The corrupted tobacco economist network Part 60 - Alexis de Tocqueville Institution

Overview of previous posts here

The previous blogpost mentioned in 1994 the Independent Institute authored the open letter against the Clinton Health Reform Plan. But the Independent Institute was not the only think tank aiming to work with the tobacco industry. 

The Alexis de Tocqueville Institution invited itself to the industry in this letter to Philip Morris. Was AdTI at this point no pro-tobacco ? Probably not, the letter illustrates it all started with a remarkably one-sided and bit silly opposition against the tax-increase in the health reform plan. Thos one-sided viewpoint ultimately would become disastrous for the think tank. 

Tim Lambert wrote a blogpost in 2004 (The Astroturf de Tocqueville Institute) showing the AdTI indeed started working with the tobacco industry in the 1990's.


The S. Fred Singer report

In 1994, late S. Fred Singer, best remembered as climate pseudo-skeptic, authored the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution report Science, Economics, and Environmental Policy: A Critical Examination. This report probably was ordered by the tobacco industry.

Early 1994, Cesar Conda, then president of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, had not decided yet who would author the paper (is not it lovely they already know what the report would conclude, without even knowing who would be the author?). Het wrote this remarkable letter: 

The letter summarizes the corruption of this think tank: fake report, fake endorsements, wide press circulation. And all that for just $20.000

The letter also shows the focus was no longer only to attack regulations on tobacco, other environmental subjects would be thrown under the bus too. And indeed, it is in the pool of different American extremist conservative industry funded think tanks that organized global warming denial would finds its roots.

The letter summarizes the corruption of this think tank: fake report, fake endorsements, wide press circulation. And all that for just $20.000

A while later, Conda wrote another amazing letter



Clearly: this report was as corrupted as a report can be.

The report contains the following passage:



No, the report does not mention Tollison's connections with the tobacco industry, nor the fact the industry indeed paid the AdTI the $20.000 for the report

No, the report does not mention Tollison's connections with the tobacco industry, nor the fact the industry indeed paid the AdTI the$20.000 for the report. All in all, it's not even that much money and from the industry's point of view, this must have been a bargain to corrupt a think tank for an amount of money lower than an add campaign in a newspaper

In the draft version S. Fred Singer was named the first author and Kent Jeffreys the second author. It is unclear why Singer is listed as the reviewer (and not author) in the final report and why suddely Jeffreys "authored" the report.

The industry wanted to use the report for lobbying, that much is certain





The report had the desired result. Samuel Chilcote, president of the Tobacco Institute reported

Who those "peer reviewers" were is a mystery, but probably the 1994 advisory board of the AdTI gives a clue: with Gary M. Anderson, Jeffrey R. Clark, Robert B. Ekelund, Dwight R. Lee, Mark Thornton, Robert D. Tollison, Richard K. Vedder and Richard E. Wagner, eight of the nineteen board members were members of the economists' network. Probably they were the not so critical reviewers of the report.

In 1995 the AdTI published another excise tax report, this time not by the economists though, but by John E. Berthoud, president of the National Tax Payers Union.

In 1998, the AdTI's draft report Tobacco Smuggling: A Worldwide Phenomenon was sent to the tobacco industry.

This is not the work of an independent think tank.

Corrupted tobacco economists network, Part 35: buying fake book reviews from the other network members

Overview of previous posts here

Buying positive book reviews

Media tours were not the only way Smoking and the State: Social costs, rent seeking, and public policy was promoted, the industry also wanted favorable book reviews. So once again the network economists began writing. James Savarese wrote

The economists did what they were asked

(etc...)

Of course, the economists' work first was checked for the right wording. The phrase "Most would sanction the government warning tobacco users of the health consequences of their habit" in Cecil Bohanon's review did not please the industry, so they added a word

A similar edit was made in the draft written by Ryan C. Amacher. Notice the similarity in handwriting. These edits were made by the Tobacco Institute. The edits appeared in Amacher's final version, published in The State, Columbia, S .C., Sunday, August 14, 1988

 

Adding a word sometimes was not enough

The same document also shows the Tobacco Institute's lawyers had to review the paper before it could be sent to the newspapers. Not all reviews were published though

November 29, 1998, James Savarese sent the following invoice to the Tobacco Institute

Seventeen economists were asked to write a review. Assuming everyone writing a review got paid, every economist earned around $3.500 for writing a review. Calculated otherwise, the industry paid some $2.000 per page written.

TI president Samuel D. Chilcote reported to the members of the TI executive committee

Clearing and the Air was translated into French, German Spanish, Finnish and Japanese

How the Tobacco Institute recruited over 100 American economics professors. Part 31 - Robert D. Tollison writes pro-tobacco books

Overview of previous posts here

Robert Tollison writes several books

The Tobacco Institute did not just want the economists to produce op-eds, the industry wanted the attack on excise taxes to have some, even only superficial, 'real' academic credibility. One of the early tactics of the tobacco industry was to publish the book "Smoking and Society", but this was not the only book Robert D. Tollison wrote/edited on the topic:

• 1986 Robert D. Tollison (ed), Smoking and society: toward a more balanced assessment, Lexington Books, Lexington, Massachussetts
• 1988 Robert D. Tollison (ed), Clearing the air: perspectives on environmental tobacco smoke, Lexington Books, Lexington, Massachussetts
• 1988 Robert D. Tollison, Richard E. Wagner, Smoking and the state: social costs, rent seeking, and public policy, Lexington Books, Lexington, Massachussetts
• 1989 Richard E. Wagner and Robert Tollison, Charging Beneficiaries for Public Services: User Charges and Earmarked Taxes in Principle and Practice
• 1991 Robert D. Tollison, Richard E. Wagner; The Economics of Smoking, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht

Smoking and society (1986)

This passage in the 1983 Presentation on social costs/social values to INFOTAB board of directors meeting October 31, is interesting as it provides an overview of the research done by the industry in the period 1979-1984

(...)

(...)

The documents leaves no doubt Tollison's 1985 book "Smoking and Society: Toward a More Balanced Assessment" was ordered by the tobacco industry. The preface of the book acknowledges this, though not completely:

While at least they did not hide the involvement of the industry, the book was not a spontaneous result of a 1984 workshop, but arose from a decision made by the Tobacco Institute no later than 1983. Moreover it did not name the funding organizations. The reason the industry needed scholars is clear: media-credibility

Even though written by academics, the industry dictated the topics the book had to cover, and who had to be the editor

The Tobacco Institute paid $70.000 for the book, meaning INFOTAB must have paid another $70.000. A document from 1989, three years after publication, illustrates the industry was pleased with the output:

It seems the tobacco industry was happy paying $140,000 to publish a book printed in only 1500 copies. The target was not public readers, but the creation of material the field lobbyists could use.

The 120+ corrupted tobacco economists network - Part 21 of many

Overview of previous posts here

Ryan C. Amacher

The Ogilvy and Mather report of a meeting held april 29, 1985 is interesting

Ryan Amacher indeed signed the piece corrected by PR-firm Ogilvy and Mather

In 1988 Northwest Airlines became the first American airline company to ban smoking on domestic flights. Ryan Amacher wrote

Even without checking Amacher's data it is obvious that the things he mentions are not related to a smoking ban. But where did his arguments come from? The Tobacco Institute's president Samuel Chilcote wrote a memorandum explaining how the tobacco industry responded to the announcement of the smoking ban

Ryan Amacher wrote exactly what the Tobacco industry wanted him to write.