue that proposed policies will lead to a dysfunctional future of policy failure and widely dispersed adverse social and economic consequences. Simultaneously, it uses diverse, interlocking insider and outsider instrumental strategies to disseminate this narrative and enhance its persuasiveness in order to secure its preferred policy outcomes. Limitations are that many papers were historical (some dating back to the 1970s) and focused on high-income regions. Conclusions The model provides an evidence-based, accessible way of understanding diverse corporate political strategies. It should enable public health actors and officials to preempt these strategies and develop realistic assessments of the industry’s claims.

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Author and article information

Contributors

Sonu Goel:

ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5231-7083

sonugoel007@yahoo.co.in

Sitanshu Sekhar Kar: drsitanshukar@gmail.com

Madhur Verma: drmadhurverma@gmail.com

Parthibane Sivanantham: parthibane42@gmail.com

Bijay Nanda Naik: drnnbijaya@gmail.com

Deepti Gupta: deepti.elt@gmail.com

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): BMC Public Health

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): BMC Public Health

Title: BMC Public Health

Publisher: BioMed Central (London )

ISSN (Electronic): 1471-2458

Publication date (Electronic): 14 October 2021

Publication date PMC-release: 14 October 2021

Publication date Collection: 2021

Volume: 21

Electronic Location Identifier: 1855

Affiliations

[1 ]GRID grid.415131.3, ISNI 0000 0004 1767 2903, Department of Community Medicine and School of Public Health, , Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, ; Sector 12, Chandigarh, 160012 India

[2 ]GRID grid.10049.3c, ISNI 0000 0004 1936 9692, Public Health Masters Program at School of Medicine, , University of Limerick, ; Limerick, Ireland

[3 ]GRID grid.4827.9, ISNI 0000 0001 0658 8800, Faculty of Human and Health Sciences, , Swansea University, ; Swansea, United Kingdom

[4 ]GRID grid.414953.e, ISNI 0000000417678301, Department of Preventive & Social Medicine, , Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education & Research, ; Puducherry, India

[5 ]Department of Community and Family Medicine, All India Institute of Medical Sciences Bathinda, Bathinda, Punjab India

[6 ]Community & Family Medicine, All India Institute of Medical Sciences Patna, Patna, India

[7 ]GRID grid.261674.0, ISNI 0000 0001 2174 5640, Department of English and Cultural Studies, , Panjab University, ; Chandigarh, India

Author information

Sonu Goel http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5231-7083

Article

Publisher ID: 11773

DOI: 10.1186/s12889-021-11773-x

PMC ID: 8515702

PubMed ID: 34649546

SO-VID: 5f4fe933-6031-4fee-89d5-af515554cfd8

License:

Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.

History

Date received : 8 August 2020

Date accepted : 10 September 2021

Funding

Funded by: World Health Organization Country office for India through The International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Diseases (Tobacco Control), SE Asia, New Delhi

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ScienceOpen disciplines: Public health

Keywords: tobacco industry,tobacco industry interference,fctc,tobacco legislations

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ScienceOpen disciplines: Public health

Keywords: tobacco industry, tobacco industry interference, fctc, tobacco legislations

Evidence on article 5.3 of FCTC (tobacco industry interference in tobacco control activities) in India- a qualitative scoping study

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Abstract

Background

Methods

Results

Conclusions

Supplementary Information

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Tobacco Prevention & Cessation

Most cited references 43

Consolidated criteria for reporting qualitative research (COREQ): a 32-item checklist for interviews and focus groups.

Scoping studies: towards a methodological framework

The Policy Dystopia Model: An Interpretive Analysis of Tobacco Industry Political Activity

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