By Mary Bottari and Brendan Fischer
Yesterday, as General Motors and Walgreens announced they were quitting the controversial American Legislative Exchange Council, ALEC members were meeting at a "five diamond" hotel in Salt Lake City to discuss how tobacco can cure smoking.
ALEC brings together corporate lobbyists and right-wing politicians behind closed doors to craft, amend and vote on ALEC "model" bills, which are then introduced in statehouses across the land stripped of their ALEC origin.
According to an agenda obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), "Can Tobacco Cure Smoking?" is the title of a workshop yesterday morning led by the tobacco industry-backed Dr. Brad Rodu, who is trained as a dentist but has the title "Chair of Tobacco Harm Reduction Research" at the University of Louisville, a program that the Wall Street Journal found was primarily funded by U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Co., an ALEC member and manufacturer of smokeless tobacco brands like Copenhagen and Skoal. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Heartland Institute, the Illinois-based think tank that attracted attention earlier this year for making billboards that likened those who believe in man-made climate change to mass murderers and terrorists.
Rodu's research supports the idea that smokers should replace cigarettes with smokeless chewing tobacco or "snus" moist tobacco packets -- a "free market" solution to reducing smoking that would allow tobacco companies to continue profiting off of addiction.
The Food & Drug Administration and health advocates have strongly opposed substituting cigarettes with smokeless tobacco because "chew" and "snus" still cause cancer and other serious diseases, and suggesting that smokeless tobacco is a safe alternative would likely lead to a rise in overall tobacco use. The risk is even more significant because tobacco companies market the product to young people with "winter chill" flavors and bright candy-colored packaging. Additionally, because of the low salt content, snus users don't need to spit, making it nearly impossible to tell if a high schooler is chewing snus or Bazooka Joe bubble gum.
As CMD has reported, in May of 2011 ALEC member Sen. Alberta Darling (R-WI) quietly inserted an amendment into the state budget that was virtually identical to the tobacco industry-supported ALEC model bill "Resolution on the Enhancement of Economic Neutrality, Commercial Efficiency, and Fairness in the Taxation of Moist Smokeless Tobacco (MST) Products." The provision would change the way tobacco is taxed from a per-unit basis or a percentage of cost to a weight-based tax, which would effectively lower the price of snus and smokeless tobacco products manufactured by the big tobacco companies. The provision successfully passed after ALEC sent a letter to Wisconsin legislators supporting the amendment, but it was too extreme even for Governor Scott Walker, who vetoed it.
Although ALEC has shed 30 corporate members in recent months as the organization has come under increasing public scrutiny for its backing of extreme voter suppression bills, unconstitutional anti-immigrant laws and Florida-style "Stand Your Ground" legislation, the tobacco industry has remained faithful. Reynolds American is a "President"-level sponsor of ALEC's 2012 conference (which in 2010 cost $100,000) and Altria/Philip Morris is a "Chairman" level sponsor (which in 2010 cost $50,000). Additionally, former tobacco industry lobbyist W. Preston Baldwin III is the Chairman of ALEC's Private Enterprise Board, Reynolds America lobbyist David Powers is the Board's treasurer, and Altria lobbyist Daniel Smith is part of the Board's Executive Committee. Additionally, Philip Morris lobbyist Brandie Davis, the Private Sector Co-Chair of the ALEC International Relations Task Force, has been named a "Private Sector Member of the Year" for 2012.
ALEC recently hired the Edelman PR firm, the preferred spinmeisters of global tobacco corporation, to polish its image and stem the corporate flight from the organization.
Also paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to sponsor the ALEC meeting -- including the "Can Tobacco Make You Healthier?" panel -- are companies that claim to be in business to make sick people well, such as pharmaceutical companies Bayer, GlaxoSmithKline and Alkermes, and pharmaceutical trade group PhRMA, each of which are "Chairman"-level sponsors of this year's meeting. The "Chairman" level cost $50,000 in 2010, meaning these companies may have spent $200,000 or more to sponsor the meeting. Bayer and GlaxoSmithKline also have representatives on the ALEC Private Enterprise Board, where they sit alongside representatives from the tobacco industry. Other health-related companies sponsoring this year's meeting are insurance company State Farm at the $25,000 "Vice-Chairman" level, and at the $10,000 "Director" level, pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim and hospital operator Intermountain Healthcare.
Despite public pressure, Big Pharma has stood with Big Tobacco, firmly behind ALEC.
The "Can Tobacco Cure Smoking?" workshop is one of around a dozen that state legislators are attending at ALEC's 39th Annual Meeting, which runs July 25th through 28th at Salt Lake's swank Grand America Hotel, the only AAA Five Diamond hotel in the city. Other workshops include "Municipal Pension Reform" and "Using Non-Addictive Medication in Alternatives to Incarceration," and one titled "Regulation Without Representation" warning of how the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) "has taken on an ardent regulatory agenda that threatens the representative nature of our government."
The Commerce, Insurance, and Economic Development Task Force, for example, will discuss topics like "the resurgence of 'right to work,'" getting rid of licensing restrictions for certain professions, and eliminating federal restrictions on states charging toll fees on roads. The Communications and Information Technology Task Force will discuss "the high cost to taxpayers from municipal broadband" and the Energy, Environment, and Agriculture Task Force "will cover the EPA's regulation of carbon dioxide" as well as consider model bills like the Animal Property Protection Act and the Intrastate Coal and Use Act.
Legislators will also attend corporate-sponsored parties and receptions, including an "invitation only" cigar reception, from 9 p.m. to midnight tonight, hosted by one of ALEC's major tobacco firms.
It is not yet known if snus will be on the menu.
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General Motors and Walgreens are the 29th and 30th firms to leave ALEC in recent months. Follow us at PRwatch.org and ALECexposed.org.
Isad t's a day in this country when only the corporate right is telling the truth about smokeless tobacco. The Left should be promoting snus and calling for intensive research on electronic cigarettes for harm reduction than any of the pharmaceutical products, instead of pushing pharmaceutical products, which are, by the way, strongly associated with Big Business, too.
All you had to do was a simple Google search using the terms "snus" and "Sweden" to find out that harm reduction doctors throughout the European Union want to lift the ban on snus, based on statistics that show that tobacco-related cancer deaths in Sweden are a fraction of what they are in countries with people who smoke
You'll never get rid of nicotine in the 21st century. Isn't it time to take a deep breath and start considering alternative solutions? If the Right Wing can do it,, so can you.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2288606/
And ALEC doesn't threaten the representative nature of government? I think it's time these pasty white billionaires got a new hobby.
ALEC does Big Tobacco's bidding not just in America, but around the world. They actively seek to prevent the implementation of tobacco control measures in places like Australia, the UK, and New Zealand. And of course, they insist that free trade agreements mean that every nation in the world is inundated with Marlboros and Camels.
Jon Krueger's post below is correct. The marketing of alternative forms of tobacco is just the latest manifestation of Big Tobacco's marketing strategy to keep smoking and tobacco use a normal and accepted part of human culture.
(Thanks for the link to the ALEC Rock video. It was great!)
Koch brothers and NRA sponsored ALEC brings together corporate lobbyists and right-wing politicians behind closed doors to craft, amend and vote on ALEC "model" bills, which are then introduced in statehouses across the land stripped of their ALEC origin.
Think back to the rash of legislation concerning so-called 'tort reform' measures that suddenly became the focus of numerous states' legislatures about 20 years ago or so. This was an ALEC motivated agenda. All these laws did was to reduce the ability of victims to seek remedies through lawsuits and/or put limitations on court-ordered settlements. The promise of reduced liability premiums for health care providers hasn't really come about.
There is discussion in my state to turning over current public highways and throughways to private/public partnerships - who will begin to collect tolls on numerous current 'free'ways.
ALEC is an insidious organization.
ALEC and CATO say to Americans: Get sick and die. We want our sponsors to be profitable.
Philip Morris explicitly markets its suck tobacco product for dual use:
Whenever smoking isn't an option, reach for Marlboro snus
Rides alongside your smokes: Marlboro snus
Made for smokers: Marlboro snus!
It's easy for folks like Rodu to talk about snus as a way to reduce smoking. That's not how the vendor is marketing the product. Big Tobacco is marketing snus as a way to keep smoking.
The paper was funded and run by cigarette giant Philip Morris ("Altria Client Services"). Yes, maker of Marlboro snus. "Made for smokers!" as Philip Morris's ads say.
Specific problems with the "research" are outlined and discussed here:
Misleading conclusions from Altria researchers about population health effects of dual use
http://ntr.oxfordjournals.org/content/13/4/296.extract
If you want to support your point, you'll need to come up with something better than that.
Over the past three years, I have learned that there are many parties in this debate, each its own agenda. Tobacco companies want to stay in business and make a profit. Pharmaceutical companies protect their profits by working behind the scenes to ensure that smokers are steered to their 93% ineffective smoking cessation products. Researchers seek project funding, publication and prestige. Politicians seek re-election. Any of the aforementioned groups can contain control freaks who feel justified in using any means possible to achieve their goals and don't care if people sicken and die as a result.
The agenda for smokers is finding a way to stop inhaling smoke without having to sacrifice their cognitive and emotional health. Nicotine is very effective as self-medication for memory impairments, attention deficits, and mood disorders. Approved medications for these disorders can have severe side effects and are often ineffective.
I finally managed to switch and quit a little over 3 years ago. Like many former smokers, I felt betrayed and angry. The abstinence-only control freaks endangered our health and our very lives by lying about the safety of non-combusted alternatives. Had I worked for a tobacco company, I would have learned the relative risks years ago and saved my body a boat-load of permanent damage.