Bravo to The Virginian-Pilot and reporter Mike Gruss for looking into the six members of the subcommittee that killed the restaurant smoking ban. In the article, Gruss reveals that:
- Of the top five recipients of money from big tobacco in the General Assembly, three of them are on this subcommittee. $10,000 to Dave Albo, $9,100 to Thomas Wright, and $6,000 to Ward Armstrong.
- Two of the subcommittee members own stock in Altria/Philip Morris.
- The subcommittee is 6% of the House of Delegates, but received 16% of all of the tobacco money given to to GA members, a 267% overrepresentation.
Had they merely voted against the bill in the traditional manner, I could understand chalking up their motivation to something more pure. But instead they killed this — an extremely popular bill — in a secret vote in subcommittee. I call shenanigans.
Wow, how times change. Used to be that when I saw news like this I would be outraged. Like when I learned that the RotaShield vaccine – you know, the one that was pulled off the shelves 6 years ago because because of 15 reported cases of bowel obstruction allegedly associated with it – was mandated for use for all infants by a CDC committee of 7 members; 5 of whom it was later learned owned stock in Wyeth-Lederle, the company that manufactured the RotaShield vaccine. Back then I was outraged, disgusted: how dare they?!?! Since then there have been so many more examples of government sleeping with industry that when I read about the latest example, the most I seem to be able to muster is a sigh. Man, I hope I will find a way to shake this cynicism one day soon.
Oops – checked my facts and found out that the number of committee members owning stock in Wyeth-Lederle was actually four not five. Here is the link to the congressional report documenting the subsequent investigation: http://www.vaccineinfo.net/issues/conflictofinterest/conflicts_of_interest.shtml