DREAMSTIME, MAGDALENA ZURAWSKA
Researchers at the University of Stirling in Scotland are embroiled in a fight against tobacco giant Philip Morris International (the maker of Marlboro cigarettes) over data University researchers collected on children’s and teens’ attitudes toward smoking and cigarette packaging. The company has submitted two Freedom of Information (FOI) requests for access to all the raw data collected by Stirling’s Centre for Tobacco Control Research, which includes interviews with over 5,500 youngsters aged between 11 and 16.
"They wanted everything we had ever done on this," Gerard Hastings, the institute's director, told The Independent. "These are confidential comments about how youngsters feel about tobacco marketing. This is the sort of research that would get a tobacco company into trouble if it did it itself."
Philip Morris ...
