Tobacco.org

• Independent and Principled? Behind the Cato Myth 

Fact: The Cato Institute is one of the leading manufacturers of toxic corporate propaganda, cynically undermining science and scholarship to serve the interests of tobacco companies, oil and gas, chemicals, health insurance, financial industry and other Cato donors.

Cato chairman Robert Levy, who today accuses the Kochs of turning Cato into “a mouthpiece of special interests,” once faithfully served the tobacco industry as a leading tobacco-death denialist. In his article, “Lies, Damn Lies & 400,000 Smoking-Related Deaths”, Levy claimed, “children do not die of tobacco-related diseases” and “there is no credible evidence that 400,000 deaths per year—or any number remotely close to 400,000—are caused by tobacco.” (In fact, tobacco use kills more than 5 million people a year worldwide.) . . .

Philip Morris listed Cato VP David Boaz as one of its “National Allies” in a 2000 memo.

In 2001, a British-American Tobacco executive sent a thank-you letterto Levy and the Cato Institute, noting: “I was also pleased to learn after our meeting that our subsidiary company, Brown & Williamson, provided the Cato Institute with funding in 2000.”

So there you have it: a brief look at the Cato Institute’s factual record, which reads nothing at all like the heroic fairytales spun by Cato and its allies about its principled opposition to the Bush Administration’s imperial presidency, or its opposition to the Republican Party, or whatever else Cato’s minions tell us to win our hearts rather than our minds.

In fact, it’s hard to know what, if anything, to believe about Cato —PR and spin are so ingrained in their thinking and their breathing, one wonders if Cato’s own flaks can tell the difference themselves between reality and spin. Lately, they seem to have a hard time keeping track of their numerous and rather careless flip-flops, particularly when it comes to how they characterize their longtime benefactors, the Brothers Koch. Most of the same libertarians who attacked the Kochs as unprincipled GOP usurpers of the Cato Institute only yesterday defended the same Kochs as principled patrons of purist libertarian scholarship. What started as a rather arcane legal dispute between the Koch brothers and their longtime lieutenant, Cato president Ed Crane, quickly transformed into a PR-manufactured Washington melodrama: The famed and revered (in some quarters) Cato Institute has turned against its Dr. Frankenstein, Charles Koch, attacking its maker with the full range of PR-weaponry that has served Cato effectively over these past four decades. The same pundits who only yesterday fell over themselves defending the billionaire Koch brothers as principled libertarians now denounce their benefactors as venal Republican Party warmongers out to crush the Cato Institute’s “nonpartisan” “independent” “scholarship” for the crime of being, yes, principled libertarians.

It would all be good for a laugh, if the spin hadn’t succeeded in conning the media and confusing the public, even roping in some well-meaning progressives like Common Cause, who defended Cato’s “independence.”

But in order for progressives and others to make an honest and practical assessment about the Cato Institute and its battle with the Kochs, we need to first set the record straight about some of the claims being spun.

Jump to full article »

Koch v. Cato — A View from Cato 

Billionaire Koch Brothers File Lawsuit to Wrest Control of Cato Institute 

NGO urges parliamentarians to support tobacco control measures 

Mr Issah Ali, National Coordinator of Coalition on Tobacco Control Bill, a non-governmental organization (NGO), has called on Parliamentarians from tobacco growing areas to support the tobacco control measures under the Public Health Bill before Parliament.

He said by so doing, they would be seeking the interest of the health of their constituents, particularly tobacco farmers, babies, children, youth, pregnant women and other vulnerable groups.

Mr Ali, who is also the Executive Director of Vision for Alternative Development (VALD), gave the advice at a public forum on Pictorial Health Warnings on Tobacco Packs at GNAT Hall in Accra on Tuesday.

The forum was to share information and facts on the importance and relevance of mandating the printing of rotational pictorial health warnings on tobacco packs as part of the Tobacco Control Measures of the Public Health Bill 2011.

Jump to full article »

Critiques Of Libertarianism: Criticisms of the Cato Institute. 

A "libertarian" quasi-academic think-tank which acts as a mouthpiece for the globalism, corporatism, and neoliberalism of its corporate and conservative funders. Cato is an astroturf organization: there is no significant participation by the tiny libertarian minority. They do not fund it or affect its goals. It is a creature of corporations and foundations.

The major purpose of the Cato Institute is to provide propaganda and soundbites for conservative and libertarian politicians and journalists that is conveniently free of reference to funders such as tobacco, fossil fuel, investment, media, medical, and other regulated industries.

Cato is one of the most blatant examples of "simulated rationality", as described in Phil Agre's The Crisis of Public Reason. Arguments need only be plausibly rational to an uninformed listener. Only a tiny percentage will notice that they are being mislead. That's all that's needed to manage public opinion.

Links

A Critical Assessment of "Lies, Damned Lies, & 400,000 Smoking-Related Deaths".

The Cato Institute, heavily funded by tobacco companies, hired Levy and Marimont to denounce statistics about smoking related deaths. This article refutes their key arguments, finding them unscientific and inflammatory.

Media Moguls on Board: Murdoch, Malone and the Cato Institute

An Extra! (the magazine of FAIR, Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting ) article that describes how media giants use Cato to lobby Congress for corporate welfare and legal monopolization.

Jump to full article »

• DUGAN: The unstoppable march of the tobacco giants  

More than half a century after scientists uncovered the link between smoking and cancer - triggering a war between health campaigners and the cigarette industry - big tobacco is thriving.

Despite the known catastrophic effects on health of smoking, profits from tobacco continue to soar and sales of cigarettes have increased: they have risen from 5,000 billion sticks a year in the 1990s to 5,900 billion a year in 2009. They now kill more people annually than alcohol, Aids, car accidents, illegal drugs, murders and suicides combined.

On Tuesday, people around the globe will mark World No Tobacco Day - a distant hope.

The West now consumes fewer and fewer of the world's cigarettes: richer countries have changed - from smoking 38 per cent of the world total in 1990, they cut down to 24 per cent in 2009. Meanwhile, the developing world's share in global cigarette sales has increased sharply, rising to 76 per cent in 2009.

An investigation by The Independent on Sunday reveals that tobacco firms have taken advantage of lax marketing rules in developing countries by aggressively promoting cigarettes to new, young consumers, while using lawyers, lobby groups and carefully selected statistics to bully governments that attempt to quash the industry in the West.

In 2010, the big four tobacco companies - Philip Morris International, British American Tobacco, Japan Tobacco and Imperial Tobacco - made more than £27bn profit, up from £26bn in 2009.

The price of their profits will be measured in human lives. In the 20th century, some 100 million people were killed by tobacco use. If current trends continue, tobacco will kill a billion people in the 21st century. . . .

Anna Gilmore, professor of public health at the University of Bath, said: "What most people don't realise is that, although sales are falling in the West, industry profits are increasing. These companies remain some of the most profitable in the world. This is thanks in part to their endless inventive ways of undermining and circumventing regulation. They're trying to reinvent their image to ingratiate themselves with governments, but behind the scenes it's business as usual."

This year's World No Tobacco Day is focusing on persuading more countries to sign a global treaty . . .

Laurent Huber, director of the Framework Convention Alliance on tobacco control, said: "In countries like Uruguay, the tobacco industry uses its vast wealth to tie up public health measures in court battles. Win or lose, this has a chilling effect on other governments."

Jump to full article »

Cato Institute  

Created in 1977, the Cato Institute has grown into one of the nation's most influential libertarian think tanks. Cato takes an approach that flatly opposes what it views as arbitrary government intrusion into the private economic sphere and usually supports policy proposals that favor business interests over those that protect and promote public safety and welfare. This makes the institute one of the tobacco industry's most prominent "national allies."Another libertarian think tank that is a prominent tobacco industry ally is the Heartland Institute.

Jump to full article »

BASHAM: An absence of tobacco evidence  

Tobacco policy currently rests on two claims: tobacco advertising and promotion are the major reasons why young people begin to smoke; and young people are particularly sensitive to the price of cigarettes. From these two claims follow the central elements of tobacco policy, namely that all forms of tobacco advertising and promotion, including tobacco displays, should be banned, and tobacco should be heavily taxed in order to prevent or at least reduce under-age tobacco use.

Unfortunately, neither of these claims nor policies meets the standards of evidence-based policymaking. Both are, instead, products of advocacy-based 'research' carried out by anti-tobacco lobby groups. . . .

Considerable previous research has shown that plain packaging of cigarettes will do nothing to reduce youth smoking. A study from Canada's York University, which asked young people about what effect plain packaging would have on their smoking decisions, found that 90 percent of daily smokers said they would smoke more or the same if cigarettes were in plain packages.

What then of high taxes to discourage or prevent youth smoking?

The claim that high tobacco taxes will reduce smoking is an odd one since we have been taught that smoking is addictive. If smoking is addictive, logic dictates that smokers will be insensitive to price increases.

Jump to full article »

LETTER: Behind the Cato Institute's doors 

How many readers noticed the full-page advertisement paid for by the Cato Institute urging Obama to halt the passing of the stimulus bill? This is a perfect example of how corporate America now controls the American people through the power of pen instead of the sword.

The Cato Institute is among the most powerful of the 500 right-wing think tanks. It believes in limited government, free markets, globalization and peaceful international relations. They denounced Bush and associates for the war in Iraq and their neocon ideas.

Their $24 million annual income is financed by Rupert Murdoch (Fox News), the tobacco industry, insurance and financial services, retirement accounts, oil, pharmeceuticals and media conglomerates.

Their main objective now is pushing for privatization of Social Security. . . .

The Cato Institute, working under a pseudonym, representing the tobacco companies, masqueraded as facts, a research paper that attempted to prove that smoking does not cause death. . . .

Democracies do not last because eventually the powerful gain control of the government. This has happened. As a result, our country cannot sustain itself any longer. Our national debt is 90 percent of the entire wealth of America. The middle class can no longer support both and rich and the poor. The Office of Budget and Management reports the $150 billion annual corporate subsidies and tax benefits for the rich eclipses the annual $130 billion for social aid.

The Cato Institute is perhaps correct. The tragedy is neither McCain, Obama or anyone else can put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

Jump to full article »

• BASHAM: Up in smoke  

Two recent events underscore big problems with the way society tries to fight tobacco use.

First, a new Harvard study came out alleging that the tobacco industry manipulated menthol levels in cigarettes to hook young smokers in violation of the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement, which bans tobacco companies from targeting youths. And second, billionaires Michael R. Bloomberg and Bill Gates last week threw their support behind a new $500 million worldwide effort to stop smoking.

Whatever the tobacco companies may have done with menthol levels, the bigger scandal is how states have misspent the billions paid to them by the tobacco industry. And however well-intentioned, the Gates-Bloomberg effort, which involves the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, is likely to fail because the tobacco control programs that it will fund - featuring such things as higher taxes, smoking bans and advertising restrictions - have failed before. These multiple shortcomings point to the need for a new, more effective approach to handling, and funding, tobacco prevention. . . .

Ten years and $53 billion after the tobacco settlement windfall, there is precious little to show in terms of credible smoking prevention. It's time for Congress - and perhaps the president - to step in and demand that the states live up to their promise to use the settlement money for effective tobacco prevention. To ensure the settlement money has an impact, it needs to be diverted from projects unrelated to smoking and then placed into interventions that are based on what the best evidence shows are the real reasons kids start using cigarettes.

Until that happens, anti-tobacco efforts - whether funded by the states or by well-intentioned billionaires - will continue to amount to little more than blowing smoke.

--Patrick Basham teaches tobacco regulation at the Johns Hopkins University, directs the Democracy Institute and is a Cato Institute adjunct scholar.

Jump to full article »

• FLEENOR: Cigarette Taxes Are Fueling Organized Crime  

But if history is any guide, most cigarettes sold will actually be trucked up from Virginia, or shipped in from China, by "butt-leggers" who can make over $1 million on each tractor-trailer load of smuggled smokes. The blunt fact, which politicians of both political parties are determined to ignore, is that high cigarette taxes in New York have led to a bloody, decades-long smuggling epidemic. . . .

As the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms said in September 2002 of New York's cigarette smuggling, "Traditional organized crime is involved, terrorist groups are involved, and street gangs are involved." Rivalry among these groups has resulted in numerous shootings and homicides.

The connection to terrorism is no exaggeration. When New York police cracked another smuggling ring in 2005, they uncovered a multimillion dollar flow of funds from New York City to unknown individuals in the Middle East. Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly gave voice to the obvious conclusion: Terrorists probably got the money. . . .

Politicians continue to use the health of smokers as their excuse for higher cigarette taxes. This view is myopic. As Gov. Wilson argued three decades ago, high cigarette taxes are bad public policy because of their effect on the rest of us. In the 1960s and '70s, organized crime exploited high cigarette taxes at our expense. Today we face an even deadlier adversary.

Mr. Fleenor is chief economist of the Tax Foundation and author of "Cigarette Taxes, Black Markets, and Crime: Lessons from New York's 50-Year Losing Battle" (Cato Institute, 2003).

Jump to full article »

Where there's smoking, there's chance of fire 

They are deaths you can prevent if you just take the time. According to the Virginia Department of Fire Programs, 158 fires in Virginia were caused by smokers not putting their cigarettes out properly in 2007. Six people died because of those fires and 20 were hurt.

So far this year in Hampton Roads, a person has already lost their life in one of four fires cased by cigarettes. The most recent fire cause by a cigarette started Friday morning at a home in Norfolk.

"We'd love to have people stop smoking, but if they're going to smoke, do it the right way," says Jack Goldhorn, Norfolk Fire Public Information Officer.

The U.S. Fire Administration says smoking is the number one cause of preventable home fire deaths. In Virginia Beach, a woman died in a fire in February.

Jump to full article »

Iowa Senate stands by tougher smoking ban  

The Senate on Thursday rejected broad exemptions to a statewide smoking ban, and a key leader predicted lawmakers ultimately would approve a bill calling for smoke-free restaurants and bars.

The Senate voted 27-23 to insist that a sweeping ban on indoor smoking be maintained, turning down a House-passed effort that exempts bars and restaurants. The issue will likely go to a House-Senate conference committee where a compromise will be bargained.

"I don't believe there will be a general exemption for bars and restaurants," said Senate Majority Leader Michael Gronstal, D-Council Bluffs.

The House has voted both ways on the issue.

Jump to full article »

FIREY/GRIER: Please Do Smoke, If You Like  

Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine recently announced that he'll renew his fight to ban smoking in all Virginia bars and restaurants. He defended this push by citing the dangers of secondhand smoke, saying, "The scientific evidence about the health risks associated with exposure to secondhand smoke is clear and convincing. Recognizing the negative health effects and high public costs of secondhand smoke, Virginia must act to protect the workers and consumers in its restaurants."

We're pleased the governor has such command of the epidemiologic literature. Usually, when politicians make such statements, they have little if any familiarity with the scientific research. Kaine should cite the empirical studies showing the health effects of bar and restaurant patrons' occasional exposure to environmental tobacco smoke. We're not aware of any such studies; even the much-cited recent surgeon general's report on secondhand smoke offered no statistical evidence of diminished health from occasional exposure. . . .

Liberal societies allow people to make decisions that others don't like. If some Virginians want to eat and drink in an establishment that allows smoking, and some workers want to work there, and some entrepreneur wants to finance that business, why does the governor think he should overrule them?

-- The writers are, respectively, a policy analyst and media manager at the Cato Institute.

Jump to full article »

SHAPIRO: Cato Scholar Comments on Court Case on Maine Internet Tobacco Regulations 

The solution, as often happens, lies in the very technology that caused the problem in the first place. Instead of placing the onus on shippers to verify age, Maine should require the tobacco vendors selling their wares online to do so. How? By employing any of the myriad age-verification software available for just these purposes. Requiring online orders to be paid for with a credit card will also have the same effect (and the issue of a minor illicitly using a parent's card is akin to that of a minor using a fake ID at a store). Thus, the carriers should technically win here through the vehicle of "federal preemption" -- and thus enable technologies freely available in the market to solve the underlying problem instead of heavy-handed regulations (federal or state).

Jump to full article »