摘要：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. Internal industry documents indicate that this strategic use of ideas, institutions, and interests facilitated the recruitment of leading progressive organizations as allies. By placing excise taxes within a strategic policy nexus that promotes mutual public interest goals, public health advocates may use a similar strategy in forging their own excise tax coalitions. In its efforts to oppose cigarette excise tax increases in the 1980s, the tobacco industry devised a coalition strategy of recruiting outside groups to advocate its positions at the federal, state, and local levels. 1 Although forming coalitions was not a new industry practice, it became an increasingly important tactic as the industry sought to create an image of broad support for its positions in the face of growing public pressure around tobacco control. 2 Roger Mozingo, a vice president for the Tobacco Institute (the tobacco industry's trade association; hereafter referred to as “the Institute”), underscored the importance of excise taxes in 1987 when he wrote that “the cigarette tax issue is our oldest and remains the one [issue] that most immediately and directly affects our bottom line.” 3 He emphasized that excise taxes were being levied not only to raise revenue, but also as “punitive attacks on industry.” 3 Additionally, research had demonstrated that tobacco tax increases were among the most effective ways to reduce smoking prevalence. 4 , 5 Acknowledging that the “political acceptability of ‘sin’ taxes made further increases a certainty,” 1 the Institute's strategy included recruiting “organized labor, minorities, and other liberal groups” to provide early warnings of legislative tax initiatives, help tobacco industry lobbyists gain access to legislators who were not industry allies, demonstrate constituent support for protobacco votes, and testify on the industry's behalf. 1 The Institute was successful in forging relationships with—and providing significant financial support to—two prominent progressive organizations, Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ) and Citizen Action, to oppose cigarette excise tax increases as part of its policy efforts. 6 The alliance between the Institute and progressive organizations on cigarette excise taxes represents a departure from the more typical formation of policy coalitions by like-minded groups with shared political philosophies and a history of working together. 7 Although there are other examples of tobacco industry support for social justice organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union 8 and leading civil rights groups, 9 CTJ and Citizen Action were progressive groups whose populist political philosophies contrasted with the antiregulatory impulses and corporate mission of the tobacco industry, making their collaboration with the industry particularly surprising. The Institute was able to gain their support by employing a strategy that employed key ideas, institutions, and interests to induce policy behavior that would otherwise not have occurred. Details of the arrangement with CTJ and Citizen Action became available with the release of internal tobacco industry documents as a result of litigation. 10 , 11 These documents offer insight into the tobacco industry's strategies in opposing tobacco control initiatives, as well as activities of groups and individuals collaborating with the industry. We drew on documents retrieved through the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library at the University of California at San Francisco ( http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu ) and Tobacco Documents Online ( http://tobaccodocuments.org ) to examine how the tobacco industry was able to attract support from progressive groups on excise tax debates. We searched both databases with key terms such as “coalition strategy,” “Citizens for Tax Justice,” “CTJ,” “Citizen Action,” “Strategy Group” (consulting group), “McIntyre” (Robert McIntyre from CTJ), and “Wilhelm” (David Wilhelm from CTJ and the Strategy Group), and pursued relevant threads contained in the documents. We also searched for Institute budgets between the years 1984 and 1999 to obtain funding information for coalition members. We reviewed more than 700 documents through these searches. We based our analysis on approximately 100 documents most relevant to the creation and maintenance of the tax coalition. We used Lexis–Nexis and newspaper and periodical searches to determine whether op-ed pieces referenced in Institute documents as part of the effort to influence public opinion actually ran in newspapers and magazines as claimed.
