Gerry Stimson

Gerry Stimson is a sociologist who has been promoting a harm reduction approach to public health since 1987, first related to drug use and later to alcohol and tobacco control.¹

Knowledge-Action-Change

Stimson is the founder and Director of Knowledge-Action-Change (K-A-C) which says it is “a private sector public health agency”² that aims to promote health through harm reduction. Read more on our page on K-A-C.

New Nicotine Alliance

Stimson was also on the Board of the New Nicotine Alliance (NNA) until 2019. The NNA says it is “completely independent of commercial interests in relevant industries (e-cigarettes, tobacco, pharmaceutical companies, etc). It operates on a not-for-profit basis and is free from commercial bias”.³⁴

NNA UK was a founder member of INNCO, until it announced it had ceased its membership on 12 July 2019 “due to differences concerning future strategy, including funding arrangements.” ⁵⁶

According to a NNA UK newsletter from August 2019, Stimson – who had been a Board member of NNA UK since at least 2015 – stepped down from the Board shortly after it announced it was leaving INNCO.⁷⁸⁹ As of November 2019, Stimson was no longer listed on the NNA website as being part of NNA UK.⁴

• For more information see International Network of Nicotine Consumer Organisations (INNCO)

Links to Academia, Governments, the World Bank, UN and WHO

In 2004, Stimson was appointed Emeritus Professor at Imperial College London. In 2017, he was appointed Honorary Professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.¹⁰

According to a biography written by him in 2013, Stimson has “advised the UK Government, World Health Organization, UNAIDS Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, UNODC United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Bank and others on issues relating to drugs and addiction. He was a member of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence NICE up to 2013 working group that recently prepared guidelines on tobacco harm reduction. He has no competing interests.”¹¹

Direct and Indirect Tobacco Industry Links

K-A-C Funded by Foundation for a Smoke-Free World

Knowledge-Action-Change (K-A-C), of which Stimson is the founder and a Director, is funded by the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World (FSFW), which is wholly funded by PMI. More information on the financial relationship between FSFW and KAC can be found on our pages on K-A-C and FSFW grantees.

Historical Links with British American Tobacco

At a NICE Programme Development Group (PDG) for Tobacco Harm Reduction meeting in 2011, Stimson declared he had “received hospitality from British American Tobacco staff and has reciprocated.”¹² as well as “declared that last year he attended a Christmas drinks receptions at British American Tobacco Ltd”.¹³

At a February 2013, NICE meeting, Stimson also “declared that he is the director of a company called Knowledge Action Change, which has requested and received development funding from Nicoventures for a project to support smoking cessation in a closed setting.”¹⁴

Nicoventures was set up by BAT in 2010.¹⁵ Stimson is largely transparent about these links in the academic literature although he describes Nicoventures only as an e-cigarette company rather than a company set up, and wholly owned, by BAT.

For example, one such declaration says: “A company of which G.S. Gerry Stimson is a director has received a research feasibility grant from an electronic cigarette company developing a new nicotine delivery device.”¹⁶¹⁷

The links are also disclosed in the British Medical Journal,¹⁸ and in an Appendix to a letter on e-cigarettes to the World Health Organization (WHO) in May 2014.¹⁹ In these he refers to receiving money from “a company developing a nicotine delivery device” or a “company developing a nicotine product”.

Historical Alcohol Industry Links

International Harm Reduction Association

From 2004 to 2010, Stimson was the Executive Director of the International Harm Reduction Association (IHRA), whose aim is to reduce the negative health, social and human rights impacts of drug use and drug policy.¹⁰²⁰ In 2011, the IHRA relaunched as International Harm Reduction (IHR).²¹

At the time that Stimson was Director, the IHRA broadened out to work on alcohol. An academic article published in December 2014, argued that IHRA had a “close relationship” with the alcohol industry.²² According to the paper, the IHRA “specifically promotes reducing harm by means other than reducing consumption”, although reducing consumption is seen as the main way to reduce harm from alcohol.²³

For example, in August 2004, the IHRA was a co-sponsor of the 2nd International Conference on Alcohol and Harm Reduction, where the focus was on challenging “traditional models” of thinking on alcohol. At the conference there was an emphasis on a “shift of attention from reducing alcohol consumption per se to reducing alcohol related harm”.²⁴²⁵

For the time that Stimson was a Director, IHRA accounts reveal the Association took some £260,000 from the alcohol industry in restricted (funds that can only be used for specific purposes) and unrestricted funding. (See Table 1)^2627282930

Table 1

	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010	Total
Unrestricted alcohol funding	39,993	33,737	15,000	–	–	88,730
Restricted (Diageo Alcohol and City project	59,834	40,166	3,000	30,026	41,974	175,000
Total	99,827	73,903	18,000	30,026	41,974	263,730

In 2008, when IHRA launched the Global Alcohol Harm Reduction Network, it said it was “funded and administered by IHRA. The network activities are funded through IHRA’s core funding, which is raised from a wide range of sources (such as conferences, project grants, membership, and donations).”In previous years, this core funding has included unrestricted donations from the alcohol industry, but IHRA no longer receives any such funding for this work.”³¹

In an online debate, Stimson has maintained that “there was no close relationship, association or collaboration with the alcohol industry” during the period when he was Director of the IHRA between 2004-2010.³²

“Drinking in Context”

There has been a controversy over a book that Stimson co-edited in the 1990s on alcohol. Despite the involvement of alcohol funded think-tanks with researchers on the book, some of these links have since been downplayed and the book has been criticised in the academic press.

In 2007, Stimson was the “main editor” of a book “Drinking in context: patterns, interventions, and partnerships”,³³ in which both IHRA and International Center for Alcohol Policies (ICAP), collaborated. The book has been highly criticised in leading medical journals (see below).

The foreword to the book said:

“The International Center for Alcohol Policies, which has taken the lead in the preparation of the book, is a think-tank supported by major drinks companies. Three other organizations have also contributed their expertise to this process: the International Harm Reduction Association has extensive experience in the field of illicit drugs; the World Federation for Mental Health has broad mandate to promote better mental health; and the Institut de Recherches Scientifiques sur les Boissons provides a welcome antidote to the Anglo-Saxon domination of the alcohol field.”³³

ICAP’s website also outlined how:

“This book was commissioned by the International Center for Alcohol Policies (ICAP), with assistance of expertise from the International Harm Reduction Association (IHRA), World Federation for Mental Health (WFMH), and the Institut de Recherches Scientifiques sur les Boissons (IREB).” ³⁴

Other material issued by ICAP admits that “The initiative in preparing this book was spearheaded by the International Center for Alcohol Policies”.³⁵

Despite these statements, in 2014, the then President of ICAP, Marcus Grant, refuted that IHRA and ICAP collaborated in the book, arguing that “This book was not the result of a collaboration between ICAP and the International Harm Reduction Association (IHRA) … I co-edited the book with three co-editors including Gerry Stimson, President of IHRA at the time, who did this work in his personal capacity.”³⁶

“Smoke and Mirrors”

One critic, writing in the peer-reviewed journal Addiction, criticised this book as a ‘‘smoke and mirrors’’ attempt to distract attention away from effective population level policies on alcohol.

Of the 26 authors in the book, the article outlined how eight either worked for the alcohol industry or for organisations funded by the industry.³⁷

Another reviewer, this time in the British Medical Journal added: “This book chiefly serves the purposes of the global alcohol industry and offers little to those wishing to tackle the unrestrained growth in global alcohol consumption that is predicted for the coming decade … The harm reduction movement needs clear blue water between itself and the alcohol industry.”³⁸

In 2014, Rick Lines, the Director of the HRI (formerly IHRA), contended that the organisation was not involved in alcohol harm reduction any more. Lines argued that: “we have no alcohol-related projects on the go, and haven’t been involved in alcohol harm reduction since 2010.”³⁹

International Center for Alcohol Policies

In 2014, Stimson was also on the Research Advisory Board of ICAP,⁴⁰

ICAP was a not-for-profit organisation founded by the major producers of alcohol in 1995. Its sponsors in 2014 included:⁴¹

• Anheuser-Busch InBev
• Asahi Breweries
• Bacardi-Martini
• Beam Inc.
• Brown-Forman Corporation
• Carlsberg
• Diageo
• Heineken
• Kirin Holdings Company, Limited
• Moët Hennessy
• Molson Coors
• Pernod Ricard
• SABMiller
• UB Group

ICAP “part of a sophisticated public relations process” by the alcohol industry

ICAP has been criticised in the academic literature. One article in the British Medical Journal in 2007 noted how:

“What the industry fears is any control of the overall level of alcohol consumption. Public health advocates are focusing on strategies aimed at reducing the total consumption of alcohol, and the industry’s key aim is to promote overall consumption, albeit responsibly.”

“As part of a sophisticated public relations process the industry has established the International Centre for Alcohol Policy … The industry is determined to shape the public health debate and to protect its interests.”³⁸

Another journal article in the American Journal of Public Health in 2012, stated:

“Comparison of ICAP research and policy statements with findings from the WHO and other public health bodies and researchers showed how the industry has simultaneously cast itself as representing public health and ignored key findings of public health research regarding effective approaches to the prevention and reduction of alcohol-related problems.” ⁴²

ICAP was also criticised for its role in producing science to ensure the alcohol industry’s involvement and influence in alcohol policy debates:

“The ICAP and other alcohol industry organizations continue to argue, advocate, and promote the alcohol industry’s involvement in medicine and public health … The ICAP and its alcohol industry sponsors apparently learned from tobacco that industry must be out front in terms of social responsibility, able to foreshadow and pre-empt public health initiatives, as the ICAP has consistently done with its publications and other activities mirroring the work of the WHO. Industry arguments must be “science-based” and clothed in research credentials, as the ICAP has done with its many briefing papers and policy reviews. Rather than direct confrontation with public health, which the ICAP has studiously avoided, partnership is critical.”⁴²

The International Alliance For Responsible Drinking (IARD)

In October 2014, ICAP and the Global Alcohol Producers Group (GAPG) announced that the two organisations were merging to create the International Alliance for Responsible Drinking (IARD). It was officially launched in 2015.

In the press statement about the merger it was announced that “IARD will work to help reduce harmful drinking and promote responsible drinking through research, programs, and balanced debate around the world.”

The press release also stated that:

“Central to IARD’s mission will be supporting and accelerating implementation of the Beer, Wine and Spirits Producers’ Commitments to Reduce Harmful Drinking (www.producerscommitments.org). The organization will promote effective policies and programs, as well as contribute to an informed debate by providing balanced and evidence-based science.”⁴³

The release added that provisional board members of the new organisation included:

• Anadolu EFES;
• AB InBev;
• Asahi Breweries;
• Bacardi; Beam Suntory;
• Brewers Association of Japan;
• Brown-Forman Corporation;
• Carlsberg;
• Constellation;
• Diageo;
• Heineken;
• JSLMA;
• Kirin;
• Moët Hennessy;
• Molson Coors;
• Pernod Ricard;
• SABMiller

Toolkits Adapted From “Drinking in Context”

IARD produced a series of Toolkits, including one called “Policy Planning and Choice: Guide to Feasible Interventions”. On the front page it stated that the briefing paper was adapted from Stimson’s co-edited book, “Drinking in Context: Patterns, Interventions and Partnerships”. ⁴⁴

TobaccoTactics Resources

• Global Forum on Nicotine
• E-cigarettes: British American Tobacco
• Knowledge Action Change
• Foundation for a Smoke-Free World Grantees

Relevant Links

• Harm Reduction International website (formerly known as IHRA)
• K-A-C website