Tobacco industry documents from outside sources: new perspectives on industry strategies on local levels.

The internal tobacco industry documents have also been used to study tobacco industry operations outside the United States. The scope of the documents on a country outside the US is decided mainly by the extent to which documents and reports were transmitted from the abroad offices of the US tobacco companies to headquarters. We explored whether the material from a private archive of a Finnish public relation consultant to Philip Morris will augment or revise the earlier reports on tobacco industry manipulation in Finland. The private records add more details to previously published reports. The new information mainly concerned implementation of the tobacco industry strategies. A general conclusion is that tobacco industry documents may not give a detailed picture of tobacco industry activities in distant markets, which would be of interest locally, even if they provide sufficient information to convey a general view of tobacco industry strategies.