Problem/Objective: Whistleblowers hold the unique position of being closest to the inner workings of companies whose activities cause damage to public health. As such, they can be powerful tools for advancing public health because they are able to expose the secrets that the tobacco companies have tried so hard to suppress or discredit through intimidation and smear campaigns.

Methods: The history of the tobacco industry's treatment of whistleblowers will be described. Past and new legal protections for whistleblowers will be discussed and analyzed. For instance, the new Sarbanes/Oxley laws were passed to offer greater protection to whistleblowers and to create a proactive duty for tobacco company lawyers to become whistleblowers themselves.

Results: This presentation will shed light on the lengths to which the tobacco industry has gone to discredit whistleblowers in order to keep smokers, litigators and regulators from finding out the truth about what the tobacco industry knows regarding the health effects of smoking, and will encourage the cultivation of new whistleblowers to forward the cause of tobacco control.

Conclusions: Access to whistleblower information will help tobacco control advocates reinforce their message that the tobacco industry is a menace and a danger to the public's health, and press for appropriate remedies through litigation and regulation. There must be a concerted effort to cultivate new whistleblowers by educating tobacco control advocates about the new protections so that they can spread the word to the general public and thereby gain attention of potential whistleblowers.