Big Tobacco wins fire marshals as ally in push for flame retardants
CHICAGO -- The problem facing cigarette manufacturers decades ago involved tragic deaths and bad publicity, but it had nothing to do with cancer. It had to do with house fires.
Smoldering cigarettes were sparking fires and killing people. And tobacco executives didn’t care for one obvious solution: Create a fire-safe cigarette, one less likely to set a blaze.
The industry insisted it couldn’t make a fire-safe cigarette that would still appeal to smokers, and instead promoted flame retardant furniture -- shifting attention to the couches and chairs that were going up in flames.
But executives realized they lacked credibility, especially when burn victims and firefighters were pushing for changes to cigarettes.
So Big Tobacco launched an aggressive and cunning campaign to “neutralize” firefighting organizations and convince these far more trusted groups to adopt tobacco’s cause as their own. The industry poured millions of dollars into the effort, doling out grants to fire groups and hiring consultants to court them.
These strategic investments endeared cigarette executives to groups they called their “fire service friends.”
“To give us clout, to give us power, to give us credibility, to give us leverage, to give us access where we don’t ordinarily have access ourselves -- those are the kinds of things that we’re looking for,” a Philip Morris executive told his peers in a 1984 training session on this strategy.
The tobacco industry’s biggest prize? The National Association of State Fire Marshals, which represented the No. 1 fire officials in each state.
A former tobacco executive, Peter Sparber, helped organize the group, then steered their national agenda. He shaped their requests for federal rules requiring flame retardant furniture and fed them tobacco’s arguments for why altering furniture was a more effective way to prevent fires than altering cigarettes.
For years, the tobacco industry paid Sparber for what the marshals mistakenly thought was volunteer work.
The Chicago Tribune discovered details about Big Tobacco’s secretive campaign buried among the 13 million documents cigarette executives made public after settling lawsuits that recouped the cost of treating sick smokers. These internal memos, speeches and strategic plans reveal the surprising and influential role of Big Tobacco in the buildup of toxic chemicals in American furniture.
This clever manipulation set the stage for a similar campaign of distortion and misdirection by the chemical industry that continues to this day.
Andrew McGuire, a burn survivor and MacArthur “genius grant” winner, said Sparber and the National Association of State Fire Marshals for years were his nemeses as he has pushed for “fire-safe” cigarettes, which would stop burning when not being smoked. McGuire came up against them again when he battled reductions in the amount of flame-retardant chemicals in Americans’ homes.
“He played them like a Stradivarius,” McGuire said of Sparber’s relationship with the fire marshals.
A founding member of the fire marshals group disputes that they were unduly influenced, but he said he regrets that the organization accepted tobacco’s money.
“There is no way you can explain to the public that taking money from the tobacco industry is a good thing,” said Tom Brace, who served as a marshal in Minnesota and Washington state. “And had I to do that over again, I would not do that.”
Brace and the National Association of State Fire Marshals often were at odds with colleagues in the firefighting community who worked to scale back the use of certain flame retardants after studies showed they can make smoke more toxic.
The fire marshals’ organization continued promoting flame retardant products even after it was clear that the chemicals inside were escaping, settling in dust and winding up in the bodies of babies and adults worldwide.
The marshals continued even after flame retardants were linked to cancer, neurological deficits, developmental problems and impaired fertility.
And they continued even after government scientists showed that flame retardants in household furniture were not protecting Americans from fire in any meaningful way.
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With the top executives of the largest U.S. cigarette companies gathered in a New York ballroom, Charles Powers rose to report that their trade group’s multimillion-dollar investment in the firefighting community was paying off nicely.
It was October 1989, and the CEOs behind Marlboro, Camel and other major brands were in a closed-door meeting of the executive committee of the Tobacco Institute, the trade group that fought legislation that could hurt their business.
Powers noted that many fire officials who once were hostile were siding with the tobacco industry in key federal and state legislative battles over fire-safe cigarettes. The strategy by the Tobacco Institute of winning over these officials, including some state fire marshals, with grants and schmoozing was working.
Much of that success can be attributed to the fact that Big Tobacco had planted an inside man within the firefighting community.
A former Tobacco Institute vice president, Peter Sparber had spent years at the trade group doling out money to firefighting groups. He left to open his own lobbying and public affairs firm in the late 1980s but retained the Tobacco Institute as a major client.
This arm’s-length relationship -- working for Big Tobacco but having a business card that said “Sparber and Associates, Inc.” -- allowed him to infiltrate an organization of public officials that became what the Tobacco Institute later called “the most politically potent group” in the firefighting community: the nation’s state fire marshals.
These taxpayer-funded employees, typically appointed by governors, had a low profile nationally until Sparber came along. In 1989 Sparber helped organize the National Association of State Fire Marshals and volunteered to be the group’s legislative consultant. The fire marshals put him on their executive board.
Sparber became so crucial to the fire marshals that they listed him on their association letterhead and for more than a decade shared a Washington office with him.
One of the marshals’ first official acts was to endorse a tobacco-backed federal bill that called for yet another study of fire-safe cigarettes rather than a competing bill that would have quickly required cigarettes to change.
Like his tobacco industry patrons, Sparber worked to prevent a mandate for fire-safe cigarettes by shifting the focus to furniture.
With Sparber’s help, the fire marshals in 1992 sought federal rules for flame retardant furniture, and Sparber went on to represent the marshals in years of meetings with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. His expense reports show that for several years he was billing the Tobacco Institute $200 an hour for his work with the marshals, including time he spent on the marshals’ petition for flame retardant furniture.
Sparber reported to the institute on the fire marshals’ key activities and even passed along their internal documents. Tobacco Institute President Samuel Chilcote Jr., in turn, sent detailed memos to the CEOs of cigarette companies about the marshals’ activities.
Chilcote declined to comment to the Tribune, saying he couldn’t recall what happened so long ago. Brace, a founder of the fire marshals’ group, said he knew Sparber was a former Tobacco Institute executive.
But Brace said he didn’t know in the association’s early days that the institute was paying Sparber for his work with the marshals and didn’t know that Sparber funneled so many of the marshals’ internal documents to the cigarette industry.
Nevertheless, Brace said the marshals made their own decisions.
“The inference that the state fire marshals sitting around the table are easily led by this Svengali -- there were arguments back and forth of what we should get involved in,” Brace said in an interview. “We had some hot debates. But the characterization that Sparber led us out of the wilderness, I don’t see it.”
But records in tobacco executives’ files show that Sparber helped set the fire marshals’ agenda, suggesting who should speak at a key conference, which consultants they should retain and why they should oppose aggressive fire-safe cigarette requirements. He also assisted the fire marshals with fundraising, nudging tobacco colleagues to contribute to the group.
This story was originally published May 27, 2012 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Big Tobacco wins fire marshals as ally in push for flame retardants."