University of York, York, UK.
BMC Public Health. 2022 May 11;22(1):946. doi: 10.1186/s12889-022-13267-w.
The UCSF Industry Documents Library has provided public health researchers with key insights into the organization of political activities in the tobacco industry. Much less is known about the alcohol industry. In the US, there is some existing evidence of cooperation between the two industries, particularly in areas where there are mutual interests and/or policy goals at stake. Efforts to raise excise taxes on tobacco and alcohol products are one such example.
We systematically searched the UCSF Industry Documents Library for data on alcohol industry actors and their political activities. Using content generated by alcohol and tobacco actors, we sought to identify new evidence of collaborations to shape excise tax policy debates in the US in the 1980s and 1990s.
We uncover evidence of the alcohol industry's efforts to shape excise tax policy debates, both at the national and state level. Excise taxes were defined by both alcohol and tobacco companies and related organisations as a key threat to profits. We show how the alcohol industry confronted this challenge in the late 1980s in the US, uncovering the range of monitoring, coordinating, and public-facing activities used to defeat proposed tax increases at both state and federal levels. The former draws particular attention to Oregon, where alcohol industry actors were not simply operating at the behest of the tobacco industry, but actively led a campaign to advance both brewing and tobacco interests.
The tobacco documents offer a key resource for studying economic interests beyond that of the tobacco industry, operating in collaboration with tobacco companies. Here, brewers advanced shared interests with tobacco, and these findings have implications for advancing understanding of alcohol and tobacco industry political strategies. The findings also suggest that financial documents from other public repositories could be used to generate new inferences about corporate political activities.
加州大学旧金山分校行业文献库为公共卫生研究人员提供了深入了解烟草行业组织政治活动的关键见解。而对酒精行业的了解则要少得多。在美国，有一些现有的证据表明这两个行业之间存在合作，特别是在双方有共同利益和/或政策目标的情况下。提高烟草和酒精产品消费税的努力就是一个例子。
我们系统地在加州大学旧金山分校行业文献库中搜索有关酒精行业参与者及其政治活动的数据。利用酒精和烟草行业参与者生成的内容，我们试图确定新的证据，证明它们在 20 世纪 80 年代和 90 年代合作塑造了美国的消费税政策辩论。
我们发现了酒精行业努力塑造消费税政策辩论的证据，既有在国家层面的，也有在州层面的。酒精和烟草公司以及相关组织将消费税定义为对利润的主要威胁。我们展示了酒精行业在 20 世纪 80 年代末如何应对这一挑战，揭示了一系列监测、协调和面向公众的活动，用于挫败州和联邦层面的拟议增税。前者特别关注俄勒冈州，在那里，酒精行业的参与者不仅是在烟草行业的要求下运作，而是积极领导了一场运动，以推进酿造和烟草利益。
烟草文献为研究除烟草行业以外的经济利益提供了一个关键资源，这些利益与烟草公司合作。在这里，酿酒商与烟草业共同推进了共同利益，这些发现对深入了解酒精和烟草行业的政治策略具有重要意义。这些发现还表明，其他公共存储库的财务文件可以用来生成关于公司政治活动的新推断。
