Clearing The Air

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

American Lung Association of MN telling lies or splitting hairs you decide

Apparently the communications director of American Lung Association MN knows how damaging it is for the public and lawmakers to know that they receive their lobbying money from the Nicoderm interests at Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

In this post Mr. Moffitt states:

....local pro-smoke activists have tried a variety of arguments to defend the indefensible practice of allowing smoking at our indoor workplaces...."They (ALAMN) receive so much money from manufacturers of alternative nicotine delivery products (like Nicoderm), they are compelled to promote their financial interests..."Truth Check, please: The ALAMN does not use any direct funding from any pharmaceutical company to support our effort to promote smokefree air in Minnesota. Not one cent....

However, on Robert Wood Johnson's own website they expose the fact that they have provided $99,000,000.00 to the ALA, ACS, and AHA and RWJF "....encouraged its grantees to be activists; (2) advocacy was emphasized to bring about policy change. The program relied heavily on three major ...organizations: the American Cancer Society; the American Heart Association and the American Lung Association......"

And since RWJF was founded by Johnson & Johnson Co. and owns 80,000,000 shares of the Nicoderm manufacturers stock. I suppose Mr. Moffit is technically correct when he states regarding the $99,000,000.00, ALAMN does not use any direct funding from any pharmaceutical company......since the $99,000,000.00 is funneled through a pharmaceutical foundation first.

However, Truth Check, please. The $99,000,000.00 does come from the profits of a pharmaceutical nicotine company (Nicoderm) whose financial windfall comes after the passage of smoking ban ordinances.

In other words Moffitt is trying his best to do the "communications two-step" but the facts are getting in his way. Just like the health department testing which proved secondhand smoke indoors is 500 - 15 times safer than OSHA workplace regulations.