16,063
edits
Changes
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
no edit summary
'''Roger Scruton''' is a British conservative philosopher well known for publishing articles critical of tobacco control efforts in major newspapers like the ''Wall Street Journal'' and the London ''Financial Times''.(1,2,3) Typical was an article he authored in the February 9, 1998 issue of the ''Wall Street Journal '' entitled “Anything Goes--Except Smoking,” in which he portrayed government efforts to decrease smoking as a waste of time. Scruton dismissed such efforts as part of the “hysteria of modern life.” A biographical line at the end of the article described Scruton only as “a philosopher living in England,”(1) without disclosing that he was actually on the payroll of a major tobacco company, [[Japan Tobacco, Inc.]]<br>
In 2002 Scruton authored a 60-page pamphlet attacking the World Health Organization (WHO) entitled ''WHO, WHAT and WHY: Transnational Government, Legitimacy and the World Health Organization'', (D) published by The Institute of Economic Affairs in London, a free-market think tank. In the pamphlet, Scruton belittled the WHO’s tobacco control efforts and portrayed WHO as trying to “impose the social and political agenda of a handful of activists” upon the rest of the world. Advancing arguments the tobacco industry and its allies had made for years, Scruton said WHO should be concentrating on vaccination campaigns and controlling communicable diseases like HIV/AIDS and malaria rather than being concerned about smoking. The description of Scruton at the beginning of the pamphlet said only that he was a British philosopher who had held professorships in London and Boston, and a freelance writer who had published several books.(4) In 2002 the newspaper U.K. Guardian obtained an email that revealed Scruton had been receiving monthly payments from Japan Tobacco, Inc. (JTI) to write and place articles critical of tobacco control efforts in major newspapers, and to write the pamphlet criticizing the WHO’s tobacco control campaigns.(5,6) Scruton sent the email to Japan Tobacco under the name of his wife and business partner, Sophie. In it, Scruton offered to use his media contacts to “place [a pro-tobacco article] article every two months in one or the other of the WSJ [''Wall Street Journal''], the ''Times'', the ''Telegraph'', the ''Spectator'', the ''Financial Times'', the ''Economist'', the ''Independent'', or the ''New Statesman''.” The Guardian revealed that Scruton had been receiving £4,400 (US$6,300) a month from Japan Tobacco and that he had asked Japan Tobacco for a pay increase of £1,000/month to continue placing pro-smoking articles in prestigious magazines and international newspapers. In the email, Scruton suggested to JTI further strategies he could use to criticize the WHO:
