The corrupted tobacco economist network Part 53 - Tim Hyde's cunning plan

Overview of previous posts here

Tim Hyde of R.J. Reynolds wrote a very long key document on how to blend the tobacco message into a broader range of political arguments, like 'freedom of choice'. It is a few pages long, but interesting from A to Z so I'm copying the whole document. 

Notice how much he respects his allies. (FC = Field Coördinators)

Just like with the recruitment of the social cost economists, the idea was to direct the existing bias of people towards viewpoints beneficial for the industry

In hindsight, we can see how much of Hyde's plan has been executed on the right side of the political spectrum. By using free market think tanks, serving as an ideological basis for the Republican Party, huge parts of the right wing succumbed to the ideological influence of a message created by corporate lobbyists, thereby effectively changing society's view.

Tim Hyde's cunning plan is not the only document in the LTDL hinting the industry deliberately tried to mix tobacco and freedom in one big blurry message.

Whether the industry started working with the think tanks for the Machiavellian reasons Tim Hyde had in mind, or just for financial reasons is not certain. The think tanks opposed taxes anyway, and with financial aid from the tobacco (and other industries) they would start to write numerous free market reports, papers, etc.

In the 1980's the Tobacco Institute spent much money sending the economists to economics conferences. Even though the tobacco economists' sessions were only attended by an average of 20-25 people, the economists were paid for years to keep presenting their work at these meetings. Savarese explicitly wrote that the aim was to "plant a seed": they hoped other economists would start copying the message, without realizing it was a tobacco message. When googling for the economists, one indeed can see the "academic output" quite often were often cited in scientific papers by economists not paid by the industry. In other words: the plan worked.

By the 1990's the industry knew which think tanks were willing to work with them, a contrast with 1988 when the industry was still looking who to work with. In the 1980's there already were plenty of contacts, but it appears that then think tanks still were seen as an external factor the industry needed to lobby

(...)

In the 1990's the industry would have much closer contact with the think tanks, and the industry hired consultants whose only job was to gain a foot in the door at these think tanks.