Tag Archives: webinar

PHAI to Host International Webinar on the Myth of the Responsible Gambling Model

It’s Not the Dough, it’s the Dopamine:
The Dangerous Myth of the Responsible Gambling Model

How the gambling industry misleads regulators and imperils the public’s health. . . and what we can do about it

An unprecedented Zoom event during Problem Gambling Awareness Month

March 15, 2023 from 1:00 – 3:00 PM EDT

Presenters:

Dick Daynard, University Distinguished Professor of Law at Northeastern University, has long been at the forefront of an international movement to establish the legal responsibility of the tobacco industry for tobacco-induced death, disease and disability. He is president of the law school’s Public Health Advocacy Institute, chairs its Tobacco Products Liability Project and helped initiate its Center for Public Health Litigation. Recently, he has worked with PHAI on issues involving obesity, gambling, opioids, gun control and e-cigarettes.

 
Jim Orford is Emeritus Professor of Clinical and Community Psychology at the University of Birmingham. His books on addiction include Excessive Appetites: A Psychological View of Addictions and An Unsafe Bet?: The Dangerous Rise of Gambling and the Debate We Should Be Having, and, most recently, The Gambling Establishment: Challenging the Power of the Modern Gambling Industry and its Allies, published by Routledge in 2019. 

 Mark Petticrew is director of the National Institute of Health and Care’s Public Health Research Unit and Faculty of Public Health and Policy at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine where he heads the Department of Public Health, Environments and Society. His research on commercial determinants of health extends from alcohol, tobacco, firearms, and fast food to gambling.

Matt Gaskell is a consultant psychologist and a clinical lead for addictions for the Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust and serves as clinical lead for the National Health Service Northern Gambling Service.


Liz Ritchie, along with her husband Charles, founded Gambling with Lives in 2018 to support bereaved families, raise awareness of the devastating effects of Gambling Disorder, and campaign for change.
Will Prochaska is the Strategy Director for the charity.

Harry Levant of Ethos Treatment, LLC is an Internationally Certified Gambling Counselor and policy advocate working with people and families struggling with gambling disorder; also a person with lived-experience in recovery from gambling addiction, and a doctoral student at Northeastern University who researches the impact of gambling on public health.

Mark Gottlieb is the executive director of the Public Health Advocacy Institute at Northeastern University School of Law in Boston where he teaches public health advocacy. His research and advocacy have focused on tobacco litigation as a public health strategy, examining legal and policy approaches to food policy, and considering public health approaches to gambling and gun violence.

Register today

PHAI Addresses tobacco industry’s use of corporate social responsibility tactics and personal responsibility rhetoric

On June 29, 2010, the Public Health Advocacy Institute conducted a webinar on the tobacco industry’s use of corporate social responsibility rhetoric and tactics to try to improve its image, while still maintaining an emphasis on personal responsibility.

Tobacco companies use corporate social responsibility rhetoric and tactics to normalize their image and stave off further regulation and litigation by appearing to have improved their corporate behavior.  Simultaneously, the industry uses the theme of personal responsibility to shift the onus for tobacco products’ impact away from itself and back to the public.

A 60 minute Webinar entitled Tag! You’re It: How Big Tobacco Shifts Blame Back Onto the Public was broadcast on June 29, 2010 and is archived here. Power Point slides from the webinar are available here in PDF format.

Please check out our Issue Briefs here:

  1. THE TOBACCO INDUSTRY’S USE OF CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY RHETORIC & TACTICS
  2. DENORMALIZATION OF TOBACCO INDUSTRY CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY INITIATIVES
  3. SMOKING CESSATION PROGRAMS
  4. TOBACCO INDUSTRY “YOUTH SMOKING PREVENTION” PROGRAMS
  5. SECONDHAND SMOKE ACCOMMODATION STRATEGY

Topics covered by the webinar and issue briefs include:

  • How the tobacco industry has strategically used corporate social responsibility rhetoric and tactics to normalize and improve its image and stave off further regulation and litigation.
  • How the tobacco industry uses personal responsibility rhetoric to shift the onus for public health from corporations back to the public.
  • Examples of specific programs and campaigns that have been used to shift blame from the industry to the public.

The tobacco industry uses various corporate social responsibility programs to convince the public that it has changed and become more responsive to concerns about health and its products’ negative impact on society.

For instance, under the guise of corporate social responsibility, the tobacco companies run “youth smoking prevention” programs to appear as if they are combating youth smoking, but in reality, tobacco companies deny that their pernicious, vigorous marketing has any effect on creating the problem and instead focus solely on putting more responsibility on parents and children.  These programs have been found to be ineffective in preventing or diminishing youth smoking, perhaps by design, but they do introduce another generation of smokers to a tobacco industry with an improved image.

The industry’s secondhand smoke PR campaigns denied the inherent dangers of exposure to its products and instead made the issue one of “courtesy” and “accommodation,” once again shifting the responsibility away from the manufacturers to consumers and the general public.  Tobacco control advocates can use these findings to denormalize the tobacco industry through counter-marketing campaigns and to deny it the legitimacy it seeks through its corporate social responsibility shell game.

Tobacco company sponsored smoking cessation information programs try to shift the responsibility to smokers, most of whom became addicted to their products as children.  Meanwhile, the companies never discuss any efforts to make their products less addictive.

PHAI Publishes Issue Briefs on Tobacco Industry’s Corporate Makeover

YEAR ONE – CORPORATE MAKEOVER

The Public Health Advocacy Institute, supported by the American Legacy Foundation, has completed a year of research on the tobacco industry’s attempted corporate makeover, and has created five issue briefs on the topic.  A 60 minute Webinar was broadcast on May 11, 2009 and is archived HERE.  They highlight various aspects of the tobacco industry’s use of corporate social responsibility rhetoric and tactics to attempt to rehabilitate its image and fend off tobacco control activism.  These briefs each contain issues, the evidence and possible messages for State Tobacco Control Programs to use in their interventions and counter-marketing campaigns, and to generate support for future interventions.  The issue briefs can be used effectively to denormalize the tobacco companies and better understand the motives behind their corporate makeover attempts.

Issue Brief Topics:

  1. Corporate Social Responsibility Overview
  2. Manipulating Science
  3. Manipulating the Press
  4. Manipulating the Public and Regulators
  5. Youth Smoking

All briefs are in PDF format. get_adobe_reader1