Jump to full article: CNN, 2009-06-19
Author: Kristi Keck CNN
Intro: * Tobacco industry once known for big spending on campaigns, effective lobbyists
* As public opinion has turned on Big Tobacco, courts and Congress has too
* Despite moves against industry, "tobacco wars are anything but over," author says
. . .
"My own view is that in many ways, the tobacco industry invented the kind of special-interest lobbying that has become so characteristic of the late 20th- and earlier 21st-century American politics," said Allan Brandt, dean of Harvard's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
The industry was known for its giant spending on political campaigns and effective lobbyists. The industry's representatives often had experience in politics or close ties to major power players.
"Today obviously, that lobby is much less powerful and successful than it was a generation ago," said Brandt, author of "The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product That Defined America." . . .
And just last month, in what Brandt considers "one of the most significant racketeering and fraud litigations" the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler's ruling in a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations, or RICO, case, which found the tobacco industry guilty of engaging in a decades-long conspiracy to defraud the American public about the health risks of tobacco.
"Given the character of Kessler's findings -- and now the fact that her findings have been upheld by the appeals court -- this is really in a way a road map to tobacco regulation," Brandt said.
Stanton Glantz, a longtime anti-tobacco advocate and director of the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at the University of California, San Francisco, said the RICO ruling is what the public health community should use in its fight against the tobacco industry.
"I think it really can undermine the power of the industry politically by going to politicians and saying, 'These guys are crooks. They are crooks according to the D.C. Court of Appeals. Not just me,' " Glantz said.
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