Cigarette Excise Taxes in Context: Cautionary Lessons from the U.S. Experience.

Cigarette excise taxes are an important tool in the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control strategy for reducing global tobacco consumption. However, contemporary tobacco control efforts also coincide with the proliferation of neoliberal economic programs calling for the withdrawal of state activity from the economy to facilitate trade. In this environment, cigarette excise taxes may be seen less as an instrument of tobacco control than a feature of an economic program that is punitive to lower-income people.

Reigniting tobacco ritual: waterpipe tobacco smoking establishment culture in the United States.

Introduction: Waterpipe tobacco smoking (WTS) is an increasingly prevalent form of tobacco use in the United States. Its appeal may stem from its social, ritualistic, and aesthetic nature. Our aim in this study was to understand WTS as a social ritual with the goal of informing prevention efforts.

Editorial input for the right price: tobacco industry support for a sheet metal indoor air quality manual.

Following legal action in the 1990s, internal tobacco industry documents became public, allowing unprecedented insight into the industry's relationships with outside organizations. During the 1980s and 1990s, the National Energy Management Institute (NEMI), established by the Sheet Metal Workers International Association and the Sheet Metal and Air Conditioning Contractors' National Association, (SMACNA) received tobacco industry funding to establish an indoor air quality services program. But the arrangement also required NEMI to serve as an advocate for industry efforts to defeat indoor smoking bans by arguing that ventilation was a more appropriate solution to environmental tobacco smoke.

Grassroots movement building and preemption in the campaign for residential fire sprinklers.

Home fires account for 85% of fire deaths in the United States, the majority in 1- or 2-family homes lacking fire sprinklers. Since 1978, however, a grassroots movement has successfully promoted more than 360 local ordinances mandating sprinklers in all new residential construction, including 1- and 2-family homes. The homebuilding industry has responded by seeking state preemption of local authority, a strategy previously used by other industries concerned about protecting their profits.

Manufacturing credibility: the National Energy Management Institute and the Tobacco Institute's strategy for indoor air quality.

Objectives: We studied tobacco industry efforts during the 1980s and 1990s to promote the National Energy Management Institute (NEMI), a nonprofit organization, as an authority on indoor air quality as part of the industry's strategy to oppose smoke-free worksite policies.

Methods: We analyzed tobacco industry documents, conducted literature searches in Lexis-Nexis for background and historical literature, and reviewed relevant public health and policy literature.

Results: The tobacco industry provided more than US $6 million to NEMI to establish it as an authority on indoor air quality and to work with it to undermine support for smoke-free air policies by promoting ventilation as a solution to indoor air quality problems.

Union women, the tobacco industry, and excise taxes: a lesson in unintended consequences.

Between 1987 and 1997, the tobacco industry used the issue of cigarette excise tax increases to create a political partnership with the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW), a group representing female trade unionists in the U.S. This paper documents how the industry created this relationship and the lessons tobacco-control advocates can learn from the industry's example, in order to mitigate possible unintended consequences of advocating excise tax increases.

Unhealthy partnerships: the tobacco industry and African American and Latino labor organizations.

The tobacco industry in the 1980s began to form relationships with outside groups for assistance on key policy issues due to its own poor credibility in the policy arena. This strategy allowed the industry to advance its own interests while seeming to match the agendas of very different organizations. Between 1988 and 1998, the tobacco industry developed coalitions with the A.

Building alliances in unlikely places: progressive allies and the Tobacco Institute's coalition strategy on cigarette excise taxes.

The tobacco industry often utilizes third parties to advance its policy agenda. One such utilization occurred when the industry identified organized labor and progressive groups as potential allies whose advocacy could undermine public support for excise tax increases. To attract such collaboration, the industry framed the issue as one of tax fairness, creating a labor management committee to provide distance from tobacco companies and furthering progressive allies' interests through financial and logistical support.

Clearing the air: the evolution of organized labor's role in tobacco control in the United States.

As efforts to make U.S. worksites smoke-free took shape in the 1980s, the tobacco industry sought to defeat them by forming alliances with organized labor.

Political coalitions and working women: how the tobacco industry built a relationship with the Coalition of Labor Union Women.

Objectives: To assess how the tobacco industry established a political relationship with the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW) and to learn from this example how tobacco control advocates can work more effectively with organisations with which working class women are affiliated.

Methods: The study reviewed tobacco industry documents to determine Tobacco Institute strategy, using the CLUW News and other published material to corroborate our findings.

Results: The Tobacco Institute was effective at framing excise tax and smokefree worksite issues in a way that facilitated CLUW's support of industry positions on these issues.

A decade of work on organized labor and tobacco control: reflections on research and coalition building in the United States.

Labor unions can and should make strong allies in tobacco control efforts. Through much of the 1980s and 1990s, however, the organized labor and tobacco control communities rarely formed coalitions to achieve mutual gains. Recently, labor unions and tobacco control organizations have begun to work together on smoking cessation programs, smoke-free worksite policies, and increased insurance coverage for cessation treatments.

Labor and the tobacco institute's labor management committee in new york state: the rise and fall of a political coalition.

In 1984 the Tobacco Institute and the Bakery, Confectionary and Tobacco Workers Union formed a Labor Management Committee. From the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, this LMC worked to elicit labor support in New York by framing issues in terms that made them salient to unions: tobacco excise taxes as regressive taxation, workplace smoking restrictions as an intrusion into collective bargaining. By the late 1990s, however, most of labor in New York had shifted to support for anti-tobacco policies.

How the health belief model helps the tobacco industry: individuals, choice, and "information".

Objective: To analyse trial and deposition testimony of tobacco industry executives to determine how they use the concepts of "information" and "choice" and consider how these concepts are related to theoretical models of health behaviour change.

Methods: We coded and analysed transcripts of trial and deposition testimony of 14 high-level executives representing six companies plus the Tobacco Institute. We conducted an interpretive analysis of industry executives' characterisation of the industry's role as information provider and the agency of tobacco consumers in making "choices".

Political coalitions for mutual advantage: the case of the Tobacco Institute's Labor Management Committee.

In 1984, the tobacco workers' union and the Tobacco Institute, which represents US tobacco companies, formed a labor management committee (LMC). The institute relied on LMC unions to resist smoke-free worksite rules. In a review of the internal tobacco industry documents now publicly available, we found that the LMC succeeded for 2 primary reasons.

Smoke-free airlines and the role of organized labor: a case study.

Labor unions play an important role in debates about smoke-free worksites. We investigated the role of flight attendants and their unions in creating smoke-free air travel. We used case study methodology to search tobacco industry documents and labor union periodicals and to interview key informants (i.

Tobacco advertising in communities: associations with race and class.

Background: Individuals of lower socioeconomic position smoke at higher rates than those of higher socioeconomic position. Because of this disparity, the National Cancer Institute has called for studies of targeted tobacco marketing to clarify mechanisms contributing to higher tobacco use among low-income Americans and other high-risk populations.

Methods: We observed tobacco industry marketing in six Boston area communities (two of high socioeconomic position and four of low position; total of 41 observations) and in selected print publications that circulated in those communities during a 22-month period in 2000-2002.

R.J. Reynolds' targeting of African Americans: 1988-2000.

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to describe RJ Reynolds (RJR) Tobacco Company's strategy for targeting African Americans, as revealed in tobacco industry documents and magazine advertisements.

Methods: The authors searched industry documents to determine RJR's strategies and analyzed magazine advertising during 2 periods: the time of the launch of the company's Uptown cigarette (1989-1990) and a decade later (1999-2000).

Results: RJR's efforts to target the African American market segment existed before and after Uptown, and the company's strategy was largely implemented via other RJR brands.