The Tobacco Conspiracy: The Backroom Deals of a Deadly Industry is a 2007 documentary by French-Canadian documentary filmmaker Nadia Collot who investigated the tobacco industry for three years and uncovered lies and fraud from the big tobacco companies. The film was funded by Kuiv Productions and thr National Film Board of Canada. Collot, formerly smoker of twenty years, was inspired to make the film because she wanted the answer to one simple question: “Why is cigarette smoking so popular and accepted despite all the information we have?”.
The film demonstrates how big tobacco corporations manipulate scientific research, bribes scientists and public health officials, and how big tobacco companies had previously colluded to release ‘The Frank Report’ which claimed that smoking did not cause cancer. It also explains how tobacco companies use money for discrete product placement in order to get around strict advertising laws, particularly in Hollywood movies, and even employ people to distribute free or cheap smuggled cigarettes to poor people in order to argue that the government needs to reduce tax rates to suppress the black market. Another revealing documentary which exposes tobacco industry corruption is The Secret Bribes of Big Tobacco (2015).