Industry Briefs

February 2008

New center promotes integrity in tobacco control

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Prominent health activist says anti-smoking movement has gone too far.

Professor Michael Siegel of the Social and Behavioral Sciences Department at the Boston University School of Public Health has established an organization to ensure the ethical and honest practice of tobacco control by anti-smoking organizations in the United States.

The Center for Public Accountability in Tobacco Control (CPATC) aims to help ensure that efforts to reduce tobacco-related morbidity and mortality are sustainable by a movement that can remain credible and effective into the future. Its premise is that the anti-smoking movement is going too far in its agenda and losing its solid public health basis.

The CPATC hopes to highlight the tactics currently being used in order to hold public health groups accountable to their primary constituency, the public.

Siegel is a physician with 21 years of experience in tobacco control. He has published numerous peer-reviewed scientific papers on tobacco-related issues, which have appeared in journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, the Journal of Marketing and the American Journal of Public Health. Siegel has also testified in seven tobacco control cases, including the Engle case, which resulted in a $145 billion verdict against the tobacco companies.

The CPATC’s Web site is located at www.tobaccocontrolintegrity.com.