Faces of smiling politicians typically mark election campaigns. In August 2024, high-ranking officials, including the Secretaries of the Department of Health (DOH) and the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) smiled for the camera with the First Lady, local government executives, and tobacco industry representatives in front of a mobile clinic donated by Philip Morris Fortune Tobacco Corp (PMFTC) for the First Lady’s Lab-for-All caravan.
PMFTC, LT Group (which owns Fortune Tobacco Corp), and Japan Tobacco International are private sector partners of this government initiative.
Though not (yet) an election gimmick and supposedly aimed at providing health services, this donation raised many eyebrows because the donor sells products extremely harmful to health. Furthermore, both DSWD and DOH have rules prohibiting donations from and partnerships with this harmful industry.
So how was this allowed to happen?
The Department of Justice (DOJ) recently issued an opinion stating that the DSWD may accept donations from the tobacco industry. This legal opinion responded to a request from DSWD Secretary Rex Gatchalian for the DOJ to clarify whether the DSWD could accept a donation of three mobile clinics from PMFTC relative to the Joint Memorandum Circular 2010-01 (JMC) issued by the Civil Service Commission (CSC) and DOH on the Protection of the Bureaucracy Against Tobacco Industry Interference. The JMC explicitly prohibits government officials from accepting donations from the tobacco industry; however, the DOJ concluded that such donations are permissible, claiming that the JMC applies only to individual government officials and staff and not to government agencies and offices.
Not only does the DOJ’s opinion defy logic as to how an agency can accept a donation without the participation of its officials, but it’s also based on an extremely narrow interpretation of the JMC and the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC), to which the Philippines is a party and which is one of the legal bases for the JMC.
It’s the law of the land
Article 5.3 of the WHO FCTC mandates governments to protect public health policies from commercial and other vested interests of the tobacco industry. The Philippine Supreme Court recognized the WHO FCTC as part of the law of the land and reiterated the government’s duty to implement it in good faith. Thus, the entire bureaucracy is obligated to reject donations from the tobacco industry. The DOJ’s opinion that the DSWD can accept donations from tobacco companies undermines this legal and ethical obligation and opens the door for undue influence by the tobacco industry.
The tobacco industry’s whitewashing donations create conflicts of interest and harm public health.
The DOJ’s opinion is also blind to the potential impact of such donations on the DSWD’s beneficiaries. DSWD is mandated to serve marginalized and vulnerable communities across the country, many of whom are victims of the harmful effects of tobacco use. Accepting donations from the tobacco industry may be understood as an endorsement of its harmful products at the expense of Filipinos.
Philip Morris International (PMI) reported that in 2023 it had already given the DSWD a mobile clinic worth US$ 572,141 and made in-kind donations to indigent Philippine communities amounting to US$ 1,859,354. While these donations seem generous, they’re tokenistic compared to PMI’s USD 8.3 billion net profit in the same year.
This is how the tobacco industry exploits corporate social responsibility (CSR) to portray itself as a helpful business. Pakitang tao lang.
The Philippines also loses P366 billion (US$ 7.2 billion) in tobacco-related healthcare costs every year, even as the tobacco industry claims 88,200 Filipino lives annually. Against a background of death and disease, the tobacco industry continues throwing money at governments in its attempts to clean up and deodorize its tarnished image.
Such support to the government from tobacco companies creates a conflict of interest for government officials. While the public knows on one hand that the government implements policies to discourage tobacco use and promote good health, it sees on the other hand a government agency accepting donations from an industry that peddles tobacco products and harms public health.
In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, PMFTC channeled pandemic-related donations through several lawmakers, who subsequently supported industry-friendly bills to regulate e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products in the country. One of them was Wes Gatchalian, currently mayor of Valenzuela City and brother of the current DSWD Secretary, who was the city mayor at that time.
Tobacco companies and the midterm polls
The election period is a prime opportunity for soliciting donations and favors from private companies, and the tobacco industry has deep pockets to take advantage of the coming May 2025 elections. The Philippines lifted its ban on domestic corporations making political donations, such that tobacco companies may contribute to political campaigns of electoral aspirants.
The 2023 Asian Tobacco Industry Interference Index reports the patronage system as a strategy of the tobacco industry, contributing to political candidates and parties that favor or will favor industry interests once they are elected into positions of power and policymaking.
In the United States, where lobbyists must be registered by law, the tobacco industry registered 927 state-level lobbyists and 262 federal-level lobbyists in 2023, but there is no similar requirement in the Philippines.
Parties to the WHO FCTC recognize that there is a “fundamental and irreconcilable conflict between the tobacco industry’s interests and public health policy interests.” An industry in the business of addiction, disease, and death can never be a stakeholder in public health.
The DOJ’s opinion is a misstep that disregards existing regulations and international commitments, rather than upholding the JMC and the WHO FCTC and protecting the government against the tobacco industry’s vested interests.
When tobacco companies use CSR as an entry point to influence policymakers and sway public health policies towards their interests, vigilance is required to ensure that the government observes transparency and accountability when interacting with the tobacco industry and that the tobacco industry does not buy its way into the country’s policymaking and bureaucracy. – Rappler.com
Ulysses Dorotheo is the executive director of the Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance.