They are among the leaders in increasing the flow of money into Republican candidate and party coffers because they do see themselves as in the hands of the Republican Party. This is quite a shift, incidentally, because for many years, the tobacco lobby was close especially to the southern tobacco state Democrats. And so it really has been a radical shift of their funding and their lobbying focus from Democrats to Republicans. The tobacco industry has a terrible problem. I'd be sympathetic if they weren't doing such terrible things.
Nobody believes a word they say.
Nobody believes anything a tobacco lobbyist or a tobacco public relations spokesman says, nobody. So their need is to find people who they can encourage who do have credentials, who do have authority, especially scientific authority or the credentials of having been a respected government official who will speak in their place. And one of the ways they do this is to fund some of these think tanks that have grown up, especially those that are concerned with preserving the free enterprise system and whose larger mission is seen as a less partisan one, a less corrupt one that is not just defending the tobacco and the cigarettes, but protecting the whole free enterprise system. So if they can get groups like the Citizens for a Sound Economy to speak out on the need for controlling the monster of FDA, including FDA's effort to regulate tobacco, and that appears to come from an authoritative source, scientific source, a disinterested source, they've really gained something that they cannot get speaking in their own voice.