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The Center for Public Accountability in Tobacco Control is dedicated to ensuring the ethical and honest
practice of tobacco control by anti-smoking organizations in the U.S. It aims to help ensure that efforts to reduce tobacco-related
morbidity and mortality are sustainable by a movement that can remain credible and effective into the future. Its premise
is that the anti-smoking movement is increasingly becoming more extreme, getting out of control, going too far in its agenda,
and losing its solid public health basis. The tactics being used by many anti-smoking organizations have become questionable,
including misleading and deceiving the public, improperly attacking individuals, and improperly using kids to promote a political
agenda. The agenda itself has become less and less public health-based; it now include efforts to deny employment to smokers,
treat smoking parents as child abusers, and ignore basic issues of individual privacy and autonomy to coerce smokers into
adopting healthier behavior.
In order to restore the movement, the
Center for Public Accountability in Tobacco Control hopes to highlight the tactics currently being used, bringing these tactics
to public attention in order to hold public health groups accountable to their primary constituency: the public.
The Center for Public Accountability in Tobacco Control was founded by Dr. Michael Siegel, a physician with 21 years
of experience in tobacco control who recently became disillusioned by the direction in which the anti-smoking movement is
going. He has published numerous peer-reviewed scientific papers on the health effects of secondhand smoke, cigarette advertising,
and evaluation of tobacco control policies, which have appeared in journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine,
JAMA, the Journal of Marketing, and the American Journal of Public Health. He has testified in
7 tobacco control cases, including the Engle case which resulted in a $145 billion verdict against the tobacco
companies. He has testified in support of smoke-free workplaces at over 100 local and state hearings throughout the country.
