Tobacco.org

John Luik  

John Luik has challenged the validity of smokefree policies since the late 1960s and has worked as a lobbyist, consultant, analyst, and advocate of "junk" and "corrupt science" for the tobacco industry worldwide since 1987. Luik - a philosophy and international studies theorist - challenges the science of secondhand smoke and the government's role in protecting public health through the passage of smokefree laws by publicly skewing ideas of personal freedom, ethics, and liberty in the tobacco industry's favor.

In 1987, Philip Morris's law-firms - Covington and Burling, and Shook, Hardy and Bacon - created a campaign dubbed "Project Whitecoat," which sought to single out independent scientists and analysts who would "go beyond the establishment of a controversy concerning an alleged ETS health risk but to disperse the suspicion of risk." Luik was an active player in Project Whitecoat. . . .

After Luik and Gori's book attacking the U.S. EPA's report was published, tobacco holdings in the Fraser Institute increased from 1.3 percent ($31,740 to $76,180) of the institute's total annual budget from 1996 to 1998, to 5 percent ($229,300) in 1999.2

Although a self-proclaimed staunch ethics analyst, Luik has been fired from numerous universities and teaching positions for repeatedly misrepresenting his own credentials since 1977.

Jump to full article »