Both popular opinion and existing research suggest that money is the key predictor of interest group lobbying activity. However, this new research on interest group lobbying argues that the decision to spend money on lobbying is dependent on a range of resources, not just organizational wealth. Using a sample containing organizations that did and did not make lobbying expenditures in the 1998 election cycle, it shows how interest group resources explain differences in lobbying behavior among organizations with similar political goals. Despite the fact that both advocacy groups and labor unions seek electoral goals like getting new legislators into office, advocacy groups are less likely to spend money on lobbying than labor unions. In addition, firms are less likely to spend money on lobbying than trade associations, even though both types of groups primarily seek access to legislators. The availability of interest group resources, such as a committed membership and organizational experience, helps explain these differences in behavior. These findings suggest that fears about the corrupting influence of money on politics may be overstated.

© 2018 The Author(s). Background: In the late 20th century, US localities began increasing the minimum age of legal access (MLA) for tobacco from 18 to 21 years by enacting "Tobacco 21" ordinances. Although these policies have a strong evidence base and broad popular support, popular media coverage of tobacco control laws has not always been accurate. This study sought to determine if contemporaneous popular media reporting accurately reflected the scientific findings regarding increased tobacco MLAs. Methods: We searched LexisNexis for popular media reports that (1) addressed proposed or enacted Tobacco 21 ordinances and were (2) published in English, (3) drawn from a US news source, and (4) written after January 2004. We conducted a content analysis for quality based on a validated measure of accuracy of reporting, the Index of Scientific Quality (ISQ), which allows assessment of articles by assigning scores ranging from 1 (lowest) to 5 (highest). Results: Searches yielded 378 articles; after screening for relevance and duplicates, 98 were included in the review. All studies identified through the keyword searches addressed Tobacco 21 policies. The average global score identifying the scientific quality of the articles was 2.98 of 5. Over three-quarters of the popular media articles addressing Tobacco 21 laws were written after a systematic review of these policies was released by the Institute of Medicine and approximately 4 in 10 cited findings from that review. Conclusions: Popular media reports on Tobacco 21 laws demonstrated average overall quality and relied on both anecdotal and scientific evidence, in contrast to previous studies found that popular media reports on tobacco issues demonstrated low overall quality and relied primarily on anecdotal evidence. The systematic review of increased MLAs for tobacco written by the Institute of Medicine diffused quickly into popular reporting, suggesting that this type of evidence might improve research translation.

This retrospective qualitative review describes the marketing of antipsychotics by pharmaceutical companies to prisons and jails to increase prescribing. This review relied on internal pharmaceutical industry documents released in litigation and stored in the Drug Industry Documents archive at the UCSF Industry Documents Library. At least two pharmaceutical companies directly marketed antipsychotics to correctional facilities to increase sales, using targeted promotions and indirect "educational" advertising and by seeking control of state advisory boards that made formulary decisions. Further research on how medications are marketed is needed, along with stronger conflict-of-interest policies to reduce industry involvement on advisory boards that approve medications. National regulations that restrict pharmaceutical manufacturers from involvement in formulary decisions and prescribing guidelines would likely improve the provision of health care to people who are incarcerated.

Background

Tobacco cessation therapy is not consistently provided for alcohol, drug abuse and mental health (ADM) populations, despite the enormous health consequences of tobacco addiction in these groups and research supporting the effectiveness of treatment. Policymakers, however, tend to rely on popular media reports rather than the scientific literature in regulating treatment. Our goal was to determine whether popular reporting accurately reflects findings from the scientific literature on tobacco cessation treatment for ADM populations in treatment.

Methods

We compared the results of systematic reviews on tobacco cessation therapy published before 2004 with articles published in traditional media and on the internet over the following 8 years. We searched LexisNexis and Google and assessed them using the Index of Scientific Quality (ISQ).

Results

We found that popular reporting on this topic was consistent with findings reported in contemporaneous scientific literature. Our results suggest that the failure to consistently provide tobacco cessation therapy to ADM populations in treatment is not due to poor research translation.

Conclusions

Our findings also suggest that in this topic area, scientific research findings have diffused relatively quickly. Further study of journalism in this area may suggest new strategies for effective translation of scientific findings into popular reporting on tobacco control.

We consider how industries use front groups to combat public health measures by relating the history of "Get Government Off Our Back", a coalition created by the tobacco industry to fight government regulation. Using tobacco industry documents, contemporaneous media reports, journal articles, and press releases, we review the establishment by RJ Reynolds of an industry front group, Get Government Off Our Back (GGOOB) in 1994. The group's goal was to advocate against U.S. federal regulation of tobacco. By keeping its involvement secret, RJ Reynolds was able to draw public and legislative support toward limiting government regulation of tobacco without having to address the tobacco industry's reputation for misrepresenting evidence. Unfortunately, the tobacco industry"s use of front groups is not unique; other industries use front groups to fight measures designed to protect public health. Research on the background and funding of advocacy organizations could help identify industry front groups and make them less useful to their creators. © 2007 Birkhäuser Verlag.

Many pharmacists have expressed a desire to become more involved in patient care, in part by being compensated for patient counseling, as well as by providing services traditionally offered by physicians and nurse practitioners. Recent efforts to develop collaborative care models, as well as major restructurings of US health insurance coverage, provide a unique opportunity for pharmacists to become recognized as independent health care providers and be reimbursed as primary care providers. Achieving that goal would require addressing advocacy challenges familiar to other health care professionals who have achieved provider status under existing reimbursement rules. Historically, political advocacy has not been a major part of pharmacy practice, or even viewed as necessary. However, pharmacists would be more politically effective with a single organization to speak for them as a profession, and with further education in advocacy.

Nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) is recommended for tobacco cessation on the basis of pharmaceutical industry research showing its effectiveness when combined with counseling. The tobacco industry opposed NRT when it first appeared in the 1980s but by 2016 was marketing its own NRT products. We used internal tobacco industry documents dated 1960 through 2010 to identify the industry's perceptions of NRT. As early as the 1950s, tobacco companies developed nonsmoked nicotine replacements for cigarettes, but they stopped out of concern that marketing such products would trigger Food and Drug Administration regulation of cigarettes. In the 1990s, after pharmaceutical companies began selling prescription NRT, tobacco companies found that many smokers used NRT to supplement smoking rather than to quit. In 2009, once the Food and Drug Administration began regulating tobacco, tobacco companies restarted their plans to capture the nicotine market. Although the tobacco industry initially viewed NRT as a threat, it found that smokers often combined NRT with smoking rather than using it as a replacement and began marketing their own NRT products.