Jules' klimaatblog

The corrupted tobacco economist network Part 65 - Conclusions

noreply@blogger.com (jules) — Sun, 23 Jan 2022 00:51:00 +0000

Overview of previous posts here

It is clear all the economists were fully aware they worked with the Tobacco Institute. Yet still I think it is possible when joining the network, some of the economists presumed they were sought to nothing but expressing their worldview. They were part of one big corporate conspiracy though, even if in the beginning not all of them might not have realized this themselves.

The tobacco industry used and exploited the libertarian bias of the economists. And the industry knew they would write the conclusions wanted by the industry. Before even contacting one, the industry was sure it would find a guy concluding taxes are evil, and that guy would be publishing it in a journal. It's not hard to find out why the industry was so sure: libertarians always conclude there shouldn't be taxes or tax-increases. The industry simply exploited their predictability.

George Berman's testimony in court shows the tobacco industry exploited Robert D. Tollison's libertarian bias to recruit him. The Tobacco Institute never told Tollison he needed to defend the tobacco industry. Instead, they fed him arguments so Tollison would come to that conclusion. in the words of Berman "we had focused a leading economist's mind on this particular problem and he was now able to be a spokesman for the solution he had come up with". Question: independently ? Berman's answer: "independently".

Of course Berman's answer "independently" isn't entirely correct: the industry fed his bias, and by doing so has been able to alter his mindset, picking up the tobacco issue. While Tollison indeed may have concluded for himself taxing is evil, his conclusion wasn't entirely independent.

The extremist worldview of the economists is obvious, and as shown even the industry sometimes had doubts on this worldview, afraid it could harm the industry being associated with people attacking tax-increases with op-eds like the one by Cotton Maher Lindsay titled excisetaxes: fascist finance, effectively comparing tobacco excise taxes to the practices of Italian fascism under dictator Benito Mussolini. A bit far-fetched, no?

Or what to think about thois one; Tollison and Wagner writing the op-ed scientific integrity consumed by anti-smoking zealotry. The same year the corrupted Tollison wrote a letter to the editor stating

Do remember this was written by a man heading a corrupted network, earning him well over 1 million dollars. Shameless.

Yet at the same time, the extreme views are exactly the reason the economists were recruited. As shown, Philip Morris was interested in Dwight R. Lee *because* he was an extremist, writing giving the EPA authority over indoor air "would be likegiving a machine gun to a child".

The industry never asked Lee to take such positions. Whatever a scientific viewpoint is, there will be always be a deluded naysayer. The industry's tactic, seen in all the headhunting documents, is always showing the same pattern; the industry deliberately searches for nutcases, then giving them lots of money and making sure they receive media attention. To the laymen, the illusion then arises these extremists ' viewpoints might mean there actually is a scientific discussion. This is the doubt the industry wanted to create, because many people think when two different opinions exist, both must have some merit; Quod non, one can be completely wrong.

Were the economists corrupt ? Were they lobbyists, or just a pragmatic free-marketeers: was libertarianism the motivation driving the economists ? Or were they really for sale ? The Legacy Tobacco Documents Library doesn't provide a clear answer to these questions. Ultimately, it depends on the definition of corruption: the first thing we think of hearing the word probably will be: people doing or telling things they wouldn't do if not being paid.

Following that definition, it is clear some economists were probably dishonest: they signed things they knew were flawed (Poulson), or lied being independent citizens (Militello). But this necessarily mean they defended work they did not believe in at all.

There's also another form of corruption: people being paid to tell ... exactly the same thing they would be saying if they would not receive money. In the case of the economists, I think it's clear that if they would not have accepted money from the tobacco industry, they still would be objecting any form of taxation.

This form of corruption isn't so much about whàt they said, but what they did not say. The website ScienceCorruption.com has done a tremendous job looking at the activities of the social cost consultants, giving a chronological order of the documents regarding the individual members. In 2011 Dominick Armentano wrote an error loaded reply (at the bottom of the page) addressing one strawman after another.

I guess the most interesting part in Dominick Armentano's reply, is the mere fact Armentano thinks his actions are defendable.

His answer misses a couple of points. ScienceCorruption's reply summarizes the entire problem with the activities of the network:

And those five points imply that every member of the network who ever delivered any output for the industry was corrupt.

Some economists seem to never have produced anything for the industry. But they accepted to join a network knowing they would be working for the industry. And several economists in the network accepted they would testify if being asked so by the industry. The fact some were never asked to testify, doesn't alter the fact they accepted to deliver testimonials if they would be asked to. It might not have been illegal (I don't know the american legal system), but it is clear there are some moral problems with their activities.

Further Research

Even though this series of blogposts isn't exactly short, there's much more to add to the tale of social cost and the economists network.

I have not fully explored the fact so many economists belonged to just two universities (George Mason University and Clemson University). What exactly was the role of GMU and Clemson ? Were these university aware of their activities ? What's the connection between the think tanks and GMU, the connection with the libertarian foundations, etc.

Another open question is how the economists ended up in think tanks. Did they join voluntarily ? Were they asked ? Is it coincidence they all ended up in the same think tanks, while there are literally dozens of right wing / free market think tanks ? Were some think tanks obliged by the industry to take the economists aboard ?

The 1984 Excise plan indicates the industry did not just want economists, but also wanted to recruit lawyers. We know there were attempts to create the network, but was it ever fully established ?

What was the role of the people "not on PM's list" ? Why does this document carry this strange heading? Were there other fully developed networks ?

We know some economists dropped out the network, but don't always know why. It is clear some were sacked, but were there any network members whose conscience came to play ?

On top of that, I'm pretty sure i did not discover all documents in the LTDL: the documents in the LTDL have been scanned and automatically converted to text, but the conversion sometimes failed, with letters getting switched etc. p. ex. Tollison can be found in the database as Tollison, but also Tol!ison, Toiison, Tollis0n, etc... This makes it difficult to find the right search queries...

One thing is clear: lots of questions remain unanswered...

The corrupted tobacco economist network Part 64 - Non-tobacco output

noreply@blogger.com (jules) — Sun, 16 Jan 2022 19:44:00 +0000

Overview of previous posts here

Microsoft

The tobacco industry isn't the only industry using think tanks to manipulate the audience. In 1999, the Independent Institute sponsored a full-page advertisement (Open Letter on Antitrust Protectionism) in the Washington Post and the New York Times, signed by 240 economists.

25 of the people signing were members of the Tobacco Institute's economists network.

The letter sounds familiar, it's just the same old call against regulations. The only real question is: were they following their political beliefs, or was the Independent Institue not anly gaining money from the Tobacco industry, but also from Microsoft ? And is it a coincidence in 1998 tobacco network economists William F. Shughart II and Richard B. McKenzie wrote the piece is Microsoft a monopolist? or where they paid to write it ?

Well, you probably already guessed it: According to the NYT in 1999 20% of the Independent Institute's funding came from ... Microsoft: 'Unbiased' Ads for Microsoft Came at a Price

Economists for sale ? Or was it pragmatism, and was the Independent Institute just working together with the industry to reach a libertarian objective ?

Alcohol output

By 1995 the tobacco industry was already working with a lot of think tanks and businesses, trying to attack the government on all sorts of environmental sciences

It may or may not be a coincidence, but in 1997 tobacco economist Richard Wagner wrote a chapter on the social cost of alcohol in a book edited by another network member, William F. Shughart II in the book The Taxation of Alcohol and the Control of Social Cost. In Taxing Choice: The Predatory Politics of Fiscal Discrimination.

But even earlier, in 1987, Robert D. Tollison and Robert B. Ekelund, Jr. wrote Economic effects of Geographic Restraints in the Malt Beverage Industry used by Tollison in a hearing before the Subcommittee on Antitrust, Monopolies, and Business Rights of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, One Hundredth Congress, first session on S. 567 (August 4, 1987).

And more alcohol output in this one: Temporal regulation and intertemporal substitution: The effect of banning alcohol at college football games. by William J. Boyes and Roger L. Faith

It could be a coincidence the tobacco authors suddenly en messa took such interest in alcohol ?

Petroleum industry

After the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska (1989) there was serious outrage allover the world. So the industry could use some help, and two tobacco economists stepped in : Alaskas Other Oil Spill. January 1, 1990. Foundation for Economic Education (written by Dwight R. Lee and Stephen L. Jackstadt).

No, the article is not about oil or protecting the environment. It's the same old story on taxes.

The corrupted tobacco economist network Part 63 - National Center for Policy Analysis

noreply@blogger.com (jules) — Sat, 15 Jan 2022 22:49:00 +0000

Overview of previous posts here

The National Center for Policy Analysis was another think tank where the corrupted social cost economist could spread their word

The next battleground: Indoor air

Dwight R. Lee in 1992 wrote the NCPA report The next environmental battleground: Indoor Air, opposing any form of regulation of indoor-air quality (IAQ). The report is also one of the first examples of a social cost economist questioning EPA's objectivity and neutrality.

On top, it is making outrageous claims like government regulations on IAQ would kill 1900 extra people a year [sic].

Lee proposed the Tobacco Institute to make a presentation of the report at the EPA's 23^rdInternational Symposium on Environmental Analytical Chemistry.

Tobacco Institute's Karen Fernicola Suhr wasn't sure what to think of the proposal as she Lee's claims were so ridiculous:

It wasn't the only weird thing about this report. The Tobacco Institute also was wondering why the NCPA cared about Indoor Air Quality at all

The Tobacco Institute in 1992 wasn't really sure why the think tank bothered to write on indoor quality. A 1993 letter sent by Tom Hockaday (of PR-firm APCO Worldwide) to Philip Morris hints the report actually was written on the command of APCO

Nor Singer (a physicist), nor Lee (an economist) have any qualifications to judge indoor air-quality science.

Meanwhile, the program of the 23^rd International Symposium on Environmental Analytical Chemistry shows Lee was one of the speakers, so despite the "cookiness", the Tobacco Institute probably paid him the $9.000 he asked for. Lee wrote an article after the presentation.

It's hard to decide which my favorite sentence is in the article: "EPA is no better at central planning than the Soviets were" or "Each polluter is better informed than EPA authorities on how to reduce pollution at least cost and is certainly more motivated"

I do understand why Karen Fernicola Suhr staed the tobacco industry had to decide if it felt comfortable with his message. And Why she felt his message borders on kookiness.

Attacking all environmental sciences

But even beofre the 1992 report above, the National Center for Policy Analysis was already attacking almost all environmental sciences, in the 1991 report Progressive environmentalism: a pro-human, pro-science, pro-free enterprise agenda for change. The head of the taskforce writing the report was Richard L. Stroup, another tobacco economist from the network.

The taskforce consisted of an interesting list of names, besides tobacco economists there are a lot of people listed who would get known as climate skeptics.

Network economists involved in the NCPA environmental task force were (besides Stroup) : Terry L. Anderson, Allen Dalton, Bruce Johnson and of course Dwight R. Lee

Other tobacco consultants mentioned in this task force were Thomas J. DiLorenzo, Kent Jeffreys, S. Fred Singer and James H. Miller. And a lot of people from other think tanks, like Joseph Bast (Heartland Institute), Fred L. Smith (Competitive Enterprise Institute), David J. Theroux (Independent Institute).

The reports attacks a wild array of environmental topics. The report might be an early example showing how libertarians started attacking all environmental sciences, not because they have much knowledge on the subject, but rather because it doesn't fit their worldview.

The corrupted tobacco economist network Part 62 - Atlas Economic Research Foundation

noreply@blogger.com (jules) — Sat, 08 Jan 2022 21:45:00 +0000

Overview of previous posts here

The social cost economists were only one of the networks and tactics used by the industry. An example of other lobbying is found in the work of James T. Bennett and Thomas J. Di Lorenzo for the Atlas Economic Research Foundation (nowadays the Atlas network)

James T. Bennett, author of CancerScam: The Diversion of Federal Cancer Funds to Politics (co-author: Thomas J. Di Lorenzo) wrote a letter in 1995 to R.J. Reynolds

Again, we see a think tank operating as a front for a tobacco funded book. And while the authors are not part of the social cost economist, just like the economists the authors both are ... libertarians active in numerous think tanks

James T. Bennett is/was associated with the Ludwig von Mises Institute, the Virginia Institute for Public Policy, the John Locke Institute and currently is on the advisory board of the global warming denying Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow

Thomas J. Di Lorenzo from his side has ties with the Independent Institute, Capital Research Center, the Ludwig from Mises Institute, the Property and Freedom Society, the Heartland Institute, the National Center for Policy Analysis, and the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow

Or in other words: the authors are active in the same kind of thinks as the social cost economists... And both have been working at George Mason University, just like the core-members of the economists network. Something seems rotten there.

The industry paid the Atlas Economic Association in 1995 for the book CancerScam, but a year before it also paid $5000 to the Independent Institute for work done by Thomas J. Di Lorenzo, as this letter by the its president Donald J.Theroux demonstrates

And this is how think tanks became one blur of economists/lobbyists, the same think tanks that became the ideological basis for a big part of the American GOP in the early 21st century.

The corrupted tobacco economist network Part 61 - Heartland Institute

noreply@blogger.com (jules) — Wed, 29 Dec 2021 00:34:00 +0000

Overview of previous posts here

Best known nowadays for their position on global warming, the Heartland Institute started as a think tank defending the tobacco industry. Former President Joseph L. Bast still minimizes the risks of ETS.

Heartland always had pro-tobacco viewpoints and even invited a tobacco employee (Roy E. Marden) to join its board. In 1999, Heartland president Joseph L. Bast wrote the following letter to Philip Morris:

At least 20 of the network economists are or have been involved with the Heartland Institute. and in 1999, the year Bast begged for money, 6 tobacco economists were members of the advisory board

A 1996Heartland report shows something seen in all libertarian think tanks: an attack on a whole bunch of "environmental sciences". It is very unlikely the think tankers actually knew something about the actual state of one scientific field, let alone a whole series of scientific domains. Ideology, not science, is the source of this kind of output produced by think tanks

It's one the first examples how tobacco and global warming (and other environmental/ health sciences) are thrown under the bus in one big effort. This was part of the "APCO" plan.

Author Richard L. Stroup was a member of the economists extended network

Gary L. Huber

Gary L. Huber was a researcher working on the link between tobacco and lung cancer, research sponsored by the tobacco industry. In 1980, Huber (re)discovered the relation by producing emphysema in rabbits.

In the prelude to the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement, he became a whistleblower (in 1997) claiming to be a naïve scientist duped by a broader plan of the tobacco industry. Huber claims in the interview the industry let him though his research on lung cancer, even though they had done the same research before, and already knew the outcome was going to be smoking causes cancer.

Huber said in an interview

Several sources state Huber was in tears when discovering his entire research was one big waste of time. Most sources feel sorry for the man.

The book Denial: The NFL, Concussions, and the Battle for Truth states Huber promptly lost his grants from the tobacco industry after publishing his results, the industry making clear they weren't too pleased with his work. Huber subsequently moved from Harvard to the University of Kentucky and continued doing research, strangely enough again funded by the tobacco industry. But something had changed: in Kentucky Huber would become accused of manipulating scientific results, sexual harassment and general incompetence. Within a year, he got fired

All this doesn't really explain how Gary L. Huber, then working in Texas, ended up in the 1996 Heartland Earth Day '96 document, writing "In this case, the EPA's risk assessment is built on the manipulation of data, ignores crucial chemical analysis and key epidemiological data, and violates time-honored statistical principles."

I'm not sure what to think about all this, and the supposed knife the industry put in his back

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

noreply@blogger.com (jules) — Sat, 18 Dec 2021 20:43:00 +0000

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.

The corrupted tobacco economist network Part 59 - The Independent Institute

noreply@blogger.com (jules) — Sun, 29 Aug 2021 01:18:00 +0000

Overview of previous posts here

The first part of theis blog series explored the activities of the economists network in the 1980's and early 1990's. The second part of the series illustrated the tobacco industry finally would not just attack science, but would try to change the political landscpae by exploiting people's personal beliefs.

That's where extremist free-market think tanks come to play.

THE INDEPENDENT INSTITUTE

At least 21 of the network economists have/had connections with the Independent Institute. In 1994, both core members Tollison and Wagner were among the members of the advisory board (Tollison had been on the board since 1986, the year the think tank was founded)

Clinton reform plan (1994)

As a part of the 1993 Clinton health reform plan, there was a suggestion to increase the excise taxes on cigarettes from 24c per pack to 99c, the so called "monster-tax".

The industry answered with the "monster op-ed" round, by setting up PR-firm APCO, and some more activities less relevant for the this story.

There also was an 'open letter' from the Independent Institute. It is not clear who ordered the letter, but no less than 52 economists from the economists' network signed the Open Letter to President Clinton on Healthcare Reform. It won't come as a surprise the letter draws the 'taxes' card. And is quite hysterical.

It may or may not be a coincidence so many of the social cost economists are affiliated one way or another with the Independent Institute. And it may or may not be a coincidence the letter fits the tobacco industry's social cost program.

One has the impression the Independent Institute acted as a front for a campaign launched by the tobacco industry.

Detaxing America (1995)

In the 1980's and early 1990's, the industry paid economist to appear at economic meetings. It seems later on the industry simply organized its own conferences with think tanks acting as a cover.

In 1995, the Independent Institute organized the conference Detaxing America to promote the forthcoming book written by William F. Shughart II

Following tobacco economists attended the conference: William Shughart II, Bruce L. Benson, Dwight R. Lee, Robert Ekelund Jr., Gary M. Anderson, Richard Vedder and Mark Thornton

7 of the 17 invited speakers were members of Tollison's illegal social cost network. With several of the 13 other speakers (p. ex. DiLorenzo and Tullock) also being paid by the tobacco industry, but in other lobby-programs.

No, "Independent Institute" doesn't seem the best possible name to describe that think tank.

Books by the Independent Institute

The Independent Institute published several books and reports written by tobacco lobbyists. But even when the tobacco economists weren't the first author of a publication, they still were around.

1994 : William Mitchell and Randy Simmons, Beyond Politics (foreword by Gordon Tullock)

David J. Theroux of the Independent Institute wrote a letter to Tobacco Institute

Quite a strange move for an “Independent” Institute, no ?

1995: Donald J Boudreaux and Adam Pritchard : Civil Forefeiture As A Tax. The authors thank 6 people for "instructive discussion and comments", four of them being tobacco economists : Bruce Benson, Dwight Lee, William Shughart and Bruce Yandle.

1995: William F. Shughart: The economics of excise taxation

1996 : Richard Vedder and Lowell E. Gallaway : The Melting Pot.

1997: William F. Shughart (ed): Taxing choice: The predatory politics of fiscal discrimination

Including Shughart, at least 7 of the 18 authors have been paid by the Tobacco Institute. Probably not a surprise, as already in 1994 David J. Theroux of the Independent Institute contacted the Tobacco Institute about the book, draft title Sin Taxes

(...)

Dr. Robert Higgs was one of the people asked by the Tobacco Institute in 1996 to write op-eds against FDA-regulations[11] Shughart was one of the most active members in the network of social cost consultants.

And to promote the book:

2000: Dominick Armentano: Antitrust and monopoly

2000: Roger Meiners and Bruce Yandle : Regulation and the Reagan Era

The foreword of this book was written by Robert Crandall, another tobacco lobbyist (and then brother in law of S. Fred Singer).

The industry also used think tankers outside the social cost network to work for them. Another Independent Institute economist, Canadian Pierre Lemieux (also involved in the pro-tobacco group FORCES) wrote the book "Smoking and Liberty: Government as a Public Health Problem"and a whole lot of smaller texts, listed on his website on a page he titled Smoking, Liberty and Health Fascism. His extremist titles and views may be a reason the industry didn't use him more often.

This document suggests there also might have been a (small) Canadian network. I did not explore it any further. The John Luik in the document was twice fired from universities for being dishonest. His former Dean stated

The Independent Institute is a fine example of tobacco interests and extremist free-market views finding and strenghtening each other, ultimately mingling into one big pseudoscientific mess benefiting the tobacco industry.

The corrupted tobacco economist network Part 58 - The role of Terry L. Anderson

noreply@blogger.com (jules) — Sun, 18 Jul 2021 20:26:00 +0000

Overview of previous posts here

As seen in the previous chapters, in the 1990's think tanks and libertarians started attacking all environmental sciences. The tobacco economists took part in this attack, with Terry L. Anderson playing a key role as an ideologist

Selection of publications:

1991: Terry L. Anderson wrote the book Free Market Environmentalism with Donald R. Leal. It became one of the books laying the grounds for the libertarian ideological attack on all environmental sciences.

Richard Stroup and Terry L. Anderson would become early TASSC's supporters and they were among the people exporting the TASSC-strategy to Europe through the UK based Institute of Economic Affairs. Both also were adjunct scholars at the Cato Institute

1995: Terry L. Anderson wrote a chapter in the book The True State of the Planet, attacking a wide variety of environmental issues. It's one of the first examples where the work of the economists and global warming denialism would emerge on the same surface.

Chapter 1, by Nicholas Eberstadt - Population, Food, and Income: Global Trends in the Twentieth Century
Chapter 2, by Dennis Avery - Saving the Planet with Pesticides: Increasing Food Supplies While Preserving the Earth's Biodiversity
Chapter 3, by Robert C. Balling, Jr. - Global Warming: Messy Models, Decent Data, and Pointless Policy
Chapter 4, by Stephen Moore - The Coming Age of Abundance
Chapter 5, by Bruce N. Ames and Lois Swirsky Gold - The Causes and Prevention of Cancer: The Role of Environment
Chapter 6, by Roger A. Sedjo - Forests: Conflicting Signals
Chapter 7, by Stephen R. Edwards - Conserving Biodiversity: Resources for Our Future
Chapter 8, by Terry L. Anderson - Water Options for the Blue Planet
Chapter 9, by Kent Jeffreys - Rescuing the Oceans
Chapter 10, by Indur M. Goklani - Richer is Cleaner: Long Term Trends in Global Air Quality

Do notice in this book tobacco economist Terry L. Anderson and Kent Jeffreys (another author of a pro-tobacco report), suddenly became "specialists" in water pollution....

1997: (with Donald R. Leal) : Enviro-Capitalists: Doing Good While Doing Well. Hoover Institution. The book received a positive pal-review of fellow tobacco economist Bruce Yandle

1997: Terry L. Anderson and Pamela S. Snyder: Water Markets: Priming the Invisible Pump. Published by the Cato Institute.

2000: The Greening of U.S. Foreign Policy (with Henry I. Miller), published by the Hoover Institution. Anderson stated [2]

The green hand of foreign policy is a threat to national sovereignty without the offsetting benefit of improved environmental quality

2000: editor of Political Environmentalism:Going Behind the Green Curtain. Hoover Institution, also containing a chapter by network economist Bruce Yandle.

2001: Terry L. Anderson & Bruce Yandle were editors of the book Agriculture and the Environment – Searching for Greener Pastures published by the Hoover Institution.

2003: Anderson was editor of You Have to Admit It’s Getting Better—The Environment That is, another book published by the Hoover Institution.

Tobacco economist Robert E. McCormick wrote the chapter The Relation Between Net Carbon Emissions and Income. While McCormick took no position on the scientific side, was poorly informed, writing "others claim there is no evidence of global warming; some even say the Earth is cooling"

Together Anderson's books (more than listed here) have played an important ideological role. All published by libertarian think tanks, they helped the message the industry and TASSC needed, by stating it would be better for the environment/health issues if there would be no government at all. His books have played an important role in creating a mindset in which the think tanks started drifting away from reality.

These books were highly ideological. Yet it is not impossible the books were commissioned by some industry. As early as 1987, during the "evaluations of economists sessions", the Tobacco Institute already remarked

Terry L. Anderson became George W. Bush's advisor on public lands issues somewhere in the late 1990's.

In 2014, he wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal defending the Keystone-pipeline. Written on behalf of his oil industry clients?

The corrupted tobacco economist network Part 57 - The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition

noreply@blogger.com (jules) — Tue, 30 Mar 2021 18:44:00 +0000

Overview of previous posts here

The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (now called the Advancement of Sound Science Center

Early 1993, EPA released the report Respiratory Health Effects of Passive Smoking:Lung Cancer and Other Disorders that was close to a final blow on the ETS issue. EPA concluded that second hand smoking beyond any scientific doubt indeed was harmful, as had long been suspected.

The tobacco industry knew it was in trouble and launched a full scale counterattack against EPA, especially using the strategy of manufacturing "scientific doubt". It seems from that point the ‘social cost’ strategy became less important as the EPA report demanded the industry's full attention.

But the industry still needed allies and seemed to have followed two main roads: searching for allies to cast doubt on any environmental subject (asbestos, pesticides, greenhouse gasses, etc.). But on the other hand, to really be able to create a broad coalition, the industry needed to translate the industrial message into something grassroots organizations would pick up. And here, the ‘freedom’ message proved to be key to finding free-market allies. The libertarian tobacco-economists were useful to spread this message.

To understand how the industry concluded that the best defense was to attack everything EPA does, we have to look at the work of Philip Morris' PR-firm APCO-Associates, which advised the industry to set up

PR-firm APCO created the astroturf organization The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC) in 1993 because

But unlike with lobbygroups like the Center for Indoor Air Research, the tobacco industry this time had a bigger plan, as seen in a memorandum probably written by Philip Morris.

The same document already hinted at the shape of the industry’s ETS-strategy to come

As the industry realized it could not defeat EPA alone, the goals were to

and to

This is taking the lobbying to a new level, and this is where the cunning plan of Tim Hyde fits the bigger picture: the lobbying was no longer focusing on tobacco and its consequences, the lobbying was about creating a new political reality.

One part of the strategy still sounded familiar, as it was about creating scientific doubt

TASSC was no longer an astroturf organization attacking only tobacco issues, the industry wanted a full scale attack, and was thinking about issues like

In 1994 Philip Morris wrote

And Philip Morris director Matt Winokur stated

The plan to built a broad coalition of businesses attacking EPA was a success and APCO reported

To avoid detection, TASSC had to look like a grassroots organization, even though it is clear TASSC never was more than a lobby-tool as can be read in the proposed plan for the public launch of TASSC:

As with the previous economists networks, there would be media training

The training included teaching the spokespeople of PM to answer questions like

The roots of organized denial of global warming would get started in the same circles, and by the same people, as the circles the tobacco industry used. TASSC and the same think tanks working on tobacco, would be the place where fossil fuel companies found a tool, the people (libertarians) and a strategy to attack climate science. And this is why someone running a climate blog has taken a close look at the tobacco strategy.

TASSC was funded by Philip Morris but it also involved companies like Exxon and recruited people who were global warming deniers like S. Fred Singer and Patrick Michaels, in addition to tobacco consultants such as Thomas L. Wyrick and Richard L. Stroup (both in 2015 were members off the Heartland Institute, a think tank denying the health effects of tobacco and man-made global warming).

Using the 'junk science’ label to discredit scientific work was adopted by the tobacco economists, as in an op-ed by Clifford Dobitz from 1998 titled Junk science taints EPA's smoke claims The same Year Robert L. Sexton wrote Did EPA use junk science ? The use of this language is no coïncidence but the result of a group effort.

It was by mingling of 'freedom' with tobacco (and asbestos, greenhouse gasses, etc.), the industry ultimately was able to create a message that indeed found its way into libertarian groups. And through these groups, the doubt and freedom message would become an important political factor in American politics, because the think tank network is huge, extending to many other people, foundations, companies and universities.

The corrupted tobacco economist network Part 56 - Philip Morris broadens the attack

noreply@blogger.com (jules) — Wed, 30 Dec 2020 23:32:00 +0000

Overview of previous posts here

In 1991, even before the EPA report stating second hand smoking kills, Philip Morris circulated a list of scientists the industry thought would be willing to attack EPA.

It's no longer about tobacco alone The list is 45 members long and it shows how the industry recruited their 'contrarians': the industry carefully looked for any person, sane or not, contesting the current status of scientific knowledge.

(...)

and one of the more active members in the tobacco economists network with one of his well known unnuanced views:

Dwight Lee Says giving the EPA authority over indoor air "would be like giving a machine gun to a child" is not regarded by the industry as an utterly bonkers viewpoint, but as an actual possibility: the document showed PM was looking for any contrarians and/or extremists who might be useful to implement the tobacco industry's attack on EPA. Sane or not.

(do notice the list also mentions well known early climate pseudoskeptics S. Fred Singer and Patrick Michaels).

The corrupted tobacco economist network Part 55 - The final turn in astroturfing

noreply@blogger.com (jules) — Sun, 27 Dec 2020 01:14:00 +0000

Overview of previous posts here

The tobacco industry had a long history of setting up astroturf organizations. But something would change in the way the industry astroturfed: the focus shifted from attacking the EPA on its tobacco viewpoints, to attacking everything the EPA did, hoping to create general mistrust against anything the EPA and "the government" concluded on any imaginable environmental problem. Let's first have a look at the 'old style' astroturfing.

Center for indoor air research

Founded in 1988, the Center for Indoor Air Research (CIAR) was a fake organisation set up by the tobacco industry as illustrated by the minutes of a meeting held by the Executives of the Tobacco Institute

CIAR was dismantled as part of the Tobacco master settlement agreement (1988).

The industry used CIAR as a tool to hide the involvement of the tobacco industry, so the industry would be able to create a bigger network. John P. Rupp of PR-firm Covington and Burling wrote

The industry palyed it clever and never tried to alter the research results of the grantees. Nevertheless, it was clear the research results had to benefit the tobacco industry:

The important thing to remember is that at the time the industry was working on one single issue, in this case ETS. This was the problem for groups like CIAR, as this one-sided approach easily led to the conclusion CIAR was a tobacco funded initiative. It made it difficult for the tobacco industry to find allies.

Therefore, the industry searched for better ways to lobby. Next post will explore the total switch in mindset occuring in the early 1990's.

The corrupted tobacco economist network Part 54 - Working with Think tanks

noreply@blogger.com (jules) — Sat, 14 Nov 2020 01:38:00 +0000

Overview of previous posts here

Tobacco Employee Roy Marden was one of the tobacco employees responsible for the communication with think tanks. He wrote the following memo, titled Tobacco Strategy on the think tanks he was responsible for (the industry divided the think tanks between a couple of its employees)

(...) (the document is 6p. long)

The tobacco industry sought the help of right-wing think tanks to fight excise taxes.

In 1995, the Tobacco Institute sent a memo, mentioning that the economists still were able to provide op-eds in no less than 30 states. The same memo illustrates how the industry worked with the different think tanks

A similar document was written in 1998, most likely by Roy Marden. Notice how long the list is. It no longer only mentions thinks tanks, but many journalists, and even an actor and a magician (???). It's not clear why the document mentions Dwight R. Lee and Walter Williams, but it is possible Marden was not aware of their membership in the social cost economists network. Do also notice he mentions he's on the board of the Heartland Institute.

[ETC, the list is a couple of pages long]

While there always have been contacts between the industry and think tanks, and they worked together since at least the 1980's, it was only in the 1990's that the industry's involvement would become so pervasive that one could say the industry 'owned' some of these organizations.

In the long run, think tanks probably were much more powerful allies than a secret network of economists ever could have been.

S. Fred Singer wrote his infamous Alexis De Tocqueville Institution's tobacco-paper in 1994 (see further), with Robert D. Tollison helping him. Tobacco economists were working with the Heartland Institute since at least 1991. The Independent Institute was was joined by many members of the economists' network. In 1994, Tollison and Wagner became members of the Independent Institute's advisory board.

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

noreply@blogger.com (jules) — Wed, 11 Nov 2020 23:58:00 +0000

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.

The corrupted tobacco economist network Part 52 - A new path.

noreply@blogger.com (jules) — Wed, 11 Nov 2020 01:57:00 +0000

The list of activities of the tobacco economists in the previous chapters was already extensive, but there's one thing not mentioned yet: their activities in a variety of free market think tanks. To understand the reason why so many social cost economists ended up in think tanks, it is necessary to examine some history,

In 1987, the industry evaluated potential allies per US State. The document shows the industry was thinking of partnering with business allies to create a broad coalition of industries lobbying together to put more pressure on politicians. It seems politicians at the time were seen as "aliens", and the industry had difficulties getting in touch with them.

Gradually though the industry shifted viewpoints and their plans became more and more ambitious: at first the industry tried to place articles in the media to alter the public's opinion of tobacco, later it tried to control external allies and media.

Ultimately the industry took the game to a whole different level: no longer did they try to influence the politician's mind on tobacco alone, but instead they tried to alter the politician’s mindset all together, so they would conclude that tobaccco taxes were unnecessary. They had to reach people surrounding politicians, like think tank members, to create a worldview where all environmental sciences would be regarded as junk. Once again, seeding doubt, and stressing the right wing bias of freedom would be the path followed by the industry.

This aim was very ambitious: the industry tried to alter the thinking of broad parts of society!

Again, feeding bias would be the tool. So before looking at the think tanks involved, it is necessary to have a look at the broader plan, but this idea to expand their lobbying has received a fair amount of attention in other papers, so this will only be a short summary.

We'll explore this in the next post, the second part of the report on the secret economists network, hereby focussing on the economists in the secret corruptes network in the 1980's/1990's.

The corrupted tobacco economist network Part 51. Robert D. Tollison working for Philip Morris

noreply@blogger.com (jules) — Mon, 31 Aug 2020 22:39:00 +0000

Overview of previous posts here

Tollison working for Philip Morris

In 1988 Tollison wrote the book Clearing the Air for Philip Morris. How he was recruited has not been discovered.

On top of that, in 1994 Tollison also started testifying for Philip Morris (WRO = Washington Relations Office)

In 1997, Tollison agreed to write a rebuttal to a study on the economic effects of a smoking ban in Hungary

All this on top of his work for the Tobacco Institute, British American Tobacco, other industries, and of course his regular job.

The corrupted tobacco economist network Part 50. Robert D. Tollison working for British American Tobacco

noreply@blogger.com (jules) — Sun, 30 Aug 2020 22:43:00 +0000

Overview of previous posts here

Robert D. Tollison working for BAT

In 1993, Tollison and Wagner wrote the 30 page paper Who Benefits from WHO?: Decline of the World Health, commissioned by British American Tobacco as the company needed a writer to attack the WHO

Tollison accepted and made following proposal

BAT's Sharon Boyse refused the offer

The LTDL is quite complete this time, so we know Tollison’s answer

Tollison later musthave changed his mind and refused to use Dietrich's material

The report indeed would get published by the UK thinktank Social Affairs Unit. But this memo shows Tollison sent the draft to BAT, not Digby Anderson or the Social Affairs unit, illustrating the SAU was not involved in writing the piece

Sharon Boyse replied thefollowing day

Digby Anderson was kept out of the entire process leading to the report. Boyse told Tollison on May 21 he should contact Anderson. July 7, Tollison wrote

Was the paper ordered by BAT or the Social Affairs Unit? It is difficult to be certain, but this memo indicates it might actuallyhave been ordered by Anderson, even though why Digby Anderson was in Venezuela at the time is not explained.

Tollison must have started working for BAT in 1993, participating in media tours abroad. The tours seemed to have been a joint effort with Philip Morris. Why he also started working for BAT is not clear. Perhaps because the 1991 budget cut caused the TI to stop paying for Tollison's first class airline tickets

Media tours for BAT attended by Tollison	Country
1992 November 23	Venezuela
1993 October 6	South Africa
1993 October 12	India
1993 October 16	Pakistan
1993 October 19	Sri Lanka
1994 May 25	Australia

In Australia, Tollison may have testified in front of the AustralianParliament

The corrupted tobacco economist network Part 49. Or the one with a secret network of lawyers. Different people, same dishonesty.

noreply@blogger.com (jules) — Sun, 23 Aug 2020 07:51:00 +0000

Overview of previous posts here

Lawyers network

As mentioned in the first chapters, the 1984 social cost excise plan did not just aim for an economist in every state, the tobacco industry also wanted to set up a network of lawyers.

In 1986, James Savarese sent Fred Panzer of the Tobacco Institute a very interesting letter

Savarese was paid $11,400 to set up the network and from Savarese's billing, we know the reason the network was created

The members can be found in the appendix (to be published at the end of the blogseries).

Savarese's wrote small remarks next to some of their names,illustrating the layers werevery well aware why they were recruited

Anthony Wiener - Tony will be out of the country during August. He was very enthusiastic about the free speech arguments. Harvard J.D., with strong economic emphasis in his teaching and research.
George M. Sullivan - George would like to see a legal brief on the subject he is arguing.
William Mitchell - Bill will be in Washington in late August for the American Political Science Association meetings. He would like to go to lunch with us on August 28. I did not make any commitments.
John Bagby - John is a business law professor at Penn State, which is about halfway between Pittsburg and Philadelphia.
Professor J[ames].R. Kearl - Jim is Mormon, so he has a problem with most Tobacco Institute issues; however, he says he would probably be comfortable with a 1st Amendment op-ed on the advertising ban.

Savarese charged $3.000 for producing 3 op-eds on the topic of ad bans. With titles like "The censorship nightmare" and "Freedom of speech" should just mean that there should be little doubt the lawyers were libertarians too.

Savarese reported and proves again the industry was rewriting the so-called work of 'independent' academics.

Another document shows Savarese seemed to be less in touch with the lawyers than the economists, a message such as this seems unlikely in the economists network

It may be the use of layers was a one time thing. Neither Google nor the LTDL reveal much more activity than listed here. Whatever happened to the network, in 1989 Savarese forwarded to the Tobacco Institute the letters sent by the lawyers to their local congressman.

We know Marshall A. Leaffer sent a letter to Senator John Glen, probably including his op-ed on a possible tobacco advertisement ban

Philip Morris Network
Another document in the LTDL hints there must have been several networks, not just the one's ran by the Tobacco Institute.

The documents carries the remark "not on Philip Morris List", suggesting there may have existed similar networks to the network described in this paper. This has not been explored.

The corrupted tobacco economist network, Part 48 - How much did they earn ?

noreply@blogger.com (jules) — Sat, 22 Aug 2020 15:35:00 +0000

Overview of previous posts here

How much did the economists earn ?

An incomplete overview of payments will be given in the appendix (to be published at the end of this series). The list with invoices is far from complete, but the LTDR contains millions of pages, and every single document cannot be checked. This survey has found invoices worth $1.56 million (without expenses like airplane tickets, hotels, ...).

It is surprising how detailed these invoices are, and how the economists let the industry pay for every little thing, even a 0.23 US$ phonecall in an invoice sent by R. Morris Coats

Robert D. Tollison was one busy guy

Tollison and Savarese sent so many invoices to the Tobacco Institute, they sometimes got confused

The Anna in the above letter is Tollison's wife Anna who became an employee of James Savarese and Partners, the consultancy firm controlling the economists network. The LTDL shows Anna did not work for free.

Robert Tollison worked for more industries as well as the Federal Government, as listed in his CV (do notice there's no end date given for his work at the Tobacco Institute)

Tollison was one busy guy. The industry noted in 1987

How Tollison was able to combine all these efforts with his work at GMU is an open question.

The corrupted tobacco economist network, Part 47 - Post 1998 tobacco output

noreply@blogger.com (jules) — Fri, 21 Aug 2020 22:01:00 +0000

Overview of previous posts here

Post 1998 output and Richard Wagner's zealotry

Not all economists disappear from the files completely after 1998, but as a part of the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement the Tobacco Institute was dismantled. Some economists must have started working for the other tobacco companies.

In 2000, R. Morris Coats provided testimony similar to that the network had provided. Coats by that time already was working for Philip Morris. At least Coats acknowledged this in his curriculum vitae (no longer online, Coats deceased in 2015), while most of the economists don't mention their work for the tobacco industry. Remarkably Coats' c.v. also notes that his paper A Note on Estimating Cross-Border Effects of State Cigarette Taxes was "Used in testimony before legislatures in New York, West Virginia and Louisiana--based on phone conversations with Tobacco Institute"

William F. Shughart II kept writing op-eds until at least 2010.

An incomplete list of publications written after the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement include:

Sexton R. (1999): Political Science and Secondhand Smoke, Investor's Business Daily (Feb . 2, 1999)
Ault, R. Ekelund, R. B., Jackson, J., Saba, R. (2004) : Smokeless tobacco, smoking cessation and harm reduction: an economic analysis, Applied Economics
Ault, R. W., Beard, T., Jackson, J., Saba, R. (2005) : On the (mis)use of cross-price effects to gauge the effectiveness of smokeless tobacco in smoking cessation, The European Journal of Health Economics 34 (November 2006), pp. 712–730
Lucassen, R. A., Coats, R. M., Karahan, G. (2005) : Cigarette smuggling mitigates the public health benefits of cigarette taxes. Applied Economics Letters, Taylor and Francis Journals, vol. 12(12)
Ault, R. W., Jackson, J. D., Saba, R., Ekelund, R. B. (2006) : Smoking cessation, weight gain, and nicotine substitutes : the economics of reducing harm. The southern business & economic journal Vol. 29.2006, 3/4, p. 34-49
Brown, B. A., Rucker, R. R., Thurman, W. N. (2007) : The End of the Federal Tobacco Program: Economic Impacts of the Deregulation of U.S. Tobacco Production. Review of Agricultural Economics, Winter 2007, 29(4): 635-655. http://www.jstor.org/stable/i412804
Shughart W. F. (2010) : Tobacco Settlements, in Roger Chapman (ed.), Culture Wars: An Encyclopedia of Issues, Voices, and Viewpoints, vol. 2, Armonk, NY and London: ME Sharpe, 2010

Richard A Wagner's output

Richard E. Wagner provided the most post-1998 output. In 1999 he wrote the article The State as a Partisan Plaintiff: Reflection on the Tobacco Settlement. He also wrote The Tobacco Settlement, as Refracted through the Economics of Litigation, which seems to have been the draft version

A rewritten (?) version of The State as a Partisan Plaintiff: Reflection on the Tobacco Settlement was published in 2000 by the Public Interest Institute (no longer online). It is an example of his extreme viewpoints:

What is a defendant to do when confronted with a subsidized political plaintiff driven by partisan interests and ideological zealotry? The defendant faces an adversary that calculates differently than commercial plaintiffs. A private plaintiff might think in terms of possible excess medical costs imposed by smokers. For a political plaintiff, however, those claims are secondary, a smoke screen to provide cover as it were, for the pursuit of an ideology animated by a vision of a smoke-free America. For the ideological plaintiff, the desired objective is not to offset some (non-existent) drain on state treasuries attributed to smokers, but rather is to degrade the commercial value of tobacco companies.

One might reasonably wonder why the tobacco companies might have capitulated when the claims lodged against them were so patently false. A man sitting on an iceberg in the North Atlantic as it floats south will recognize his ultimate fate, and yet be thankful when clouds obscure the sun. It is perhaps similar with the tobacco companies. The famous "problem of the gambler’s ruin" from probability theory tells us that in a fair game of chance, the player with the smaller fortune will eventually be ruined by the player with the larger fortune. In ordinary games, of course, play is voluntary, and either party can terminate the play at will. But the state can command participation, and it can exhaust the fortune of anyone against whom it plays. A wise person would not continuously play a fair game of chance against a much wealthier adversary, and similarly would not want to play continuously against a zealous, interest-driven political plaintiff. Settlement is perhaps like that welcome cloud in the North Atlantic. It brings respite to a weary soul, but it does not give peace of mind.

The general theme illustrated by the tobacco settlement is the danger of being on the opposite side of the partisan use of state power to advance a private interest agenda at public expense. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, as Patrick Henry noted. And the state is potentially the biggest threat of all. We may well fault the tobacco companies for capitulating against the onslaught of state power. For if everyone did, this liberty would perish. Yet the state as a partisan plaintiff can pursue a strategy of divide-and-conquer against its potential defendants, which may render some such capitulation understandable, even if it can never render it admirable.

In 2004, Wagner wrote Meddlesome Preferences and Rent Extraction: The Tobacco Shakedown, continuing the same themes as above. In 2005, he wrote State Excise Taxation:Horse-and-Buggy Taxes In an Electronic Age, both still attacking excise taxes.

As recently as 2013, Wagner co-authored the paper Taxation as a Quasi-Market Process:Explanation, Exhortation, and the Choice of Analytical Windows

There is no evidence to know if the tobacco industry was still paying Wagner to write these articles, or they were merely expressing his worldview.

Even though he's 79 years old, Richard E. Wagner still is working at George Mason University

The corrupted tobacco economist network, Part 46 - towards the end of the network.

noreply@blogger.com (jules) — Thu, 20 Aug 2020 00:01:00 +0000

Overview of previous posts here

Towards the end of the network

The industry kept working with economists throughout the 1990's. The same activities as explored iextensively in previous blogposts continued: attending conferences, writing op-eds, appearing at testimony, etc. As there's not much new too learn, I will not go into detail.

Until roughly 1992 the LTDL documents many activities. After that, it becomes increasingly difficult to find anything substantial, and many network members suddenly disappeared from the files. One is money (we'll another reason at the end of this post)

In 1991 the Tobacco Institute faced a budget cut of 1.1 million US$, so one reason is the institute had to downsize certain activities:

(...)

The summary of a June 26, 1991 meeting are revealing the industry did not just improvise and the "that the heart of the current program is the consulting economists who produce the studies, get them published and promote them in academic circles"

(...)

Also in 1991, Tollison and Wagner published their last tobacco book The Economics of Smoking. It is clear the budget did not increase

The same document shows that year the industry had already spent $16,290 and only had a budget of $19,710 left. In the late 1980's the industry had paid the tobacco economists $15,500 to appear at one convention, so the 1992 budget in comparison was minimal.

Further, around that time, the Tobacco Institute wrote many memoranda complaining about 'going over budget' (not just for the social cost economists), showing the budget cut must have really hurt the Institute. From 1985 to 1991 the economists appeared at economic conferences, but not afterwards.

Many of the original members were dropped around 1991/1992, leaving only an ever smaller core group. The "tax hearing witnesses" list was decreased from an economist in every state to just three economists: Robert D. Tollison, Richard A. Wagner and Dwight R. Lee

In 1993, the Tobacco Institute still suffered from the decreased budget, leading to the Tobacco Institute demanding a new contract with James Savarese

Even though the network kept delivering material until at least 1998, this letter probably marked the final turning point in the functioning of the network. The letter to Savarese was written on the same day as a document announcing the Tobacco Institute's 1994 budget would decrease another 62%

Some members of the network started working for the individual tobacco companies, such as Philip Morris (e.g. Walter E. Williams), R. J. Reynolds (Richard Wagner, from 1994). Tollison on his side started working for British American Tobacco in 1993. The economists may have been too expensive for the reduced budget

Still, in 1994 the Tobacco Institute budgeted $102,000 - $194,000 for the activities of Tollison, Wagner and Lee

From about 1993, the industry shifted to using think tanks (especially the Independent Institute - this will be explored in future blogposts) instead of directly ordering reports from the economists. But it was not the end of the network yet, as the economists still wrote op-eds, and Tollison and Lee still appeared at hearings.

The Tobacco Institute sent a memo in 1995 mentioning that the economic consultants still were able to provide op-eds in no less than 30 states and effectively the economists started organizing an op-ed campaign against FDA-regulations, with 17 economists trying to get published, including a new names (Lowell Gallaway). The industry once again pressed its agenda, and suggested to write on

In 1996, not 17 but 20 op-eds were sent to newspapers. In 1998 the last new name that could be found appears: Gary D. Ferrier wrote an op-ed that year, but there is no indication he ever was formally recruited. His name appears in exactly five documents.

Yet still, despite this last joined effort in 1995 and continued recruitment of new authors, the impression remains after 1992/1993 things went steeply downhill. The sparse documents show a network with less coordination

After some years of legal actions, in 1998, the US government reached the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement. More and more whistleblowers were explaining industry methods, the industry realized it would face trial long before 1998, and knew the authorities would be uncovering the lobbying-tactics and people used by the industry.

It is nearly impossible to find anything relevant to the economists network in the LTDL from 1995 onwards and the documents often stopped giving names. The first attempts to hide names started around 1995, until the 1998 Settlement, after which the industry systematically stopped using names. From that point on, it is impossible to trace the network. In 1995 Savarese and Tollison wrote another proposal for the Tobacco Institute though, proposing several studies, op-eds etc. Amongst the proposals was a $27,500 report that would conclude that a Rand Corporation study in JAMA overestimated the social cost of tobacco. Of course, they knew their conclusion before actually conducting the research.

The early documents always carried the names of the economic consultants and overview of whose op-eds were published, but in 1998 James Savarese simply wrote "payment of $22,000 for "Consulting Services - Op-Ed Project - 1st of 2 payments".

Unlike the documents from the 1980's the invoice does not mention a single name. While the document overviews the published op-eds, it does not mention the names of the authors, only the university where the op-ed was written. Only through the older documents is it still possible at times to link the university with the author. Yet it is clear the Savarese memo differed strongly from those from the 1980's. Remember the 1987 audit, and the industry complaining Savarese withheld some names from the industry? The industry was aware it was under scrutiny in and started culling names...

Even though the network of economic consultants vanished from the LTDL, it seems it did not really cease to exist, but rather the industry adapted communications to the new reality after the Tobacco Masters Settlement Agreement. Thus, it is not possible to detect if the network really ceased to exist or not. The correct title of this chapter therefore perhaps should have been: the end of the traceable network.

Yet another possible reason the industry stopped working with the economists is that it seems people like Tollison and Wagner became very radical, and started writing op-eds with titles like Scientific integrity consumed by anti-smoking zealotry. DEspite this ectreme title, it was cleared by the Tobacco Institute. The same year they wrote a letter tot the editor, stating

In 1999, only a handful of the social consultants signed an open letter to the US Attorney General, defending the tobacco industry. It contained the standard free-market reasoning, wans was signed by 5 network members (Bruce L. Benson, Robert B. Ekelund, Lowell Gallaway, William F. Shughart, II and Walter E. Williams) and some 37 other economists, all of them known for their strong free-market views. By that time (1999), the role of the economists network had already been replaced by tobacco-friendly think tanks, and this letter probably originated somewhere in a think tank, not the Tobacco Institute's economists network.

The corrupted tobacco economist network, Part 45 - More tobacco publications.

noreply@blogger.com (jules) — Sat, 15 Aug 2020 22:30:00 +0000

Overview of previous posts here

Other tobacco publications

There have been more papers and booklets written by the members of the network, probably ordered by the tobacco industry. I didn't explore them because I don't think it will provide much new information and the list is long, very long, starting with:

Tollison, R.D., Wagner, R.E. (1983) : WHO: No Rx for a Healthier World. Center for Study of Public Choice, George Mason University, 39 p.

The following two pieces were published in the same volume of the same journal, so there may have been some pal-review:

Jackson, J. D., Ekelund, R. D. Jr. (1989) : The Influence of Advertising on Tobacco Consumption: A Debate: Some Problems with Chetwynd et al.'s Analysis, British Journal of Addiction 84 (November 1989), pp. 1247-1250
Boddewyn, J. J. (1989) There is No Convincing Evidence for a Relationship Between Cigarette Advertising and Consumption. British Journal of Addiction. Volume 84, Issue 11 (November 1989), pages 1255–1261

Many more papers were published by members of the network, e.g.:

Lee, D. R. (1990) : An Economic Analysis of the Economic Burden of Cigarette Smoking in Georgia Journal of the Medical Association of Georgia (March 1990): pp. 161-164.
Lee, D. R. (1990) : Social Cost and The Cigarette Excise Tax: A Misguided Rationale for an Inefficient Policy, The Journal of Private Enterprise (Fall 1990): pp. 17-33.
Rucker, R. R., Thurman, W. N., Sumner, D. A. (1990) : Production Rights with Limited Transferability: A Case Study of the U.S. Tobacco and Peanut Programs. American Journal of Agricultural Economics, December 1990
Ault, R. W., Ekelund, R. B., Jackson, J.D., Saba, R. B., Saurman, D. S., (1991) : Smoking and Absenteeism: An Empirical Study, Applied Economics. 1991, 23, pp. 743-754 .
Rucker, R. R., Thurman, W. N., Sumner, D. A., (1991) : An Economic Analysis of the Effects of Eliminating Restrictions on the Transfer of Tobacco Quota. in Current Issues in Tobacco Economics, Vol. 4, Tobacco Merchants Association of the United States, Inc., Princeton, NJ, 1991.
Lee, D. R. (1991) : environmental economics and the social cost of smoking. Contemporary Economic Policy, Volume 9, Issue 1, pages 83–92, January 1991
Bohanon, C.E, McClure, J.E. (1993) : The Prohibitive Taxation of Cigarettes. Indianapolis Star.
Saba, R. at. al. (1995) : The Demand for Cigarette Smuggling, Economic Inquiry.vol. 33, no.-2 (April 1995), pp: 189-202;
Coats, R. M. (1995) : A Note on Estimating Cross-Border Effects of State Cigarette Taxes National-Tax Journal, vol. 48, no. 4 (December 1995), pp. 573-84;
Rucker, R. R., Thurman, W. N., Sumner, D. A. (1995) : Restricting the Market for Quota: An Analysis of Tobacco Production Rights with Corroboration from Congressional Testimony Journal of Political Economy, 1995, 103(1): 142-175.
Boyes, W. J., Marlow, M. L. (1996) : The Public Demand for Smoking Bans, Public Choice, 88: 57-67. (Marlow was not a Savarese-network member, but was working for Philip Morris)
Lee, D. R. (1996) : The Turf Fight for Indoor Air Quality Protection. Center for the Study of American Business, Volume 79, May 1996 http://news.heartland.org/sites/all/modules/custom/heartland_migration/files/pdfs/5854.pdf
Vedder, R. K. (1997) : Bordering on Chaos; Fiscal Federalism and Excise Taxes in William F. Shughart II, ed., Taxing Choice: The Predatory Politics of Fiscal Discrimination (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publish- ete, 1997)
Boyes, W. J., Marlow, M. L. (1997) : The Effects on Businesses of laws Restricting Smoking
Lee, D. R. (1997) : Will Government's Crusade Against Tobacco Work ? Center for the Study of American Business, Washington University, Contemporary Issues Series 86 , Jun1997, pp. 2-4
Lee, D. R. (1997) : The use and abuse of excise taxes. Tax Foundation, working paper 19, May 1997, 19 p.
McCormick, R. E., Tollison, R. D., Wagner, R. E. (1997) : Smoking, insurance and social cost. Regulation : the Cato review of business and government.- Vol. 20.1997, 3, p. 33-37

And then there is the output of other scholars, like this book:
Magda E. Schaler, Jeffrey A. Schaler (eds.) : Smoking, who has the right ? (Prometheus, 1998)

The connection of these authors to the economists network, if any, is not clear, but like the main members of the network, Jeffrey Schaler was working at. . . George Mason University.

The Schaler and Schaler-book contains contributions from George J. Annas, Gary S. Becker, Peter L. Berger, Richard Daynard, Antony Flew, Peter D. Jacobson, Stanton Glantz, Robert E. Goodin, Joseph R. Gusfield, Stephen J. Heishman, Graham E. Kelder, David A. Kessler, Mark Edward Lender, Stephen C. Littlechild, Rajendra Persaud, Robert N. Procter, David Ryder, Robert J. Samuelson, John Slade, Edward L. Sweda Jr, Robert D. Tollison, Richard E. Wagner, Lee S. Weinberg, Walter E. Williams, and Richard Vatz.

Although some were not members of the social cost consultant network, those underlined were people who had worked as consultants for the tobacco industry, via direct evidence in the Tobacco Legacy Documents Library. It raises questions why and how the book was compiled.

Clearly, in the 1980's and 1990's, economists suddenly were very interested in tobacco ...

The corrupted tobacco economist network, Part 44: another example where the 'independent academics' allow the Tobacco Institute to alter the draft versions of their work.

noreply@blogger.com (jules) — Fri, 14 Aug 2020 21:26:00 +0000

Overview of previous posts here

Office of technology assessment on the costs of smoking: wrong again

In 1993 professors Robert Tollison and Richard Wagner wrote the paper The Office of Technology Assessment on the Costs of Smoking: Wrong Again. It was published by George Mason University's Center for Study of Public Choice. Once again, this was not an independent scientific publication. Tobacco Institute's Calvin George wrote

Everything Tollison and Wagner wrote had to be cleared by the Tobacco Institute's lawyers:

The LTDL shows indeed corrections were made by the industry.

And yes, these changes do appear in Tollison's final draft

The corrupted tobacco economist network, Part 43: the one with the flawed papers, with revisions made by the Tobacco Institute

noreply@blogger.com (jules) — Sat, 08 Aug 2020 21:34:00 +0000

Overview of previous posts here

Smoking and workplace efficiency: an assessment of the record

The comments of the Tobacco Institute on paper Smoking and Workplace Efficiency: An Assessment of the Record by Richard Wagner and Kevin Grier again illustrates to what extent the industry provided direction to the economists

[the rest of the document is missing]

Karen Fernicola Suhr was concerned about the validity of the arguments. She seemed to have been one of the few Tobacco Institute's employees who actually cared that the science was somewhat sound, and she was rather critical towards the output of the economists (another example will be given in another chapter below).

A follow-up memorandum from Karen Fernicola Suhr shows Wagner was willing to revise the paper

A few months later, Fernicola Suhr wrote

Even more interesting is the next paragraph

In other words, green light was given to a paper the industry knew to be flawed. Fernicola-Suhr wrote the authors

Richard Wagner and Kevin Grier revised their paper, incorporating the changes wanted by the Tobacco Institute

Savarese billed $42,500 for the paper. No proof was found the paper ever was published.

The tobacco economists network - part 42 - SAMMEC II

noreply@blogger.com (jules) — Wed, 05 Aug 2020 00:15:00 +0000

Overview of previous posts here

Sammec II

In the early 1990's the software SAMMEC II (Smoking-Attributable Mortality, Morbidity, and Economic Costs) was developed to calculate the social cost of tobacco. As to be expected, the Tobacco Institute planned to call the software flawed. Just like all the other ‘scientific’ output from the social cost consultants, the Tobacco Institute carefully read the drafts before allowing it to be released. Overall this letter of Tobacco Institute's Cal George gives a brilliant insight into the tactics:

The paper was written by Robert Ekelund and Richard Ault, both from Auburn university, a good but messer know university. Savarese found a solution

A year later Cal George wrote another memo, proving Savarese's plan indeed was executed

(...)

The document was written during a period when the network was in decline (this will be explored in another blogpost), and the document might give one of the possible explanations. The 1993 EPA report stated that second hand smoking indeed as harmful for the environment, and attacking the EPA's report became a much higher priority for the industry.

The corrupted tobacco economists network - Part 41 : Benefit-cost analysis of EPA's workplace smoking policies

noreply@blogger.com (jules) — Sun, 26 Jul 2020 20:04:00 +0000

Overview of previous posts here

Benefit-cost analysis of EPA's workplace smoking policies

In 1991 the booklet “A benefit-cost analysis of the environmental protection agency's draft guide to workplace smoking policies” was written

It was well paid work, even though Savarese did not mention all the names of the authors, which is strange as the document 1) does mention other names 2) this is written AFTER the 1987-audit in which the industry complained Savarese hiding some names from them.

Of course, again the authors did not work independently

It is amusing to read that the Tobacco Institute hired Miller and Tollison because they could not find anyone else

Either the output was subpar or did not meet the tobacco industry’s needs, as the work was not used.