{"id":2827,"date":"2025-12-03T15:09:51","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T15:09:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/?p=2827"},"modified":"2025-12-03T15:09:51","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T15:09:51","slug":"why-british-museum-has-ended-15-year-japan-tobacco-deal-and-what-it-means-for-future-partnerships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/2025\/12\/03\/why-british-museum-has-ended-15-year-japan-tobacco-deal-and-what-it-means-for-future-partnerships\/","title":{"rendered":"Why British Museum has ended 15-year Japan Tobacco deal \u2013 and what it means for future partnerships"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Dr Allen Gallagher<\/a> is a Research Fellow within, and a co-director of, the Tobacco Control Research Group<\/a> (TCRG) at the University of Bath<\/a>. Dr Duncan Thomas<\/a> serves as Policy and Knowledge Exchange Lead and Dr Sophie Braznell<\/a> is a Research Associate within the group.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/article>\n

This article is republished from\u00a0<\/em>The Conversation<\/em><\/a>\u00a0under a Creative Commons license. Read the\u00a0<\/em>original article here<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

The British Museum has ended its controversial 15-year sponsorship with Japan Tobacco International (JTI).<\/p>\n

The sponsorship has attracted a lot of criticism in that time. In 2016, 1,000\u00a0public health<\/a>\u00a0experts wrote an\u00a0open letter<\/a>\u00a0calling for London\u2019s cultural institutions, including the British Museum, to end \u201cmorally unacceptable\u201d sponsorship from tobacco sponsors.<\/p>\n

Despite this, as reported in both\u00a02023<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a02025<\/a>\u00a0by our\u00a0Tobacco Control Research Group<\/a>\u00a0at the University of Bath, the British Museum had continued to have a close relationship with JTI.<\/p>\n

It is therefore welcome news that the UK government has finally intervened to end the partnership. It comes following a freedom of information request from the research and campaign organisation\u00a0Culture Unstained<\/a>. This revealed that the Department for Health had\u00a0raised concerns<\/a>\u00a0about the partnership earlier this year to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport, the government department that funds the British Museum. As a result, the museum\u2019s trustees decided not to continue the partnership upon its expiration in September.<\/p>\n

This is long overdue. Many other cultural institutions in the UK have already ceased entering into agreements with such companies, given the immense damage tobacco products do to public health.<\/p>\n

Tate, for example, stopped accepting all sponsorship from tobacco companies in 1991. The National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery and Victoria and Albert Museum\u00a0each gradually did the same<\/a>, leaving The British Museum as\u00a0the only major UK national art museum<\/a>\u00a0still accepting money from a tobacco company.<\/p>\n

The British Museum\u2019s director, Nicholas Cullinan,\u00a0previously argued<\/a>\u00a0there needed to be \u201cvery good, clear reasons for turning down money that would help keep the British Museum free to the public\u201d.<\/p>\n

Ties to a harmful industry<\/h2>\n

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) became a popular concept in the 1950s. It was originally interpreted as a positive development whereby companies committed resources to further societal gain instead of company profit. By the 1960s, however, more critical interpretations had emerged.<\/p>\n

CSR began to be seen as\u00a0\u201cfundamentally subversive\u201d<\/a>\u00a0by business researchers, and now it is commonly interpreted as a mechanism for large corporations to\u00a0legitimise and consolidate power<\/a>. For health-harming industries such as tobacco, CSR campaigns can help them \u201cclean\u201d their image by claiming to be investing in society, while simultaneously causing extensive public health harms.<\/p>\n

Indeed, sponsoring cultural institutions is a\u00a0well-documented tobacco industry tactic<\/a>. Among public health practitioners and researchers, it\u2019s widely seen as part of the industry\u2019s efforts to\u00a0improve its public image and achieve policy influence<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Viewed in this light, the British Museum\u2019s sponsorship from JTI could be viewed as a deliberate effort by a harmful company to improve its own reputation by exploiting the reputation of a UK cultural institution.<\/p>\n

Government funding of the British Museum during its tobacco sponsorship contradicts the world\u2019s first public health treaty. The World Health Organization framework convention on tobacco control was adopted in 2003 and has been\u00a0signed by over 182 countries and the EU as of 2025<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It aims to protect populations from the harms of tobacco through various measures to reduce tobacco consumption, such as preventing people from starting the habit and protecting them from the harm of secondhand smoke.<\/p>\n

Article 5.3 of the treaty aims to protect policymaking from the vested interests of the tobacco industry, given the \u201cfundamental and irreconcilable\u201d conflict between the industry\u2019s commercial interests and public health.<\/p>\n

This article and its\u00a0implementation guidelines<\/a>\u00a0stipulate that parties should aim to limit interactions with the tobacco industry. This includes rejecting all partnerships with tobacco companies and curbing their CSR activities.<\/p>\n

The government\u2019s financial support of the British Museum, while the museum received JTI sponsorship, was therefore problematic.<\/p>\n

The future of sponsorship<\/h2>\n

Unfortunately, despite the welcome British Museum developments, the tobacco industry continues its connections to other UK cultural institutions. Both the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the Royal Academy of Arts\u00a0continue to accept JTI sponsorship<\/a>. Hopefully, the British Museum case will draw the attention of other institutions, encouraging them to follow suit.<\/p>\n

Tobacco industry sponsorship of the British Museum has hopefully now become a thing of the past. However, it should be noted that the museum continues to accept sponsorship from other health-harming industries. Its ten-year partnership with oil producer BP, for example,\u00a0has also come under scrutiny<\/a>. As with the JTI sponsorship, the British Museum appears behind the curve. Other institutions like the Royal Opera House, National Portrait Gallery and Tate galleries have\u00a0already cut ties with BP<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Time will tell whether the end of the JTI sponsorship will encourage other cultural institutions to reject tobacco industry sponsorship. We need to remain alert and vigilant regarding current and future partnerships entered into by the British Museum and other UK cultural institutions.<\/p>\n

All articles posted on this blog give the views of the author(s), and not the position of the IPR, nor of the University of Bath.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr Allen Gallagher is a Research Fellow within, and a co-director of, the Tobacco Control Research Group (TCRG) at the University of Bath. Dr Duncan Thomas serves as Policy and Knowledge Exchange Lead and Dr Sophie Braznell is a Research...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1948,"featured_media":2828,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[108,111,118],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture-and-policy","category-drug-and-alcohol-policy","category-health"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/115\/2025\/12\/Why-British-Museum-has-ended-15-year-Japan-Tobacco-deal.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1948"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2827\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}