Stirling University Fight Tobacco Giants

The world's largest tobacco company is putting pressure on a Scottish university to release its research on teenage smokers and their smoking habits.

Stirling University‘s Centre for Tobacco Control Research has spent the past decade questioning 6,000 young people about why they smoke and what they think of tobacco marketing. The department was set up by Cancer Research UK with the hope of trying to cut the numbers of teenagers who start smoking.

However, Philip Morris International, which makes Marlboro cigarettes, has recently become very interested in the findings. The company has submitted a Freedom of Information request to the university, showing particular interest in the research done into plain packaging for cigarettes.

"Deeply Concerning"

The request has angered academics and researchers at Stirling, who claim that revealing the results would be a breach of confidence and could out any future research at risk. Prof Gerard Hastings from the Centre said:

"It is deeply concerning they are even trying to get this data...This is data the tobacco companies themselves would never be allowed to collect. Most fundamentally this information was given to us by young people in complete confidence. We assured them we would treat it with absolute confidence and that it would be restricted to the research."

There are also much wider implications for the results of the request. If universities can spend huge amounts of time and money researching a particular subject only to be forced to reveal it to companies against their will, there is little reason to start the research in the first place. Indeed, this is particularly true in this case, where the research could end up helping the very industry which it was trying to fight.

The university is currently preparing a response to the request, which it will hand to the Information Commissioner to decide on a verdict.

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