American Red Cross Pressured to Rid Itself of Tobacco Money

Today, January 7, 2015, the New York Times just published a Reuters investigative article exposing the tobacco industry’s global corporate responsibility (CSR) schemes. Specifically, the article focuses on its decades-long history of donations to the American Red Cross. This is a huge blow to the tobacco industry's global strategy to gloss over its tarnished image through CSR and has the potential to build more support for other NGOs to drop tobacco industry funding. 
 
This article is also an important follow-up to the decision adopted at WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control Sixth Conference of the Parties recommendations to protect public health policies from commercial and other vested interests of the tobacco industry, which requests the Secretariat promote Article 5.3 and its guidelines to pertinent international organizations and ensure rejection of any direct or indirect contributions from the tobacco industry.
 
In December, a group of US organizations, including the UCSF Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, sent a letter to the American Red Cross calling on it to stop accepting tobacco industry money, which spurred this article.  The article also includes indirect quote from a top official with the International Red Cross that "the American Red Cross risks damaging the reputation of the global Red Cross brand because of its refusal to stop accepting donations from tobacco companies."
 
This article is important because:
 

1. It exposes a global tobacco industry strategy to undermine health worldwide.
2. Given the fact that the American Red Cross is the largest non-profit in the US, this could compel other non-profits to drop tobacco industry funding, taking away a key in for the industry to influence policy and gloss over its tarnished image.
3. The fact that the Int'l Red Cross is calling this a "reputational risk" solidifies the fact that health and the tobacco industry just don't mix and that the tobacco industry just isn't a credible source of funding.
4. It raises the visibility of the importance of the global tobacco treaty’s Article 5.3, which calls on governments to reject tobacco industry CSR.

 
Please share this article widely with your networks, policymakers, others you think would be interested.  If you send a follow-up letter to the American Red Cross, please post a signed comment to this blog post describing the letter.