An enquiry launched by World Health Organisation (WHO) Director General Gro Harlem Brundtland exposed a long-term strategy by the tobacco industry to undermine the WHO's work against smoking. As well as manipulating public opinion against the WHO by attempting to discredit key executives and arranging media events to coincide with WHO initiatives, it succeeded in getting its own consultants appointed onto key WHO executive committees. One such was the US lawyer Paul Dietrich, who at one stage was sending monthly bills for fees to both the WHO and British American Tobacco.

The tobacco industry's wider strategy included convincing the Governments of less industrially developed countries that growing tobacco as a cash crop was essential to their economic stability and thus to their battle against poverty and malnutrition. Dietrich worked hard to steer WHO spending away from tobacco control initiatives and towards child mass immunisation and anti AIDS programmes.

Ed.- One wonders how a man as obviously tied to the tobacco industry as Paul Dietrich was ever appointed to any job by a WHO interview panel.