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The Cato Institute

The Cato Institute publishes reports on the environment and economics with a purpose of opposing government regulation.

1. They have published papers which were critical of the EPA report on secondhand tobacco smoke. The internal documents of tobacco companies show they understood it to be carcinogenic. Their landmark paper, "Smoke and Mirrors: the EPA's Flawed Study of Environmental Tobacco Smoke and Lung Cancer," was published in Regulation in 1993. One of the coauthors was Dr. Gary Huber, who later admitted in a deposition to "the role he had played for the industry over the years and saying that it was a dishonest role." Huber had taken "millions in research dollars" from the tobacco industry." Huber had also annoyed students during his tenure at Harvard Medical school who complained about him "pasting up a big tobacco leaf in his office... and said that cigs are not harmful" while "taking millions from the tobacco industry."
   
2. Cato has the gall to claim that smoking "poses little danger to young adults or family members" and " no proven relationship between parental smoking and pediatric disease." Medical research, however, tells us that exposure to smoke is a major risk factor for babies dying of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome and having bronchitis, ear infections, and asthma attacks.
   
3. Cato has written many editorial pieces in favor of whatever the tobacco industry was arguing at the time. Here is a document from Phillip Morris that suggests that Cato agreed to a PM suggestion to write a paper critical of a Centers for Disease Control report before they'd even studied it! Here is another, suggesting that Cato was writing articles about teen smoking at the direct bidding of the industry.