In 1994, Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA), Chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health and the Environment, subpoenaed the top executives of the seven largest U.S. tobacco companies and asked them to testify under oath whether they believed nicotine to be addictive.
All of the tobacco executives testified under oath that “I believe that nicotine is not addictive.” Tobacco CEO’s Statement to Congress.
The Waxman hearings represented the pinnacle of the tobacco industry’s decades long campaign to collude together to mislead the public by promoting “controvery” about the harmful effects of smoking and the addictiveness of nicotine.
Just four years later, the four largest U.S. tobacco companies entered into a “global settlement agreement,” i.e., the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement, in which the attorneys general of 46 states settled their Medicaid lawsuits against the tobacco industry for recovery of their tobacco-related health-care costs — but also exempted the companies from private tort liability regarding harm caused by tobacco use. In exchange, the tobacco companies agreed to curtail or cease certain tobacco marketing practices, as well as to pay, in perpetuity, various annual payments to the states to compensate them for some of the medical costs of caring for persons with smoking-related illnesses.
History is repeating itself with the Carbon Monopoly’s decades long campaign to collude together to mislead the public by promoting “controvery” about the harmful effects of global warming and climate change. Think Progress reports, Oil Company Exxon Knew About The Scientific Reality Of Climate Change In 1981:
[T]he Union of Concerned Scientists has disclosed an email revealing that Exxon understood the scientific reality of climate change as far back as 1981. “Other companies, such as Mobil, only became aware of the issue in 1988, when it first became a political issue,” Exxon’s former in-house climate expert, chemical engineer Leonard S. Bernstein wrote last year. The 30-year veteran of Mobil and Exxon explained:
Exxon first got interested in climate change in 1981 because it was seeking to develop the Natuna gas field off Indonesia. This is an immense reserve of natural gas, but it is 70% CO2. That CO2 would have to be separated to make the natural gas usable.
And yet despite a growing understanding of the scientific reality of climate change in the 1980s and 1990s, Exxon became one of the biggest funders of scientists and think tanks and others who do little but deny and cast doubt on the scientific understanding of human-caused global warming.
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