Clearing The Air

Monday, September 26, 2005

For those still naive enough to think non-profits push for smoking ban legislation for your health...

Here are some RWJF (Nicoderm) grants to finance smoking ban legislation.

1) Increasing public debate and demand for smoke-free environments and advancing state and local smoke-free policies. (links) Awarded to: The Institute of Medicine and Public Health of New Jersey, Inc $150,000.00 +

2) Awarded to: Kids Involuntarily Inhaling Secondhand Smoke $399,950.00 So what are kids doing in the bars anyway?....this argument is a red herring.

3) Enhancing and sustaining smoke-free environments. Awarded to: American Nonsmokers' Rights Foundation $1,000,000.00

4) Awarded to: Health Research Incorporated $1,500,000.00

5) Awarded to: Duke University Center for Health Policy, Law and Management $399,997.00

6) Public awareness campaign to increase the number of smoke-free communities in Illinois Awarded to: American Lung Association $138,900.00

7) Awarded to: Mission City Community Network Inc. $49,998.00

8) Center for MultiCultural Health $50,000.00

9) University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine $399,000.00 Project Director Stanton Glantz

10) Tobacco Control Resource Center Inc. $300,000.00

11) Increasing the number of smoke-free sites in the Denver metropolitan region through collaborative educational activities Awarded to: Colorado Tobacco Education and Prevention Alliance $149,500.00

12) University of Minnesota School of Public Health $250,000 .00

13) Promoting an increase in smoke-free workplaces and protection of Master Settlement funds for tobacco control Awarded to: American Medical Association $10,896,463.00

14) Effort to lobby lawmakers for asmoking ban in Delaware Awarded to: American Lung Association of Delaware (Wilmington, DE) Amount: $ 793,552.00 and $ 654,953.00

You can find all 497 grants here. The non-profits demand smoking ban legislation because once they accepted hundreds of millions of dollars from RWJF they became marketing spokesmen for Nicoderm & Nicoderm CQ.

As you can tell by clicking on some of the above links, RWJF has moved or deleted some of the financial grants above, perhaps as an effort to thwart further investigations. Either way it seems to be an admission of wrongdoing on the part of RWJF.

These financial grants are designed to coerce our lawmakers to enact smoking ban legislation. Grants are financed by RWJF via its ownership of $5.4 billion of Johnson & Johnson stock......profits made in part thru continued sales of Nicoderm & Nicoderm CQ. As you can see the recipients are as varied as the American Lung Association, American Cancer Society, American Non-Smokers Rights Foundation, universities, and private "research" companies.

The source of funds used to influence lawmakers to pass smoking bans, coming from the company which profits in sales when smoking bans are implemented, makes the lobbying efforts of any of the recipients highly suspect to say the least.

The only study not funded by pharmaceutical nicotine special interests, is the St. Louis Park Environmental Health Department secondhand smoke air quality test. And the SLP results prove secondhand smoke is 150 times safer than OSHA requires. I guess that's the reason the American Lung Association, American Cancer Society, American Non-Smokers Rights Foundation and others disapprove of the SLP study.....because they via RWJF did not manipulate (fund) those test results.

Update: Now there is the American Cancer Society air quality testing which proves secondhand smoke is up to 25,000 times SAFER than OSHA air quality regulations.