Mobilising public opinion for the tobacco industry: the consumer tax alliance and excise taxes
Mobilising public opinion for the tobacco industry: the consumer tax alliance and excise taxes
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DOI：
10.1136/tc.2008.025338
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发表时间：
2008-10-01
期刊：
影响因子：
5.2
通讯作者：
Balbach, E. D.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Campbell, R.;Balbach, E. D.
背景：烟草业的资金在 1989 年创建和资助消费者税收联盟方面发挥了重要作用，该组织依靠广泛的媒体宣传来反对消费税作为一种累退的税收形式。通过模糊自己在这一努力中的作用，烟草业破坏了公众对政策制定过程透明度的合理期望。目的：研究消费者税收联盟作为“混合”形式的利益集团的形成和活动，以便为烟草控制和公共卫生倡导者提供对意想不到的烟草业联盟的更好理解，并促进采取适当的对策。方法：通过传统烟草文献库和烟草文献在线进行文献搜索和审查结果：烟草协会从 20 世纪 80 年代中期开始，积极寻求自由派盟友，通过将卷烟消费税提高作为一种累退税收形式来宣传，以争取公众反对。 1989 年消费者税联盟的成立，明确是为了在联邦预算赤字谈判中扭转劳工和中产阶级的观点，反对预期的消费税增加，但不透露烟草业在其形成过程中所扮演的角色。结论：了解信任的动态非常重要。倡导者需要了解这种形式的利益集团行为，以便他们能够通过诊断和揭露这种影响，更好地在政策领域进行谈判，并通过这样做，更好地准备采取适当的对策。
Background: Tobacco industry funding was instrumental in creating and financing the Consumer Tax Alliance in 1989 as an organisation that relied upon extensive media outreach to build opposition to excise taxes as a regressive form of taxation. By obscuring its own role in this effort, the tobacco industry undermined the public's reasonable expectations for transparency in the policy-making process.Aim: To examine the formation and activities of the Consumer Tax Alliance as a "hybrid'' form of interest group in order to provide tobacco control and public health advocates with a better understanding of unanticipated tobacco industry coalitions and facilitate appropriate countermeasures.Methods: Document searches through the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library and through Tobacco Documents Online and review of background literature.Results: The Tobacco Institute actively sought liberal allies beginning in the mid-1980s in seeking to build public opposition to cigarette excise tax increases by promoting them as a regressive form of taxation. The creation of the Consumer Tax Alliance in 1989 was expressly intended to turn labour and middle-class opinion against prospective excise tax increases in federal budget deficit negotiations, without divulging the tobacco industry's role in its formation.Conclusion: It is important to understand the dynamic by which trusted organisations can be induced to alter their agendas in response to funding sources. Advocates need to understand this form of interest group behaviour so that they are better able to negotiate the policy arena by diagnosing and exposing this influence where it occurs and, by doing so, be better prepared to take appropriate countermeasures.