Title: Nightingales

Author:

Section/SPIG: Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Drugs

Issue Date:

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PRESS RELEASE 5/3/04

EAST HANOVER, N.J.: Nurses from across America attended the annual shareholders meeting of Philip Morris (now under the parentage of Altria) April 29 in East Hanover, N.J. to call on the company to voluntarily end active promotion of cigarettes. This was the first time in the history of Philip Morris that nurses have attended the meeting. Following the meeting, the nurses—members of a nurses’ advocacy group called the Nightingales-- held a reading and shared a display of letters from the secret tobacco industry documents, sent to the company by its dying customers and their families and never before exposed.

“We’re here to say that this can’t go on,” said Nightingales organizer Ruth Malone, RN, PhD, associate professor of nursing at the University of California, San Francisco School of Nursing, who first found the letters while doing research on the previously-secret tobacco industry documents. “The tobacco industry spends more than $1 million an hour, 24/7, on making their deadly, addictive products look fun, cool, and glamorous—but these letters show the terrifying, painful reality of what cigarettes actually do.”

As the largest group of health care providers, the nation’s 2.5 million nurses are in a unique position to witness first hand the deadly effects of tobacco products, which according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention kill more people in the United States every year than AIDS, alcohol, drug abuse, car crashes, murders, suicides and fires--combined. Philip Morris now admits on its Web site that cigarettes are addictive and deadly. “A socially responsible company would not continue to promote a product that they themselves admit addicts and kills,” said Diana Hackbarth, RN, professor of nursing at Loyola University in Chicago and a Fellow in the American Academy of Nursing.

The nurses were first to speak during the public comment period, asking Louis Camilleri, CEO of Altria, whether a company ethics committee actually read the letters from suffering customers and their families and what ethical criteria were used in deciding whether to promote deadly tobacco products. “He didn’t give us an answer,” noted Colleen Hughes, RN, a nurse from Nevada who attended.

At the request of Sharon Brown, RN, PhD, a nurse from Arizona, the shareholders observed 30 seconds of silence in honor of her father. “I came because this would have been my Dad’s 74th birthday, except he died from lung cancer from this company’s products. I’m here to honor him and to try to keep this company from taking away somebody else’s Dad,” Brown said.

Following the meeting, the nurses took part in a press conference and read from the letters customers and their families had sent to the company. “We want to honor those who wrote these courageous letters. All over the country, people are facing the suffering tobacco causes. We want them to know that nurses will stand with them in taking on Big Tobacco,” said Gina Intinarelli, RN, from California.

The letters, the nurses said, are also important for another reason. “The vast majority of smokers want to quit and they feel alone in their struggles. These letters show they aren’t alone,” said Carol Southard, RN, of Illinois. "This company needs to hear from its customers and the public that it’s just plain wrong to keep on pushing these products,”.

Although CEO Camilleri indicated that the company felt smoking was a choice consumers made with knowledge of the risks involved, Ab Brody, RN, a nurse from San Francisco, expressed the views of the nurses in speaking to one of the shareholder resolutions: “Altria talks about smoking as an ‘adult choice’, but nobody ever ‘chooses’ to suffocate and die in pain and terror. That wasn’t a choice they made. No; they chose the tobacco industry’s image of cool, fun, glamour. And that’s a big, fat lie.”

Nurses attended the shareholders meeting as a group to tell their patients' stories, giving voice to those who can no longer speak because tobacco addiction has robbed them of breath and life. “Tobacco products cause devastation to so many families,” noted Lee S. Clay, RN, CNM, a nurse midwife from New Jersey who attended to call attention to the tobacco industry’s aggressive marketing to young women of childbearing age. Wearing black armbands to honor the memories of their patients who have suffered and died from cigarette-caused disease, the nurses called on Philip Morris to show genuine corporate social responsibility by voluntarily ending the active promotion and marketing of tobacco products. They urged nurses across the country to visit their Web site, <www.nightingalesnurses.org>, and join them in telling the truth about Big Tobacco.

Pamela Jones, RN, MPH, a nurse from San Francisco, said “This is like the Emperor’s New Clothes. It’s time somebody told the truth.” Added Heather Horgan, also from California: “They pulled Ephedra from the market because it killed 164 people. Tobacco kills 440 THOUSAND every year. What’s wrong with this picture?”

CONTACT INFORMATION:
Ruth Malone, RN, (415) 476-3273; Diana Hackbarth, RN, PhD, FAAN (773) 508-2894