Tobacco and Politics

Re “Media Caution,” Ventura County letters, June 20.

I should be flattered that my letter, in which I objected to an unwarranted characterization of the work of Dr. Stanton Glantz of UC San Francisco, attracted the attention of Thomas Humber of the National Smokers Alliance (NSA) in Alexandria, Va. I am pleased that Mr. Humber, a former executive at Philip Morris Tobacco and an executive of the public relations firm of Burson-Marsteller, which created the NSA, could find the time to reply to a letter in a local edition of The Times.

However, I shouldn’t be surprised by Mr. Humber’s interest because the NSA and Stanton Glantz have a long and colorful history. In 1997, the NSA manufactured the group Californians for Scientific Integrity (CSI), which filed a lawsuit against UC San Francisco and the UC regents over Glantz’s research and the use of his faculty position for “political purposes.” The lawsuit was dismissed as groundless.

Try as they might, NSA has never been able to demonstrate any significant flaws in Glantz’s work, which has examined the effect of smoking restrictions in restaurants along with how tobacco money has influenced the political process. NSA continues the tobacco industry’s attack on Glantz’s research by referring to it as “politically motivated” when the tobacco industry is the only player flexing any political muscle.

KENNETH LONG, Associate Professor, Biology, Cal Lutheran University, Thousand Oaks