• That parents who use SHOULD quit.
• That Secondhand Smoke remains a threat to the whole family, even if the parents go outside to smoke.
• That there is no safe tobacco product.
• That there is no safe age to begin tobacco use.
• That tobacco marketing is carefully designed to appeal to youth demographic that is well researched.
• That 90% of lifelong tobacco users begin tobacco use as children.
• That tobacco industry marketing has and continues to research teens as the base of new customers for a product which sees a regular reduction in clientele due to disease and/or quitting.
• External Research done by academic institutions demonstrates that Tobacco Industry Education actually encourages youth experimentation.

 Project Sunrise

 

Project Sunrise, initiated in 1995 and proposed to continue through 2006, was a long-term plan by Philip Morris to slow tobacco industry delegitimization and ensure the long-term social acceptability of smoking and of the company itself.

Project Sunrise was a scenario-based strategy exercise used to determine the best strategic options that PM could apply in a variety of future legislative, regulatory and social scenarios facing the company.

PM started Project Sunrise in 1995, and the exercise ran for one year.

Documents about Project Sunrise reveal that PM considered public health advocacy groups to be their competitors.

In the project, PM laid out an explicit divide-and-conquer strategy against the tobacco control movement, proposing to establish relationships with groups it identified as "moderate" tobacco control individuals and organizations.

PM planned to limit the sources of funding going to public health advocacy groups, use carefully orchestrated efforts to exploit existing differences of opinion within tobacco control, and weaken its opponents by working with them.

PM also planned to thwart tobacco industry delegitimization by repositioning itself as a "responsible" company.