Reputational revival and industry survival: A rhetorical analysis of tobacco industry evidence before a UK parliamentary select committee

The tobacco industry is facing an existential threat from increasingly stringent tobacco control policies. At the same time, their exclusion from policy-making processes curtails their ability to oppose further regulation of their business. Trans-national tobacco companies (TTCs) claim that their investment in electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDs) present a viable alternative business model to the sale of combustible cigarettes. However, many public health actors argue that entry into the ENDS market is being used by TTCs to shape the development of this product category, influence tobacco control debates and re-engage policy-makers in ways precluded by the World Health Organization's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). The appearance by four tobacco company executives before the House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee enquiry into electronic cigarettes is an important example of how the tobacco industry is ‘healthwashing’ its reputation through ENDs investments and is being invited back into policy spaces from which it had been previously excluded. This article employs rhetorical theory to conduct a micro-level analysis of the tobacco industry's policy influencing strategy. It examines not just the ways in which TTC actors frame the ENDs product category, tobacco control policy and their role within this, but the rhetorical appeals, forms of language and discursive strategies used to engage and persuade their audience. In so doing, it contributes to the growing literature on the commercial determinants of health and previous macro-level framing analyses of these industries. Finally, it sets out a methodology for similar analyses of TTC rhetoric in other contexts, of other health-harming industries, and comparative analyses between industries.