Report: Tobacco Firm Started Front Group

Source from:  Tuesday, August 21, 2007 Gazette Staff Reports  08/23/2007

R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. created a front group in the mid-1990s to oppose tobacco regulation and kept its involvement in the group secret to gain greater influence with lawmakers, according to an article published this year by the American Journal of Public Health. ``The Creation of Industry Front Groups: The Tobacco Industry and `Get Government Off Our Back,''' an article by Dorie E. Apollonio and Lisa A. Bero, contends that R.J. Reynolds created the Get Government Off Our Back coalition in 1994 to fight federal regulation of tobacco. The coalition's stated goals, however, were broader than tobacco-regulation opposition, and this allowed R.J. Reynolds to contact legislators without the lawmakers necessarily realizing that they were speaking to tobacco-industry representatives, the authors say. The article, available for purchase online, also says that 18 of the 39 groups that were part of the coalition in 1995 received financial support from the tobacco industry. Among the groups listed in the article as members of the coalition in 1995 were the Christian Voters League, the Home School Legal Defense Association, the National Association of Convenience Stores, the National Wilderness Institute, Small Business of America, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The authors say their investigation was based on analysis of tobacco-industry documents, media reports, journal articles and press releases about the Get Government Off Our Back coalition. On the Web n American Journal of Public Health article: www.ajph.org/cgi/content/abstract/97/3/419 n Legacy Tobacco Documents Library: http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu n Tobacco Documents Online: http://tobaccodocuments.org Enditem