Stanton A. Glantz, Edith D. Balbach Tobacco War, Inside the California Battles (2000)

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.[52] Pringle alsowanted $5 million set aside for cessation.Senators Thompson and Lockyer and Assembly Member Katz were strongly opposedto media account restrictions, although they were willing to include the cessationlanguage as a compromise with Speaker Pringle in order to protect the mediacampaign.[21] Though it was not realized at the time, this $5 million was moneycurrently appropriated for the media campaign that the governor had not spent andwhich would have been carried over to the next year in the media account.Thus, thecessation compromise was effectively a cut in the media campaign.In addition, following the lead of his predecessor, Willie Brown, Speaker Pringle alsotried to insert language in the authorization for the Research Account that wouldblock it from funding research of a partisan political nature. [53] (ANRF and AHAprotested this incursion of politics into the Research Account debate by running anadvertisement, which included side-by-side photos of Pringle and Brown, whodespised each other.) According to Katz, Pringle and the governor were very, veryserious about attacking Stan [Glantz] and the research, writing into Prop 99 or thebudget that the ads couldn't attack the tobacco companies. [20]Pringle was widely criticized for his stance.The editorial in the Sacramento Bee onJune 28 was representative: Tobacco industry executives plainly don't enjoy turningon the television and seeing ads telling Californians that the industry profits at theexpense of their health.They don't like it when researchers unmask their marketingand political strategies.It's not hard to understand why they want the Legislature toundermine those elements of Proposition 99.What's harder to explain, and impossibleto justify, is the speaker's willingness to do their work. [54] Pringle's language puttinglimits on what the media account could be used for was eventually dropped.The Research AccountSignificant changes also occurred in 1996 in the way the Research Account was to bespent.Up to that time, the University of California had been left wide discretion inselecting which research projects to fund using the peer review process.On one side,the public health advocates had been critical of the University of California for notfocusing the research effort more directly on tobacco in the form of applied research.On the other side, the governor and Pringle were trying to impose more politicalcontrol on the content of the research program.In the May budget Governor Wilsonhad proposed that TEROC be required to hold hearings and approve projects forfunding.Since the majority of TEROC's members are appointed by the governor, thiswould increase his control over the program.The public health groups vigorously objected to giving TEROC control overindividual research projects, as well as to Pringle's language designed to stop partisan political research, as infringements on academic freedom.Rather thandemanding that the Pringle language be dropped, however, the university attempted tofinesse the point.The university convinced the governor to agree to a procedurewhereby TEROC would hold a hearing and make recommendations to theDepartment of Finance on the university's expenditure plan, which was a generalplan for how the money was to be spent, rather than act on specific projects.Theuniversity argued that it had to submit expenditure plans to the Department of Financeanyway, so this was not a significant change.As in prior years, the university wasreluctant to make any waves regarding Proposition 99 if it meant offending thegovernor.Public health advocates were furious with the university for proposing thiscompromise because they thought it might be possible to get rid of the languagealtogether.According to Martin, The budget people were trying to work a dealwithout understanding the issues.I was just floored.& I read this and I said toCathrine [Castoreno, the UC lobbyist], `Don't they know these people aren't theirfriends?' So we were shocked, because I don't believe that was necessary.& UCshould never have caved in on that. [39]On July 1 the University of California's vice president for health affairs, CorneliusHopper, attempted to clarify the university's interpretation of the language. Aresearch program expenditure plan, he wrote, was understood to be a generalexpenditure plan identifying the range of targeted research areas.As we have madeclear to all parties, we do not intend to submit for review each grant proposal we wishto fund. [55] The letter went on to say that the university interprets the phrase,`research or other activities of a partisan political nature,' to mean activities pertinentto political parties.As a matter of policy, the University of California does not engagein such activities and the TRDRP [Tobacco Related Disease Research Program, whichadministers the Research Account] would not fund research that does so. The letterspecifically affirmed that research related to public policies for tobacco control wouldbe funded and that the university had no control over the uses to which its researchwas put by others.[55] Hopper also phoned Glantz and assured him that the universitydid not consider his work to be of a partisan political nature and that he would befree to compete for funding from the Research Account.(Glantz, whose research wasby then supported by the National Cancer Institute and the American Cancer Society,did not apply for funding from the Research Account that year.)According toCastoreno, the university was trying to accommodate the political process whileholding firm on the issue of academic freedom: We put out a letter to clarify ourunderstanding of the language which very specifically is to share an overall planabout the areas we're intending to fund and how much money we're prepared tocontribute to each of those areas, but definitely not to allow any external party tosecond-guess the actual projects we fund.And within that, we plan to fund publicpolicy research. [56] Both the Legislature and the Wilson administration consented toHopper's interpretation of the Research Account [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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