Term limits and the tobacco industry

Dorie E Apollonio; Stanton A Glantz; Lisa A Bero

doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2013.11.005

Term limits and the tobacco industry

Soc Sci Med. 2014 Mar:104:1-5. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2013.11.005. Epub 2013 Nov 15.

Authors

Dorie E Apollonio¹, Stanton A Glantz², Lisa A Bero³

Affiliations

¹ University of California, San Francisco, Department of Clinical Pharmacy, 3333 California Street Suite 420, San Francisco, CA 94143-0613, USA. Electronic address: Dorie.Apollonio@ucsf.edu.
² University of California, San Francisco, Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, 530 Parnassus Avenue, Suite 366 Library, San Francisco, CA 94143-1390, USA.
³ University of California, San Francisco, Department of Clinical Pharmacy, 3333 California Street Suite 420, San Francisco, CA 94143-0613, USA.

Abstract

In the 1990s several American states passed term limits on legislators with the stated intention of reducing the influence of wealthy industries on career legislators. Although term limits in the United States do not have a direct relationship to public health, the tobacco industry anticipated that term limits could have indirect effects by either limiting or expanding industry influence. We detail the strategy of the tobacco industry in the wake of term limits using internal tobacco company documents and a database of campaign contributions made to legislators in term limited states between 1988 and 2002. Despite some expectations that term limits would limit tobacco industry access to state legislators, term limits appear to have had the opposite effect.

Keywords: Campaign finance; Health policy; Term limits; Tobacco control; United states.

Publication types

Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Financial Support
Health Policy / legislation & jurisprudence
Humans
Politics*
Tobacco Industry*
United States

Abstract

Publication types

MeSH terms

Grants and funding