Advocates

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Tobacco Control Advocates (Past and Present)

[* Denotes documented RWJF funding]

RWJF: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is the biggest single shareholder in Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT) producing Johnson & Johnson, and began its massive funding of tobacco control in the U.S. in 1991, the same year the FDA approved the nicotine patch as a prescription drug.

• Ahluwalia, Jasjit*

Dept. of Preventive Medicine and Dept. of Internal Medicine, School of Medicine, University of Kansas, Kansas City. RWJF Generalist Physician Faculty Scholars Award and recipient of honoraria and grant support from Glaxo Wellcome (makers of Zyban), SmithKline Beecham (makers of Nicorette and Nicoderm) AND Johnson & Johnson’s McNeil Consumer Products (makers of Nicotrol and other cessation products). Chair of Nominations Committee for Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco (SRNT).

• Altman, David*

At Bowman Grey School of Medicine, Department of Public Health in Winston-Salem, NC. Served as a consultant and helped administer RWJF’s “Tobacco Policy Research & Evaluation Program.”

• Arno, Peter S.*

Associate Professor, Dept. of Epidemiology and Social Medicine, Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx. Listed in RWJF’s media guide for “Ethical, Social and Public Health Implications of Regulating Tobacco,” which was a “study” of the tobacco industry’s influence in weakening anti-tobacco legislation and litigation (and even the "60 Minutes" Wigand show). Arno’s study blames tobacco industry campaign funding.

• Arnott, Deborah

Director of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) for the United Kingdom as of 2012. Has expressed the view that, although she has smoked and quit herself, there can be no choice to smoke or not, as all smokers are addicts. Her background is in public relations.

• Banzhaf, John

Founder of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), Banzhaf has never met a smoking restriction he did not like, having spoken in support, for example, of bans in apartment and condominium complexes, and job discrimination against smokers. All the way back in 2006 he made it clear that his ultimate intention was total control of smokers, even in their homes: "Here we are literally reaching into the last frontier — right into the home... No longer can you argue, ‘My home is my castle. I've got the right to smoke.’" Also see some background on Banzhaf by author Christopher Snowdon.

• Bauld, Linda

A "smoking cessation expert" at the University of Bath until 2010, and now Professor of Socio-Management at the University of Stirling, United Kingdom, Dr. Bauld has displayed typical TC obliviousness in stating her incredulity that smokers should be appalled and enraged at government-supported programs designed to destroy smokers' finances, careers, families, social dignity, and their lives generally.

• Benowitz, Neal

Prof. of medicine, UC San Francisco. A reviewer for Tobacco Control. A member and discussion group chair for Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco (SRNT). Known for his role in the redefinition of the word "addiction" so that it could specifically apply more strongly to smoking.

As a paid consultant to pharmaceutical companies, Benowitz has assisted in the design, development, and marketing of smoking-cessation products for Pfizer (manufacturers of Chantix), GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), Novartis, Sanofi-Aventis and Aradigm. He has also received grant support for research and writing from GSK and/or Pfizer. In 2010, he co-authored a (Pfizer-funded) study on the use of its drug Chantix for smoking cessation. He was also a member of an "expert panel" convened by the National Institutes of Health to author the government's Clinical Practice Guideline for "the treatment of tobacco use" (2008) -- a guideline that, not surprisingly, recommended that all smokers who wanted to quit should be treated with... pharmaceuticals. The use of Chantix was also recommended despite its infamous history of causing psychosis, agitation, depression, suicide, violence and a nasty series of neurological problems-- a record that had caused the FDA to black-box it, and the Institute for Safe Medication Practices to call it "the one drug that was responsible for more serious injuries than any other pharmaceutical on the market."

Dr. Michael Siegel devoted two of his blogs in 2011 to highly critical analyses of smoking cessation drugs, here and here. The second analysis goes into great detail on Benowitz's alleged conflicts of interest.

• Bero, Lisa*

Assistant Professor, Institute for Health Policy Studies, UC San Francisco. A colleague of and sometimes co-publisher with Stanton Glantz. Listed in RWJF media guide for “Quality of Research on Environmental Tobacco Smoke by Different Sponsors.”

Bero has been given substantial RWJF money for this project, the results of which were published in JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) in 1999. Basically the “study” says any studies conducted with tobacco funding are bad, but those conducted with other funding (ostensibly including pharmaceutical money from RWJF) are good. A reviewer for Tobacco Control.

• Berteletti-Kemp, Florence

Works as a consultant on European Union health policy to the Smoke Free Partnership in Brussels and is the Vice President of the European Public Health Alliance.In 2009 she trampled on democratic principles and managed to rally support from the tobacco control community to convince the European parliament to forbid a scheduled conference organized by international free-choice groups to discuss the concerns of encroaching prohibition. Some of them falsely accused the organizers of this conference to be tobacco industry representatives when in fact these groups and delegates were ordinary citizens wanting to exercise their right to free speech in a parliament that belongs to all people.

• Biener, Lois*

Senior Research Fellow, University of Massachusetts at Boston Center for Survey Research, Boston MA. Listed as a media contact in RWJF’s guide for the “Survey on Responses to the Massachusetts Tobacco Control Program.” The survey would, among other things, “determine the characteristics of smokers who are most responsive to media messages and to determine which segments of the population are most likely to adopt anti-tobacco stances.” Biener received $220,152 from RWJF for that “study.” She is a frequent RWJF grantee who often publishes journal articles with other RWJF grantees.

• Bloom, John L.*

Tobacco tax policy and international tobacco policy consultant, American Cancer Society. Manager of International Issues for Center for Tobacco-Free Kids. Lawyer and independent policy consultant, wrote “International Interests in U.S. Tobacco Legislation,” Policy Analysis No.3, Health Science Analysis Project of the Advocacy Institute, funded by RWJF and the ACS.

• Bloomberg, Michael

Billionaire Michael Bloomberg, a former smoker known to hold continuing personal affection for dietary indulgence, became Mayor of New York City in 2002. As mayor of New York, and through private contributions to TC and other agencies outside New York, Bloomberg has established himself as a world class enemy of personal responsibility and property rights regarding both smoking and the public's personal dietary choices. Criticism of "nanny" Bloomberg is now approaching unanimity.

• Blum, Alan

Founder of the anti-tobacco organization Doctors Ought to Care (DOC). At Baylor University, Houston. An Honorary Board member of Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation.

• Bristow, Lonnie

Bristow, Lonnie. President, American Medical Association (1995-96). Member of the federal Interagency Committee on Smoking and Health (1988-1994). Board member of the American Legacy Foundation (1999-). Elected to the Institutes of Medicine (1978) for whom he still chairs committees (on laudible subjects such as Veterans' Affairs). But when it comes to tobacco, he tends to go postal. In a page one screed in the Miami Herald (June 13, 1995) he talked about the AMA's war on tobacco. "This is what I call a black flag war," he said to reporter Jane M. Adams. "You fly a black flag when you mean: no prisoners. We're committed to running the tobacco industry out of town." Bristow is currently a practicing physician (Walnut Creek, California).

• Burke, James E.

CEO and Chairman of the Board of Johnson & Johnson from l976 to l989 (he joined J&J in l953 and rose up the corporate ladder to head the corporation). Now a board member of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Also a board member of the RWJF-funded Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA), Chairman of the Board for the RWJF-funded Partnership for a Drug-Free America, and a board member of the Washington Post.

• Burns, David*

Prof. of Medicine, UC San Diego. Among his RWJF-funded projects is an article on the tobacco settlement in Tobacco Control (“What Should Be the Elements of Any Settlement With the Tobacco Industry?” 6(1):1–4, 1997). A former vice president of California Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation in l983 (along with Virginia Ernster) when co-founder Stanton Glantz was president of the organization that later became Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights. Senior scientific editor of the 1986 Surgeon General's Report on "Involuntary Smoking," and an early proponent (1987) of outdoor smoking bans. (According to the Congressional Record, "Dr. Burns had made clear that his single-minded focus on ... restrict[ing] the use of tobacco in any public place was to penalize smokers for their decision to smoke.") Member of the Scientific Advisory Board charged with reviewing the evidence for the EPA's 1993 report which declared cigarette smoke a Class A carcinogen.

More recently, despite his admitting to have earned over $1 million from testifying as an expert witness in lawsuits against tobacco companies, neither his finanical nor intellectual conflicts of interest prevented the FDA from appointing him as an "independent" scientific advisor to its Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee in 2010. Further critical background can be found on pages 45 to 52 at pipes.org

• Califano, Joseph*

President and founder of the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University, which has received primary and massive funding from RWJF. Califano was Jimmy Carter’s Secretary of Health, Education & Welfare, 1977–1979. An Honorary Board member of Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation.

• Callard, Cynthia

Executive Director, Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada.

• Carol, Julia*

Co-Director of Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights and ANR Foundation. Sat on the Koop/Kessler Advisory Committee on Tobacco Policy and Public Health. Also sat on the Special Review Committee, which approved the NCI grant to Richard Daynard to assist in anti-tobacco litigation. Close associate of Stanton Glantz, co-founder and former head of ANR.

• Chaloupka, Frank*

Chaloupka, Frank: His history includes the following: Assoc Prof in Economics, U of IL (Chicago). Research Fellow, National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). Reviewer/Assoc. Editor, Tobacco Control.

Member of the Illinois Coalition Against Tobacco, which, in 1994, got a $1 million grant from RWJF. Member of RWJF's "Research Network on the Etiology of Tobacco Dependence" (TERN). His economic research in the early 90's (funded by RWJF) showed, he claimed, that a 75c/pack tax hike would cut youth smoking in half between 1992 and 1994. He also wrote on the effectiveness of taxation for the US Surgeon General's Reports of 1994 and 1998 and co-authored a 1995 paper, "Criteria for Determining an Optimal Cigarette Tax." All of which have allowed him to combine his two hobbies: hating tobacco and loving taxes.

Aside from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Chaloupka has been funded by the federal government (the NCI, the CDC), and such "charities" as the American Cancer Society (ACS), and both the American Lung (ALA) and Heart (AHA) Associations.

• Chapman, Simon

Australian-based sociologist and anti-smoking zealot. In 1995 he was caught urging colleagues to doctor a paper that didn't show that environmental tobacco smoke significantly increased a person's risk for lung cancer. Excerpt from a two page fax he sent, advising against publishing the paper as is lest the Australian tobacco control movement be ridiculed by the journalists. “[L]ook at Table 7 in the way any journalist would … a reasonable conclusion will be that the idea that there is ANY lung cancer caused by ETS (environmental tobacco smoke) in Australia will be seen as a huge joke.” Copies of the fax can be found here and here.

• Cherner, Joe*

Founder and head of SmokeFree Educational Services in NYC. Very active in attempting to push smoking bans in New York as policy chair for the Coalition for a Smoke-Free City. Cherner is one of the zealots who want smoking bans virtually everywhere. He has been largely unheard from since moving to France several years ago.

• Clayton, Richard*

Director, Center for Prevention Research, University of Kentucky. Program Director for RWJF’s Research Network on the Etiology of Tobacco Dependence. Network chair of RWJF’s Tobacco Etiology Research Network (TERN). Clayton has suggested that schools go beyond health messages to “environmental strategies.” “For instance," he says, "principals could pretend the faculty restrooms are broken, and force teachers to share the students’ restrooms, which would mean fewer kids sneaking in there to smoke” (“The Rehooked Generation: How Do We Help Them Stop?”, by David Ansley, onhealth.com, November 19, 1998).

• Collishaw, Neil

Research director of Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada. He was involved in initiating work on the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.

• Connolly, Gregory

Dentist. His history includes Director, Massachusetts Tobacco Control Program (and the Health Protection Fund), Mass. Dept. of Public Health, in which capacity he oversaw a budget of about $58 million. Adviser to WHO’s Panel on Smoking and Health. Ex-officio member of the board of directors of the American Legacy Foundation. Chair of the RWJF funded 11th World Conference on Smoking & Health (Chicago, 2000). Associate Editor on “Politics of Tobacco Control” and reviewer for the journal Tobacco Control. Involved in tobacco control since ca. l985. He also sat on the Special Review Committee for NCI’s grant to Richard Daynard to assist in anti-tobacco litigation.

A member of the FDA’s Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee, established in 2010 after Congress put tobacco under FDA control with an eye to making it “safer” or at least “less harmful.” Connolly wasn’t interested in making it less harmful but in making it disappear–a fact that was widely known. Dr. Elizabeth Whelan, president of the American Council on Science and Health, called him “the most extreme anti-harm-reduction person I’ve ever heard of”. Connolly opposed electronic cigarettes but promoted the chemically-laced “fire safe” kind while dismissing their higher carcinogenic content as unimportant. Connolly also urged the FDA to ban menthol flavoring, calling it “candy to make the toxins go down.” When the FDA ignored him, he quit “in disgust.”

• Crawford, "Chuck"

President of Kimball Physics, an electronics manufacturer in Wilton, NH. In 1993 he set a company policy to ban, not just smokers, but "tobacco-residuals-emitting persons" from his company premises. ("Residuals," Crawford thought, can be "emitted" by nonsmokers if they've recently talked to a smoker.) Further barred from his door: "anyone who has used a tobacco product within the previous two hours" and "any article of clothing or other object" that has been in the presence of anybody's smoke. Quote Chuck Crawford: " If someone has a wool suit and walks through a bar, they don't wear that suit into the office." Then, too, employees exposed to smoke at home must immediately shower in the company washroom and change into uncontaminated clothes at the start of the workday. No surprise he's on the Board of Trustees of ASH (Action of Smoking and Health), but are you slightly surprised that in 2007 he was awarded the Unsung Hero Award by the American Lung Association for "his tireless efforts to make tobacco control everybody's goal" and for "encouraging more businesses to follow Kimball's policy"? (Actually, we're not surprised either.)

• Cummings, K. Michael*

Sr. Research Scientist, Dept. of Cancer Control & Epidemiology, Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Buffalo, NY. Also a Research Scientist with Health Research, Inc. of Buffalo. Listed in RWJF’s media guide for his “Assessment of the Effects of New York City’s Smoke-Free Restaurant Law...", a study of tax receipt data to determine the economic impact of the ban while gauging consumers’ and restaurant owners’ response to the ban and steps toward ban compliance. Cummings received $183,133 from RWJF for this study.

Cummings is heavily funded by RWJF and co-authored a 1999 AJHP article with RWJF’s C. Tracy Orleans. The article focused heavily on cessation treatments and products and advocated more research on cessation and continued tobacco tax increases, counter advertising, and anti-tobacco "advocacy" (lobbying).

• Curry, Susan J.*

Scientific Investigator, Center for Health Studies, Group Health Cooperative of Puget Sound, WA. The cooperative has received RWJF funding for studying tobacco cessation/control in HMOs. She is listed in the RWJF media guide for her project to examine the cost-effectiveness for HMOs to cover the cost of cessation programs (“Impact of Co-Payments on Use of Smoking Cessation Services in an HMO”).

• Davis, Ron*

Director of the Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, MI. North American editor of the British Medical Journal. Former editor of Tobacco Control. Former head of CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health. Member of the RWJF-funded 1999 Conference Advisory Committee for the American Association of Health Plans’ conference on tobacco control and a presenter at the 2000 conference. Davis is listed as a media contact in RWJF’s media handbook and was awarded $323,254 by RWJF for an “Assessment of Public Opinion on Tobacco Control Policies in Michigan.” In the April 24, 1996 edition of JAMA, Davis wrote an editorial listing RWJF’s support of tobacco control as one of the major assets of the anti-tobacco “community.” He was also the Chair of the Special Review Committee, which approved the NCI grant to Richard Daynard to assist in anti-tobacco litigation.

• Daynard, Richard*

President, Tobacco Control Resource Center, Inc., and Chair, Tobacco Products Liability Project, Northeastern University Law School, Boston MA. Editor of the Tobacco Products Litigation Reporter. He has advised or consulted with most plaintiff attorneys suing tobacco companies over the years and consulted with state attorneys general and private attorneys in the state lawsuits against the tobacco industry, and has sued some of the private attorneys for a share of the money, though he and his TCRC received a $1.1 million grant from the National Cancer Institute to assist with those lawsuits (and others). He and TPLP have also received funding from the CDC for their hosting of annual conferences for anti-tobacco litigators

Daynard has also received a hundreds of thousands of dollars in RWJF grants and is listed in RWJF’s media guide for his RWJF-funded study, “Analysis of the Implications of the Americans With Disabilities Act for Environmental Tobacco Smoke Policy” (or how to use the ADA to force tobacco ban legislation and also conduct litigation). Associate editor forLitigation and reviewer for Tobacco Control. Sat on the RWJF-funded Koop/Kessler Advisory Committee on Tobacco Policy and Public Health. Though he is not an engineer and has no credentials, he has managed to become a voting member of and advisor to the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE). When ASHRAE, after years of resistance, finally agreed to an antismoking position in the 1990s, Daynard bragged, "This culminates a 13-year effort on my part to get the 1989 language ... changed. I was a member of the ASHRAE committee that proposed the change." Advisor to WHO. President GASP Massachusetts since l983. Board of Directors for Stop Teenage Addiction to Tobacco (STAT) and American Nonsmokers’ Rights (ANRF).

• DiFranza, Joseph*

DiFranza, Joseph. Prof. Dept of Family & Community Medicine, U of MA (Worcester). Reviewer for Tobacco Control and member of the Special Review Committee that approved a federal grant (NCI money) for attorney Richard Daynard to assist in anti-tobacco litigation. With RWJF funding, he investigated state compliance with the 1992 Synar Regulation -- a congressional move to end all tobacco sales to "youth" -- and reported that most states had been violating the law. But DiFranza's Big Headines came from murdering Joe Camel, causing uproar with a study implying Joe was a pied piper, luring little children to smoke. Problem was, the study was faked. Halfway into his labors, he bemoaned to his colleagues: "It would appear that we have just disproven our theory that the [Camel] ads appeal more to kids than adults." To get the "right" results, "DiFranza changed the questions that didn't produce the desired answers and included in the results 'kids' who told him they didn't smoke." He also counted 21-year-old grownups as being "kids."

• Douglas, Cliff

President, Tobacco Control Law & Policy Consulting, Evanston, IL.

• Eriksen, Michael

Director of CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health. Served on the Board of Directors of Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights until he resigned in 1991.

• Ernster, Virginia

Prof. of epidemiology, Dept. of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Medicine, UC San Francisco. Tobacco advertising and women. A Vice President of California Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation in 1983 (along with David Burns), when Stanton Glantz was President of the organization that later became ANRF. Ernster was given a CA Prop 99 grant of $528,147 to study “Cigarette Smoking & Facial Wrinkling” (Annual Report to the State of California Legislature l993, University of California, “Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program”).

• Fiore, Michael*

Director, Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention, University of Wisconsin Medical School (Madison, WI). One of the principal investigators with RWJF/NCI/NIDA $14.5 million (RWJF provided $14 million of the total) Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Centers. Has received funding from Glaxo Wellcome and RWJF. His recent Preventive Medicine article, “Cost–Benefit Analysis of Sustained-Release Bupropion, Nicotine Patch or Both for Smoking Cessation” (Mar 2000, Vol. 30, No. 3), which found that bupropion (Zyban) was a more cost–beneficial smoking cessation intervention than the nicotine patch was funded by Glaxo Wellcome, makers of Zyban.

Between 1999 and 2004, Dr. Fiore personally received $10,000 to $40,000 a year from the quitting-aid industry for honorariums and consulting work. According to his own 2008 JAMA article: "In the past 5 years, Dr Fiore reports that he has lectured and consulted for Pfizer and has served as an investigator on research studies at the University of Wisconsin (UW) that were supported by GlaxoSmithKline, Nabi, Pfizer, and sanofi-aventis."

• Flora, Jane A.*

Associate Director, Stanford Center for Research in Disease Prevention, Stanford Univ. School of Medicine. Listed in RWJF media guide for study, “Advertising/Promotion Influences on Adolescent Perceptions of Smoking.” More in the “advertising, promotional items, and movies cause kids to smoke” vein

• Fong, T. Geoffrey*

Professor and Director, Health Psychology Lab, University of Waterloo, Ontario Canada. Founder and Chief Principal Investigator of the International Tobacco Control Policy Evaluation Project. The ITC Project has received over $15M CDN in grant funding so far including, recently, one of CIHR’s largest grants to date. As well as being backed by CIHR (the Canadian Institutes of Health Research), the ITC Project has received funding from the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI), Cancer Research UK, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the American Cancer Society (ACS), the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia (NHMRC), and the Canadian Tobacco Control Research Initiative (CTCRI).

• Galanter, Marc*

Director, Institute for Legal Studies, University of Wisconsin–Madison Law School. Received a $288,967 RWJF grant in 1994 for “Assessing the Potential Contribution of Lawsuits in Controlling Tobacco Risks.”

• Garner, Don*

Professor of Law, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, School of Law. Listed in RWJF’s media guide and funded by RWJF to write a “Model Municipal Ordinance Prohibiting Cigarette Billboards.” Garner helped cities draft legislation to ban tobacco billboards and restrict tobacco ad placement. The “model” ordinance was mailed to 1000 state municipalities and “citizens groups.” Garner is also a reviewer for Tobacco Control. Interestingly, back in 1991, prior to getting RWJF funding, Garner said job discrimination against smokers was an unfair labor practice: “‘More and more, smokers [comprise] minorities, women and the poor,’ he said. ‘To take job opportunities away from a population that needs more job opportunities strikes me as an unfair labor practice.’” And he continued in that vein talking about employers dictating the private but unhealthy behavioral choices of employees: “It’s in a sense Nazi-like in its extreme desire for purity ... Or do you recognize we all sin, all fall short of the glory of God, and take a softer approach?” (Bosses Snoop into Private Lives, Alan Sipress, Pittsburgh Press, April 7, 1991).

• Garrison, John

American Lung Association. Sat on the RWJF-funded “Koop/Kessler” Advisory Committee on Tobacco Policy and Public Health.

• Gilmore, Anna

British anti-smoking campaigner, former board member of ASH and current director of the UK's Tobacco Control Research Group. Gilmore rose to prominence when she and her colleagues published a study in the British Medical Journal claiming that the English smoking ban reduced the heart attack rate by 2.4%. This was an attempt to shore up the flagging 'Helena Hypothesis' devised by Stanton Glantz, albeit with a much lower figure (Glantz had claimed 40%). As with previous efforts, routine hospital admissions data showed that the smoking ban had no effect whatsoever on the number of heart attacks; the heart attack rate fell at exactly the same rate after the ban as it had done in the years preceding the ban. It transpired that Gilmore had simply looked at the long-term downward trend in heart attack admissions and attributed half of the 2007/08 decline to the smoking ban. Like Jill Pell, Gilmore was rewarded for this brazen misuse of statistics with a professorship in public health. She continues to write prolifically about many aspects of tobacco control, but has also attempted to discuss economics (she believes that companies are "legally obliged to maximise shareholder returns") and alcohol. On the latter topic, she borrows liberally from tobacco control rhetoric, referring to the drinks industry as "mosquitoes" who spread disease. Anna Gilmore is the only named co-founder of tobaccotactics.org, the taxpayer-funded website which attempts to smear anyone who speaks out against tobacco prohibitionists as being "the industry, its allies and others promoting the pro-smoking agenda".

• Giovino, Gary

CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health chief of epidemiology until 1999. Now at Roswell Park in Buffalo, he is a colleague of Michael Cummings. An executive officer of Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco (SRNT) and RWJF’s Tobacco Etiology Research Network (TERN). A Senior Editor of Tobacco Control.

• Glantz, Stanton*

Stanton Glantz is arguably the most influential anti-smoking activist (or at least the most successful in grabbing media coverage) of the last thirty years. To his friends, he is a pioneering hero; to his enemies, a dangerous crank. Whether under the guise of activist or researcher, Glantz has been involved in most of the major developments in the tobacco control enterprise since 1975. He was the main proponent of 'denormalisation' in the 1970s – long before the approach even had a name. In the 1980s, he founded Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights and led the fight for the first smoking bans in his home town of San Francisco. In the 1990s, he was the source for the claim that 50,000 Americans died every year as a result of secondhand smoke (a figure so outright silly at the time that even the EPA refused to include it in their 1992 Report on ETS). He was instrumental in bringing secret tobacco industry documents before the public and has written prolifically about almost every aspect of tobacco control.

In recent years, Glantz has been a key player in the efforts to persuade the public that secondhand smoke is not merely dangerous but is extraordinarily lethal. His written output in this decade has included such papers as "Even a little secondhand smoke is dangerous" [PDF] – in which it was claimed that just 30 minutes of exposure to smoke could cause a heart attack. He also co-authored the infamous Helena heart attack study, which purported to demonstrate that exposure to smoke caused 40% of heart attacks in one Montanan town. He is also perhaps the only person on earth who believes that passive smoking causes breast cancer despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary and despite the fact that active smoking does not cause the disease.

Glantz has been accused of twisting data and disregarding crucial facts to promote his extreme anti-smoking agenda (he is unashamedly prohibitionist). It comes as a surprise, then, to find that one of his earliest published papers was an appeal for greater scientific rigour in epidemiological studies. Click here for full text by Christopher Snowdon. Click here for Glantz's early (1980) article. Click here regarding RWJF funding for Glantz.

• Goldstein, Adam*

Clinical Asst. Professor, Department of Family Medicine, UNC Chapel Hill. Listed as a contact in RWJF’s media guide for “Attitudes of State Legislators Toward Tobacco and Tobacco Control Policies.”

• Gottlieb, Mark*

Associate of Richard Daynard on staff of the Tobacco Products Liability Project and Tobacco Control Resource Center at Northeastern University Law School in Boston MA. Specialty is use of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to promote smoking bans and to bring lawsuits.

• Grossman, Michael*

Prof. of Economics, City University of New York Graduate School and Research Associate and Program Director of Health Economics Research, National Bureau of Economic Research. A close professional associate of Frank Chaloupka with whom he has conducted numerous studies on tobacco and alcohol taxes and with whom he has published many tobacco-related articles and op-eds and letters to the editor, the subject of which is almost always a call for higher taxes on smokers. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, Institute of Medicine (1990- ).

• Gruman, Jesse*

Founding Executive Director of the Center for the Advancement of Health (CFAH), begun in 1992 to “promote a view of health that recognizes the role of psychological, behavioral and social factors in personal and public health services.” Prior to becoming CFAH’s CEO, Gruman designed and directed NCI’s anti-tobacco ASSIST program, which developed and funded anti-tobacco coalitions in 17 states (coalitions headed by ACS, ALA, AHA). From l986 to l988, Gruman was the National Director of Public Education for the American Cancer Society. The CFAH also publishes the American Journal of Health Promotion.

• Gutman, Marjorie*

Director, Prevention Research, Treatment Research Institute, University of Pennsylvania. “Special Consultant’ to RWJF for the Tobacco Etiology Research Network (TERN). RWJF’s Senior Program Officer for the Research Network Initiative on the Etiology of Tobacco Dependence (begun by RWJF in 1996).

• Hatsukami, Dorothy*

Prof., Dept. of Psychiatry and Director of the Tobacco Research Program at the University of Minnesota. One of the researchers funded by RWJF/NCI/NIDA Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Centers. President of Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco (SRNT).

• Henningfield, Jack*

Former Chief, clinical pharmacology for the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). Now an Assoc. Prof. of behavioral biology at Johns Hopkins University Medical School and Vice-Pres. for Research and Health Policy at Pinney Associates (Bethesda, MD), which does consulting and research and health policy. Associate editor for “Addiction and pharmacology” and a reviewer for Tobacco Control. Henningfield is also known for his early work with Benowitz in promoting the idea of tobacco as seriously addictive, rather than simply habit-forming, drug. This work was quite valuable in establishing a public negative image of smokers as addicts and therefore undeserving of equal rights. An officer and past president of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco (SRNT), and a core member of RWJF’s Tobacco Etiology Research Network (TERN).

Currently works for the WHO (TobReg). He often fails to declare his striking competing interests in Big Pharma. Considering that he is “above the law”, he does not disclose in his numerous interventions as a consultant for the mainstream media – and even as a ““peer-reviewer”” in scientific journals- that he actually is “Vice President, Research & Health Policy” of Pinney Associates, a wealthy company whose business is "international pharmaceutical manufacturers and marketers, established specialty pharmaceutical companies, and start-up companies making their first forays into the development and marketing of drugs”. Jack Henningfield’s undeclared competing interests.

• Hobart, Robin

Co-Director of American Nonsmokers’ Rights Assn. and ANR Foundation.

• Hoffmann, Dietrich

Associate Director, American Health Foundation, Valhalla, NY. Worked on many U.S. Surgeon General’s reports.

• Houston, Tom*

AMA’s Director of the Department of preventive medicine and environmental health, in which capacity he develops policy for the AMA and physicians on tobacco and smoking issues and drafts, introduces and testifies on tobacco legislation. Also is National Program Director of RWJF’s heavily funded SmokeLess States Initiative, promoting and supporting supposedly local "grassroots" smoking ban efforts.

He acknowledges that he and the AMA get funding from the pharmaceutical industry, specifically from makers of cessation products. Houston also sat on the RWJF-funded “Koop/Kessler” Advisory Committee on Tobacco Policy and Public Health.

• Hughes, John

Prof. of psychiatry, psychology and family practice, University of Vermont, Dept. of Psychiatry. Cessation (Columbia Journalism Review media handbook says his specialty is “nicotine withdrawal, drug therapies and patches to help people quit smoking”). Member of and spokesman for the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco (SRNT). President, Association for the Treatment of Tobacco Use and Dependence (2009- ) which apparently believes the mere "use" of tobacco requires "treatment."

In a 2009 letter to the FDA he urged it to ban electronic cigarettes because smokers who attempt to use them to quit "may become frustrated" and stop trying and therefore "will die." Or, in other words, implying that e-cigs kill. Instead, he recommends that smokers use only pharmaceutical products. By an eerie coincidence (nothing to see here; please move on), Dr. Hughes is the recipient of research grants from Pfizer Pharmaceuticals (Chantix et al), Sanofi-Synthelabo Pharmaceuticals (actively developing quit-smoking drugs), as well as honoraria from Warner Pharmaceuticals, McNeil and Nabi.

For some strange reason he doesn't seem to worry that the 90 to 99.2% failure rate of his favored products might cause smokers to become frustrated and die. It is also odd that he expresses a "fear that naive children can be exposed to" e-cigs "as a gateway tobacco product" while neglecting to voice any concern about children poisoning themselves with the NicoGummyPatchyProducts he favors. (General information based on a May 1st article by Dr. Michael Siegel at tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.com)

• Hurt, Richard

Director, Nicotine Dependence Center, and Nicotine Research Center, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN. Cessation.

• Kabat, Geoffrey C.

Senior Epidemiologist, PhD, MS, Albert Einstein College of Medicine Department of Epidemiology and Population Health.

Geoffrey C. Kabat has been highly critical of the environmental tobacco smoke (ETS)/secondhand smoke/passive smoking pseudo-science. A large study on ETS which he performed together with James E. Enstrom reported results distasteful to the prohibitionists. Many orthodox Tobacco Control health professionals have heaped condemnation on Enstrom and on Kabat in result. Kabat in turn has strenuously protested the close-minded, persecutorial unfairness of his colleagues toward himself and toward other epidemiologists who deviate from strict Tobacco Control dogma in terms of statistical interpretations.

Nevertheless, and despite having expressed an opinion that smokers “aren’t evil”, Kabat continues to adhere to the strict orthodoxy of Tobacco Control in terms of society. He contends that, based on his own sense of aesthetics, Tobacco Control’s inherently and intentionally stigmatizing smoking bans are good. He sees no unfairness whatsoever in universally denying to smokers, as a matter of criminal law, any social milieux in which they could be accommodated, as and amongst friends, with dignity and respect. Tobacco Control’s edict that its strict orthodoxy must be imposed upon everyone, everywhere, without exception, does not strike Doctor Kabat as being close-minded when it comes to the matter of socially governing law; or anyway, when it comes to law which persecutes smokers, and does not persecute non-smokers such as Geoffrey Kabat or his personal circle of friends.

As he has written on the subject: “Whatever one thinks about the lethality of environmental tobacco smoke, it appears to me to be an enormous step in the direction of a civilized society to not have to stand on line in a poorly-ventilated post office behind someone puffing on a cigarette or cigar. Nevertheless, I believe it was a mistake for authorities to feel they had to justify smoking restrictions based on the flimsy science linking ETS to fatal diseases.... I completely agree with Professor [Luiz Antonio de] Castro-Santos that smokers, who are now a beleaguered minority, should not be stigmatized. ... But, by the same token, I am not inclined to bemoan the loss of this particular practice – as much as it contributed to the ambience of Paris cafés.”

• Kauffman, Nancy, RN*

Vice-President of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Represented the RWJF on the federal Interagency Committee on Smoking and Health beginning in 1995. Also assisted with SCARCnet.

• Keeler, Theodore*

Professor, University of California at Berkeley. Listed in RWJF media guide for “Analysis of Ways to Enhance Smoking Cessation and Deterrence Programs Directed at Individuals,” which investigated the effect of government-imposed restrictions on the marketing and availability of smoking cessation aides such as the patch and gum. The study findings were expected in the fall of 1998. (And subsequently the FDA approved J&J’s Nicotrol for over-the-counter sale in record time, ahead of its competitors’ products.)

• Kelder, Graham*

Associate of Richard Daynard at Tobacco Products Liability Project and Tobacco Control Resource Center at Northeastern University Law School. His specialty is defending cities and towns in smoking ban lawsuits.

• Kilbourne, Jean

Media Education Foundation (Northampton MA). Author of the Foundation’s “Pack of Lies: The Advertising of Tobacco.”

• Kropp, Rick*

Executive Director, North Bay Health Resources Center, Inc in Petaluma, CA. Listed in RWJF’s media guide for “Study of Ways to Reduce Tobacco Sales to Minors.”

• Lando, Harry

Professor, division of epidemiology, University of Minnesota. Cessation. A reviewer for Tobacco Control.

• Lee, Philip R.

Assistant secretary designate for health, DHHS. Oversees FDA, CDC and National Institutes of Health.

• Lichtenstein, Edward

Researcher, Oregon Research Institute (Eugene, OR). Field is smoking cessation clinics and the role of doctors in cessation. A reviewer for Tobacco Control.

• Manley, Mark

Office of the Surgeon General, Chief, public health applications, research branch, National Cancer Institute.

• McGinnis, J. Michael*

In 1997 he was hired as a consultant to RWJF to “help the Foundation expand its knowledge base of effective behavior interventions and their link to advances in biomedicine and human genetics” (RWJF Advances, Issue 1, 1997). Prior to being hired by RWJF, McGinnis was Dept. of Health and Human Services, Disease Prevention and Health Promotion deputy assistant secretary for health and was assistant surgeon general. He is also a consultant to the National Academy of Sciences, the WHO, and The Woodrow Wilson School of Government at Princeton.

• Miller, Leonard S.*

Professor, UC Berkeley, School of Social Welfare. Listed in RWJF media guide for a study entitled, “Determining Current Costs of Cigarette Smoking,” which estimated the smoking-attributable Medicaid expenditures in all 50 states (for local antismoking publicity purposes and possibly in preparation for state suits?). Completed in March 1996, the “study” found that the state expenditures averaged about 5.64 percent of the state Medicaid budgets from 1980 to 1993.

• Montgomery, Kathryn*

President, Center for Media Education, Washington, DC. Listed in RWJF media guide for “Analysis of Alcohol and Tobacco Companies’ Use of Electronic Communications for Marketing.” Results were expected to appear in late 1996. (And now there is a push to get online tobacco marketing banned – because of the “children,” and their widespread and profligate use of credit cards to order cartons of cigarettes that their parents never notice of course.)

• Morrison, Alan*

Co-Founder, Public Citizen Foundation, Inc., Washington, DC. Listed in RWJF media guide for “Research on Laws Regulating Tobacco Products,” which provided an “analysis of the constitutionality of the FDA’s proposal to regulate tobacco products.” Naturally, the analysis found that it was perfectly consistent with the Constitution for the FDA to restrict tobacco advertising targeted at youth (and isn’t it ALL targeted at youth, according to the antis?), though it questioned whether the FDA could constitutionally compel the tobacco industry to underwrite an anti-tobacco public education program.

• Myers, Matt*

Executive Vice President and General Counsel for Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. In the early 80s he was in charge of the Federal Trade Commission’s tobacco advertising program. According to the 1996 Colombia Journalism Review’s “Covering Tobacco” media handbook, Myers was involved “on most of the tobacco legislation to come out of Washington in the last decade.” Served for 10 years as staff director of the Coalition on Smoking or Health (anti-tobacco coalition of ACS, ALA, AHA) until it morphed into the RWJF-funded Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids in 1996.

Was also a partner in the Washington DC law firm of Asbill, Junkin & Myers until 1996. He was a key participant in the initial national tobacco settlement talks, and sat on the RWJF-funded Koop/Kessler Advisory Committee on Tobacco Policy and Public Health.

• Ockene, Judith

Director, Dept. of Preventive and Behavioral Medicine, University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, MA, which has received many RWJF grants. An executive officer of Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco (SRNT). Sat on the federal Interagency Committee on Smoking and Health from its first official meetings in l986 through l988.

• O’Keefe, Ann Marie*

Vice President, Board of Directors, American Nonsmokers’ Rights and ANR Foundation. Also with Prospect Associates (recipient of many federal contracts). Also sat on the review committee for Richard Daynard’s NCI grant to assist in anti-tobacco litigation.

• Opperhuizen, Antoon

Vice-Chair of the WHO Tobacco Laboratory Network (TobLabNet); Scientific Advisor, European Commission; Head, WHO Collaborating Centre for Tobacco Product Regulation and Control, since 2007; Special advisor to the WHO FCTC, COP Secretariat for articles 9 and 10, since 2008; Has published over 200 scientific articles on topics associated with exposure, health effects and addiction, the variables that affect nicotine exposure/addiction/effects in cigarette smokers, and lung/respiratory health determinants; Head of the Laboratory of Toxicology, Pathology, and Genetics, of the National Institute of Public Health and the Environment (RIVM – NL).

• Orleans, C. Tracy*

Senior Program Officer for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Associate Editor of “Smoking cessation” and reviewer for Tobacco Control. Has co-edited a book with John Slade (Nicotine Addiction, NY; Oxford University Press, 1993), and has authored a number of journal articles, both alone and with such big RWJF grantees as Michael Cummings.

• Pell, Jill*

Author of two notoriously flawed studies claiming that Scotland's smoking ban reduced heart attack admissions and childhood asthma admissions in Scottish hospitals. In both cases, official Scottish NHS statistics showed her findings to be false (see here and here for details). Her heart attack study was debunked by the BBC in 2007 and was included in The Times' list of "Top 10 Junk Stats of 2007", but continues to be treated as serious evidence by many journalists and anti-smoking campaigners. Pell is cited as a physician by the University of Glasgow despite having no medical qualifications. Shortly after her Scottish 'heart miracle' study was published, she was made a Professor of Public Health.

• Pertschuk, Mark*

President, Board of Directors, American Nonsmokers’ Rights and ANR Foundation.

• Pertschuk, Michael*

Co-Director and co-founder of the Advocacy Institute (A.I. founded in l984, the same year the federal Interagency Committee on Smoking and Health was established). Former Chair of the Federal Trade Commission under the Carter administration (1977-81). He was considered too radical by many legislators and was replaced as head of the FTC, though he continued to serve as an FTC commissioner through l983 and, among other things, monitored tobacco advertising. As a congressional staff member in the 1960s and 70s, he helped develop the legislation for warning labels on cigarette packs and the TV ad ban.

An expert spinmeister, Pertschuk helped develop the “Bork Bork” campaign against the appointment of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court. In l989 he and the A.I. produced “Media Strategies for Smoking Control: Guidelines” for the NIH (and funded by NIH). The handbook states that behind every story detailing the “risks” of ETS could be found “[a] scientist wise in the way of ‘creative epidemiology,’ i.e., the presentation of data – both scientifically sound and artful – so as to catch the glint of media attention.” The report describes “creative epidemiology” thus: “Michael Daube, who coined the term, defines creative epidemiology as ‘the ability of the good epidemiologist to rework data so that what is essentially the same information can be presented in a new and interesting form.’ Thus creative epidemiology marries the science of the researcher with the art and creativity of the media advocate,” (p. 21-22).

Under a $4 million sub-contract for the National Cancer Institute, he developed and managed the encrypted anti-tobacco electronic communications network SCARCnet. He also developed SCARCnet’s international equivalent, Globalnet - a closed internet based communications network tightly restricted to approved Tobacco Control personnel. Such notables as Dr. Michael Siegel and Kamal Chiouchi have been expelled from Globalink for their heretical views. He was also a member of the RWJF-funded “Koop-Kessler” advisory committee on the original tobacco settlement, and the A.I. has directly received funding from RWJF. He is an honorary board member of Americans for Nonsmokers Rights.

• Pierce, John

The Cancer Prevention and Control Program at UC San Diego. A reviewer for Tobacco Control.

• Pinney, Joe*

President of Pinney Associates, Inc., which does private consulting (Jack Henningfield is one of the associates). Formerly at the CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health. One of the primary (and most active) board members of the Society for Research in Nicotine and Tobacco (SRNT). Pinney Associates has received grant/contract funding from RWJF and Pinney is currently a consultant to SmithKline Beecham for their $100 million ad campaign for Nicoderm. Pinney has only a B.A. degree.

• Pipe, Andrew*

Dr. Andrew Pipe is Chief of the Division of Prevention and Rehabilitation at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute and Professor in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Ottawa. A former Chair of Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada, he is a Life Member of the Canadian Council on Smoking and Health. Among other anti-tobacco initiatives over the years, he was instrumental in developing the Ottawa Model For Smoking Cessation In Primary Care which is strongly focused on pharmacotherapy. More recently he enthusiastically supported outdoor smoking bans in Ottawa, Canada. Read published letter in the Ottawa Citizen . It is well documented that Dr. Pipe receives honoraria, speaking fees, research and educational support from various pharmaceutical companies.

• Pope, Gregory*

Center for Health Economics Research, Inc., Waltham, MA. Listed in RWJF media guide for “Study of the Adoption and Economic Effects of Smoke-free Restaurant Ordinances in Massachusetts.” Results were expected in early 1997.

• Proctor, Robert

The historian Robert N Proctor, author of The Nazi War on Cancer, has regularly argued that, despite their more egregious errors, the Nazis were in fact capable of performing very good scientific work. And on several occasions he has cited the example of the V2 rocket. In 2008, he wrote an article in 'Tobacco Control' titled 'On playing the Nazi card'.

Robert Proctor clearly wishes to associate Nazi antismoking research with the former kind of respectable science. But into which category does it really fall? Adolf Hitler ignored and scorned the V2 rocket for an entire decade, but he put 100,000 Reichsmarks of his own money into The Scientific Institute for the Research into the Hazards of Tobacco, an institute whose very name indicates clearly its prejudicial intent, as did the telegram from Hitler it received at its inauguration: "I send my best wishes for your work which will liberate mankind from one of its most dangerous poisons". The Nazi assault on tobacco was part and parcel of its programme to rid German society of such 'poisons', of which the Jews were one, and tobacco was another.

• Rabin, Robert*

Professor of law at Stanford University Law School. Served as Senior Consultant for RWJF’s “Tobacco and substance abuse policy program.”

• Repace, James

James Repace, an anti-smoker who calls himself a "health physicist" (he has an M.S. in physics) and also a "secondhand smoke consultant", is a great darling of the Tobacco Control Industry and has performed some of its most comical anti-scientific pratfalls. He is well known for his vituperative reactions to the ridicule he engenders (from the public generally but which he likes to blame on evilly inspired "industry moles"). Some examples of his scientific slapstick at these links: Bouncing Body Counts – Courtroom Cut-up – Off with Their Tongues.

• Rigotti, Nancy*

Founder and Director of Tobacco Research and Treatment Center, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston MA. A scientific editor for the l989 Surgeon General’s report on tobacco, for which Kenneth Warner was the Chief Scientific Editor. Listed in Robert Wood Johnson Foundation media guide for RWJF grant on “Does Active Enforcement of Tobacco Sales Laws Reduce Adolescents’ Smoking?” Has done a number of studies funded by RWJF, including: “Impediments to the enforcement of youth access laws” (with Joseph DiFranza, Tobacco Control, 1999 Summer;8(2):152–155). Also does studies and writes articles such as the American Cancer Society and National Cancer Institute-funded “The use of nicotine-replacement therapy by hospitalized smokers” (Rigotti, Arnsten J., McKool K., Wood-Reid K., et al, American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Nov 1999; 17(4),255–259) supporting use of pharmaceutical cessation products. Was a member of a research team at the Institute for the Study of Smoking, Behavior and Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government for five years in the 80s until the Institute closed in 1990. With regard to underage smoking: “Since prevention isn’t working, we need to focus on cessation,” (“The Rehooked Generation: How Do We Help Them Stop?” by David Ansley, onhealth.com, November 19, 1998). An executive officer of SRNT.

• Samet, Jonathan

Until 2009 chairman of Dept. of Epidemiology, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. Since then Professor and Chair for the Department of Preventive Medicine at the Keck School of Medicine at University of Southern California and Director, USC Institute for Global Health.

Funded by SmithKline Beecham in carrying out China’s Third National Survey on Smoking, which was presented at the 10th World Conference on Smoking and Health at Beijing in August 1997. SmithKline Beecham, at that time the world’s leading marketer of smoking cessation products and programs, also funded the Johns Hopkins Institute for Global Tobacco Control in the School of Public Health in 1998.

Jonathan Samet has played a prominent role in reviews of the epidemiologic evidence on passive smoking for over 25 years. He was consulting editor for the Surgeon General 1986 report about passive smoking, and played a major role in the epidemiologic analysis for the 1992 EPA-report. Samet was chairman of the group behind the IARC 2003 Monograph 83 of smoking & passive smoking. He was also the senior scientific editor of the Surgeon General's 2004 and 2006 reports and thus responsible for the omission of the Enstrom & Kabat 2003 BMJ-study from the SG 2006-report.

Jonathan Samet is one of the leaders of the inner circle of TC in the WHO, working for Tobacco Control globally. He is the one James Enstrom compares to the Soviet scientist Trofim Lysenko in his 2007 defense against the ad hominem attacks on Enstrom, launched by the Tobacco Control Industry after the publication of the BMJ-study in 2003: Defending legitimate epidemiologic research: combating Lysenko pseudoscience

Jonathan Samet has some serious financial conflicts of interests with the big pharmaceutical players in the anti-smoking industry: While he is chairman of the FDA's Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee and sits on several other advisory boards for the US-government, he is at the same time chairing the Nicorette-owners in The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Health & Society Scholars program, which is designed to build the nation’s capacity for research, leadership and policy change to address the multiple determinants of population health.

Jonathan Samet also has financial conflicts of interest with the multinationals GlaxoSmithKline & Pfizer and other anti-smoking foundations:

Dr. Samet has received grant support from GlaxoSmithKline, the American Legacy Foundation, Flight Attend Medical Research Institute (FAMRI), and Atlantic Philanthropies. - Smoking Bans Prevent Heart Attacks

The Institute for Global Tobacco Control receives financial support from GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer ... Jonathan Samet have agreed to serve on Pfizer's global tobacco control advisory board and will be compensated. - Mexico and the tobacco industry: doing the wrong thing for the right reason?

Samet is an Associate Editor for “Health effects of tobacco use” and a reviewer for Tobacco Control.

• Schayck, Onno van

Maastricht University (CAPHRI), Netherlands. Van Schayck tests an anti-smoking vaccine (NicVax) for Nabi Biopharmaceuticals. Also sponsored by Pfizer (research on Varenicline/Champix/Chantix) en Boehringer in the past.

Dr van Schayck also has received honoraria from Pfizer for participation in speaking activities and received financing (grants, consultancy, and/or travel/accommodation costs) from AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim and Pfizer.

• Schroeder, Steven

President and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Recruited by RWJF in l989 from UC San Francisco (academic home of zealot Stanton Glantz), Schroeder became the president of RWJF in 1990. Under his leadership, by 1991 the foundation developed a new focus on combating tobacco use, alcohol and substance abuse as a priority. Schroeder also is on the staff of the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, where John Slade, a benefactor of many RWJF grants, is also on staff.

In his President’s Message in the 1997 RWJF Annual Report, Shroeder wrote: “In the case of the proposed tobacco settlement, it appears that the Foundation was one of a number of actors that elevated the prominence of tobacco as a national policy issue. It accomplished this by funding research, policy analysis, public opinion polls and articulate spokesmen who could highlight the health risks of smoking as well as the addictive nature of tobacco. In addition, The (RWJF-funded) National Center for Tobacco-Free Kids helped to broker the settlement itself.”

Under Schroeder’s leadership, the RWJF has pushed for higher and higher tobacco taxes, FDA regulation of tobacco, more anti-tobacco litigation, and more use of and prominence for and access to cessation products (such as Johnson & Johnson’s products).

Schroeder is now one of the 11 board members of the American Legacy Foundation, the $200 million a year anti-tobacco entity created by the tobacco settlement and funded by American smokers via higher tobacco product prices. Also on the board are Kenneth Warner, heavily funded by RWJF, and Lonnie Bristow, former president of the American Medical Association, which is heavily funded by RWJF and the Pharmaceutical Industry. Since RWJF’s primary worth is its ownership of Johnson & Johnson stocks (it is the single largest shareholder), Schroeder’s presence on the ALF board of directors seems like a major conflict of interest.

• Seffrin, John

Executive & Chief Staff Officer, American Cancer Society. Was a member of the federal Interagency Committee on Smoking and Health 1988–1993. The ACS is the named recipient of many of RWJF’s SmokeLess States awards and is also the lead non-governmental head of most state anti-tobacco coalitions, funded by RWJF, NCI (ASSIST) and CDC (IMPACT). Also sat on the RWJF-funded “Koop/Kessler” Advisory Committee on Tobacco Policy and Public Health at the time of the original tobacco settlement.

• Shiffman, Saul*

Prof. of psychology, smoking research group, University of Pittsburgh. Is a member of RWJF’s Tobacco Etiology Research Network (TERN) and the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco (SRNT).

• Shopland, Don

Coordinator of the National Cancer Institute’s Smoking & Tobacco Control Program. He has worked on every Surgeon General’s report to come out since the first one in l964 and was Acting Director of CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health from l985-87 and as such helped initiate the Interagency Committee on Smoking and Health, which began in l986. Actively involved with NCI’s ASSIST program. A reviewer for Tobacco Control.

• Siegel, Michael

Medical Doctor, Research Associate, Social and Behavioral Sciences Department, Boston University School of Public Health. He spent two years at the CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health, and prior to that was Preventive Medicine resident at UC Berkeley. Member of the Board of Directors of Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation until he resigned early in 2000, possibly because of the public emergence of the news of ANR’s tax-funded “enemies” list, though his resignation came immediately after he was challenged over a false accusation against Robert Levy of the Cato Institute which appeared in an article (signed by Siegel) on ANR’s website. The article itself proposed using smears to deflate scientific challenges to anti-tobacco junk science rather than debating on scientific grounds. Siegel clashed with ANR leadership when he insisted that one of his earlier claims, which he now believed was mistaken, be removed. ANR claimed that maintaining their political position was more important than Siegel's personal and scientific integrity. Siegel disagreed strongly and has become highly critical of many mainstream antismoking efforts in the following years. A reviewer for Tobacco Control, Siegel has also worked with Lois Biener on studies supporting Massachusetts’s heavily funded anti-tobacco program, which is headed by Greg Connolly.

Siegel now runs a critical blog in which he accuses TC of going too far. He thus has established a degree of celebrity for his opposition to some tobacco control tactics, including their attacks on Free Choice advocates, most of their outdoor ban proposals, and their attempts to ban smoking in smokers' own homes; Siegel has said he believes these sorts of expanded bans could create a popular backlash which ultimately might reverse the smoker pogrom entirely.

Siegel has been criticized for supporting policies that encourage the general exclusion of smokers from society, scorning individual choice and the property rights of business owners, and continuing his advocacy of the bulk of anti-smoking science in support of positions and practices that further "de-normalize" and vilify smokers. Siegel however has also been praised for his harsh criticism of clearly biased advocacy science that promotes extreme concerns over minute exposures to smoke and other similarly extremist studies and claims. Siegel has been one of the leading forces in debunking the junk science of Tobacco Control's favored "Instant Heart Attack" studies and has written passionately against exclusion of smokers from work and against medical care discrimination aimed at smokers. Other TC advocates, especially Stanton Glantz (viz.), have harshly condemned Michael Siegel for criticizing their no-holds-barred approach to destroying the lives of tobacco consumers.

It should be noted however that many in the Free Choice community are still quite critical of Siegel's stance in a number of areas. Some feel, and have argued strongly, that Siegel's criticisms of some anti-smoker policies may simply represent a tactical view designed to support "effective" anti-smoking policies rather than representing any real philosophical criticism of anti-smoking goals.

Siegel is correct that a popular backlash against Tobacco Control has long been forming and is rapidly growing. His prescription for tactical adjustment of TC policies (which some have compared to Mikhail Gorbachev's 1980s policy of attempting preservation of Communism in the USSR through institution of moderate reform) is likely to fail to preserve the core of more basic Tobacco Control objectives from ultimate destruction by the excesses of the extremists. Those he has become critical of generally seek total denormalization and prohibition despite any human costs involved.

• Sirchia, Girolamo

Italian Minister of Health from June 2001 to April 2005 and known for the Italian smoking ban (Sirchia law) in all indoor public places. As reported in Italy Mag he was convicted to three years in jail and was banned from holding public office for five years for graft.

• Sitzer, Maxine

Prof. Dept. of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Johns Hopkins Univ. School of Medicine. Committee Chair, Society of Research on Nicotine and Tobacco (Scientific Liaison: Public Policy Council).

• Slade, John*

Assoc. Prof. Dept of Med., Univ. of Medicine & Dentistry of New Jersey, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School (St. Peter’s Medical Center). Slade has been a key organizer of an annual addiction medicine conference, and has promoted FDA regulation of tobacco since the late 80s. He has received numerous RWJF grants and co-edited a book with RWJF’s C. Tracy Orleans (Nicotine Addiction NY: Oxford University Press, 1993). Is listed in RWJF’s media guide for his “Analysis of Whether Tobacco Meets the Legal Definition of a Drug,” which Slade says it does. The analysis was submitted to the FDA in 1996 on behalf of the American Society of Addiction Medicine. Slade is also an Associate Editor, “Legislation and regulation” and reviewer for Tobacco Control.

• Sopenski, Judy*

Executive Director of Stop Teenage Addiction to Tobacco (STAT), which was among the first organizations to be given a tobacco control grant from RWJF when tobacco became one of its focus areas in 1991-1992. STAT is based in Springfield MA, and is one of the first anti-tobacco programs to utilize children in its activist approach. Also sat on the RWJF-funded “Koop/Kessler” Advisory Committee on Tobacco Policy and Public Health.

• Sweda, Ed*

Associate of Richard Daynard at the Tobacco Control Resource Center and the Tobacco Products Liability Project at Northeastern University Law School in Boston. His specialty is ETS lawsuits.

• Thun, Michael

American Cancer Society vice president for Epidemiology and Surveillance Research. A reviewer for Tobacco Control.

• Tilson, Melodie

Director of Policy, Non-Smokers' Rights Association, Ontario, Canada

• Warner, Kenneth*

Prof. and Chair, Dept. of Public Health Policy and Administration, Univ. of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Warner is a reviewer for Tobacco Control and has received enormous RWJF funding and is listed in RWJF media guide for his study, “The Employment Implications of Declining Tobacco Product Sales for the Regional Economies of the U.S.” Essentially, the study says that there won’t be economic loss in most states if tobacco goes under because people will spend the money on other things. It acknowledges that the 6 major tobacco-producing states would be affected, but that it wouldn’t be as bad as expected and the gains in other states would be worth the loss in the Southeast. Warner has continually worked on studies, which minimize the economic effects of tobacco bans and declining tobacco sales. The most recent was in the Spring 2000 issue of Tobacco Control (“The economics of tobacco: myths and realities,” 9:78-89). It was funded by the RWJF and Warner thanks Frank Chaloupka and Gary Giovino for their assistance.

In addition to multiple grants, Warner heads one of RWJF’s continuing programs and is an apparently tireless flack for raising prices and for widespread use of cessation products (including medical insurance coverage of them). He was quoted in L.A. Times, Washington edition (“Tobacco Ads’ Impact Debatable, Except to Some Lawmakers,” Alissa Rubin, March 19, 1998): “Increasing the price of cigarettes – a lot – is far and away the most important thing we can do to reduce youth smoking.” His RWJF-funded study on the “Cost Effectiveness of Smoking Cessation Therapies: Interpretation of the Evidence and Implications for Coverage,” appeared in Pharmaco-Economics in 1997 (11(6):538-549). Another RWJF-funded study touting nicotine replacement products by Warner, John Slade (another RWJF grantee) and David Sweanor of the Canadian Nonsmokers’ Rights Association appeared in JAMA in 1997 (“The emerging market for long-term nicotine maintenance,” 278(13):1087-1092). The article depicted the tobacco industry as the bad guys who were trying to maintain nicotine dependence and the pharmaceutical industry as the good guys who were delivering nicotine therapeutically to help people quit smoking or who would vie with the tobacco industry for the long-term nicotine maintenance market.

Warner is one of the 11 members of the board of the American Legacy Foundation, along with RWJF CEO Steven Schroeder, which essentially means RWJF gets two votes on every issue and that RWJF has VERY heavy input in policy decisions. Will ALF become a $200 million vehicle for promoting Johnson & Johnson’s (and other pharmaceutical companies’) cessation products?

• Whelan, Elizabeth*

President of American Council on Science and Health (ACSH), a private public policy advocacy group funded by various special interests, including the chemical and pharmaceutical industries and foundations such as RWJF (Whelan says foundation grants account for 40-55% of ACSH funding for any given year). Whelan is a close personal associate of C. Everette Koop and supported his going after tobacco. ACSH’s “Tackling Tobacco” project is funded by Nicorette gum, a product of SmithKline Beecham.

In recent years, ACSH has taken a somewhat more moderate position with regard to TC, sometimes criticizing the mainstream TC movement.

• Wilbur, Phil*

Advocacy Institute and R.O.W. Sciences.

• Willemsen, Marc

Works as an extraordinary Professor for Tobacco Control Research in the team of Onno van Schayck. His chair is paid for by Dutch anti-smoking NGO STIVORO.

• Wolfe, Chuck

Was director of the American Legacy Foundation. Head of Florida’s “Truth” campaign during its first year when one of its tactics involved encouraging teens to make harassing phone calls as a form of tobacco control. Resigned (reportedly under pressure) in the spring of 1999.