Last year, CVS Health made a huge splash with its announcement that its CVS/Pharmacy stores would stop selling cigarettes and tobacco products. At the time, the company CEO explained that “cigarettes have no place in a setting where health care is being delivered,” and that move was “the right thing for us to do for our customers and our company to help people on their path to better health.” But while the company was moving to help its customers quit smoking in 2014, it was also contributing money to a U.S. trade association quietly working to undermine smoking cessation.
In 2014, CVS Health sent $562,500 to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, according to its voluntary disclosure. The New York Times reported on Tuesday that the Chamber, which claims to represent “the interests of more than 3 million businesses,” has waged a massive international campaign against anti-smoking measures in recent years.
Bruce A. Gates, the senior vice president for external affairs for tobacco giant Altria’s client services division, sits on the Chamber’s board of directors, and rival tobacco company Reynolds American has also contributed more than $100,000 to the Chamber over the past several years.
All totaled, the Chamber spent about $161 million in 2013 alone, according to its IRS filings. The Chamber uses some of those funds to advance the interests of the tobacco industry internationally. In 2013, a Tweet on the official U.S. Chamber of Commerce feed linked to a Wall Street Journal article and opined: “The Obama Administration shouldn’t let anti-smoking activists interfere with America’s larger economic interest.”
While the Chamber does not list its contributors publicly, executives from many of its member companies are identified as members of the Chamber’s board of directors.
Among them is Pfizer executive Ken W. Cole. The pharmaceutical company has not only partnered with the International Association of Fire Fighters here in the United States on a “campaign for a smoke-free union,” but also makes smoke-cessation aid Chantix. The company’s media relations director told ThinkProgress: “Tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable death in the world. At Pfizer, we support measures that aim to reduce the prevalence of smoking, and are committed to providing effective interventions and support to smokers who want to quit as well as those who want to remain smoke-free. Our membership of any group comes with the clear understanding that we may not always agree with all the positions of the organization.”
Steward Health Care, whose chairman and CEO Dr. Ralph de la Torre also sits on the Chamber’s board, told ThinkProgress that it disagrees with the Chamber’s efforts. “Smoking is one of the leading causes of death,” a spokeswoman said in an email, “As a healthcare provider, we counsel our patients and actively support their efforts to quit smoking so that they may improve their health and wellbeing. If the Chamber is in fact advocating for increased smoking we do not agree with them on this public health issue.”
CVS and other member companies in the health field — including Indiana University Health and Anthem Inc. — did not immediately respond to requests to explain their financial support for an organization that is undermining international anti-smoking efforts.
The Chamber did not respond to a ThinkProgress inquiry about the conflicting interests of its members, but told the New York Times it “regularly reaches out to governments around the world to urge them to avoid measures that discriminate against particular companies or industries, undermine their trademarks or brands, or destroy their intellectual property.”
Update:
This post has been updated to include a statement from Steward Health Care.