WARNING: This site deals only with the corporate corruption of science, and makes no inference about the motives or activities of individuals involved.
    There are many reasons why individuals become embroiled in corporate corruption activities - from political zealotry to over-enthusiastic activism; from gullibility to greed.
    Please read the OVERVIEW carefully, and make up your own mind.

OPINION ONLY

Willard G Manning was an professor in economics at the University of Michigan, also associated with the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica. In 1988 he organised a study that effectively established superficially that smokers pay their way — a counter to the "Social Cost" argument of the anti-smoking brigade.

In 1988-89 Louis W Sullivan, the Health Secretary, had endorsed a major report from his Health and Human Services (HHS) department which concluded that smokers cost society approximately $52 billion a year in lost productivity and medical costs.

Two academic studies were then funded to contradict this: one led by Kenneth Warner of Michigan, and another by Willard Manning. This second became an article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.] (JAMA) and so carried a lot of weight Both studies state that smokers in effect do "pay their own way", essentially by arguing the "death benefits" line — that since smokers die younger, they impose less in welfare payments on the society.

If taken as a principle, it would be also possible for economists to argue that unrestricted ownership of guns also "pays its own way" since the owners of guns tend to die prematurely by guns, and so the net result is a society which has less need for welfare support of the aged. Making cars unsafe, and allowing them to be driven at unrestricted speeds, would have the same 'economic benefits'.

To be fair to Manning, his later studies showed that workplace smoking costs the employer an additional $1100 per year per smoker. The 1991 study by Wasserman, Manning, Newhouse, and Winkler found that expanding smoking restrictions from a handful oi places, such as hospital waiting rooms, to private work sites as the Labor Dept. later advocated, reduced smoking substantially.

But these findings were not promoted by the tobacco industry while the 'social cost' aspects were — leaving the overall impression that he was pro-tobacco. However he also was the lead researcher in other tobacco studies that the industry did not promote.

\Manning's 'death benefits' study became a mainstay of the tobacco industry trying to counter the 'Social Cost' arguments, and it became widely used and actively promoted by the cash-for-comments network economists through their op-eds, etc.

The tobacco archives have hundreds of documents which refer either directly or indirectly to this report and its arguments.

Some key documents

• In 1989 Manning was credited with being "From the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and the RAND Corporation, Santa Monica

• In 1987-89 period there were four main 'Social Cost of Smoking' studies

• Secretary of Health, Louis Sullivan/HHS cost study
• Kenneth E Warner, Department of Public Health Policy and Administration, University of Michigan. In the study, published in JAMA Oct. 15, 1987. Warner observed that "cigarettes alone cause more premature deaths than do all of the following put together: AIDS, cocaine, heroin, alcohol, fire, automobile accidents, homicide and suicide: "
• National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. 3322, "An Empirical Analysis of Cigarette Addiction," by Gary S. Becker, Michael Grossman, and Kevin M. Murphy, published April 1990.
• Michigan/RAND study led by Willard Manning on the social cost of smoking

• See death benefit

• • Manning Study

• There are 702 documents mentioning Willard G Manning in the tobacco archives.

• See also Kenneth E Warner another economics professor from Michigan.

1968: BSc Cal Inst of Tech in Economics

1971: MA Stanford

1973–75: Assistant Professor Kennedy School and School of Public Health, Harvard Uni

1973: PhD Stanford in Economics

1975–88: Rand Corporation

1981–88: Visiting Professor UCLA

1988: Prof of Public Health and Economics Uni of Michigan

1988: Study on the Social Cost of Smoking by Willard G. Manning, Emmett B Keeler, Joseph P Newhouse, Elizabeth M Sloss and Jeffrey Wasserman

Willard Manning - later explanation

In 1988 the five of us completed a study on the external costs of three poor health habits: smoking, drinking heavily, and not exercising.     By external costs we mean the costs imposed on others by people who have these habits. Such costs arise from various sources. The ones we considered were collectively financed programs; for example, health insurance, group life insurance, retirement pensions, and lifetime taxes on earnings. We also considered the value of property damaged and lives lost in traffic accidenis as the result of excessive drinking. What we found is that smoking, heavy drinking, and lack of exercise have high costs. And although some of this cost falls on the individuals who have these habits, a major portion is paid by others.     In 1989 we presented our results in two articles: "The Taxes of Sin: Do Smokers and Drinkers Pay Their Way?" in the journal of the American Medical Assoriation, (March 17, 1989) and "The External Costs of a Sedentary Lifestyle" in the Americwr Journal of Public Heidth, June 1989).     These articles and subsequeni reports in the media have created considerable interest in our results and the analyses that generated them-in part because they have implications for taxes on tobacco and alcoholic beverages, the so-called sin taxes. [This led to their later book (1991) published by Harvard University Press.]     The book carries a concluding paragraph [Not one the cigarette companies were keen to promote]: We hope that our results will help to inform the public debate on these subjects. Because we have not tallied the costs of addiction, the regret of those with poor health habits (or of their families), or the costs of passive smoking, our numbers indicate where the minimum should be for taxes on alcohol and cigarettes as part of a wider public strategy for combating poor health habits.

1989: University of California Biographical Sketch says he is Professor of Public Health and Economics/Consultant and that he is at the University of California, running a "Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program" It credits him with:

"The Taxes of Sin : Do Smokers and Drinkers Pay Their Way?"
(with EB Keeler, JP Newhouse, et al.), Journal of the American Medical Association (March 1989)
"The Effect of Excise Taxes and Regulations on Adult and Teenage Cigarette Smoking,"
(with J Wasserman, et a1), draft (1989)

[Prior to 1989 his publications have shown no interest in tobacco usage]

1989: Associate Editor "Journal of Health Economics"

1989 Mar: AMA reports him as economist with Rand Corporation
    "smokers probably pay their way at current level of excise taxes" Do Tobacco, Alcohol Taxes Cover Public Cost Of Smoking, Drinking?
    [950150887]

1989 Mar 17: "The Taxes of Sin: Do Smokers and Drinkers Pay Their Way," Manning, WG, et al, Journal of the American Medical Association

Some argue that smokers already are "paying their own way" through cigarette excise taxes. In examining the lifetime costs that smokers impose on others through collectively financed health insurance, pensions, disability insurance, group life insurance, fires, motor-vehicle accidents, and the criminal justice system, Willard G. Manning, et al, conclude that on balance, smokers probably pay for their own costs to society under the current level of excise tax on cigarettes

    Excepts
JAMA article

    This study was immediately used by the tobacco industry to attack the Social Cost arguments:

However a major new study by Dr Willard G. Manning of the University of Michigan and Ennett B. Keeler of the Rand Corporation has looked at this subject dispassionately. Their findings, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, demonstrate that the external costs (the costs to society) of smoking,are covered by the present level of state and federal excise taxation which averages 37 cents per pack of cigarettes.

Manning acknowledges that the findings differ markedly from earlier estimates, which focus on the total costs of smoking and drinking, but argues that the external costs are most relevant in establishing tax rates.

    The reason, Manning explains, is that although the costs borne by smokers and drinkers and their families from illness and premature death are large, they are presumably taken into account by individuals when they decide to smoke or drink.

1989 Mar 17: "The Taxes of Sin : Do Smokers and Drinkers Pay Their Way?" Journal of the American Medical Association v. 261,

1990 Jan: /E Willard Manning's study on absenteeism is quote in dozens of documents in the 1990 period.

    See Tollison's witness-rehearsal document "Questions for Friendly Witnesses (Tollison) http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/yaf52f00/pdf
    (Health Official)


    "Questions for Unfriendly Witnesses" (Louis W Sullivan - HHS Secretary)

1990 Mar: Infotopics p 8 Critic of Surgeon General Sullivan's claim the social cost of smoking is $52 billion pa — says two studies show they die young. NBER and Manning [TI12262368]

1990 Mar: INFOTAB's newsletter Infotopics, edited by Catherine Browne and Carol Stocken. says:

Smoke-free society could put strain on health care system.
It quotes a Kansas City Star article (Mar 4 1990) which discusses two studies :

one carried out by three Stanford University economists for the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Cambridge, Massachusetts think tank, and one by Willard Manning an economist at the University of Michigan.

• The National Bureau of Economic Research study contradicts the widely-reported comments by US Health and Human Services Secretary Louis W. Sullivan, who claims that smoking costs the United States US$52 billion annually. According to the research group, even though smokers are claimed to run up higher medical bills, they die relatively young.
• The Manning study weighed the alleged 'social' and 'health care costs' of smoking against the higher taxes tobacco users pay and their lower costs in retirement pensions and nursing home care. The study reported that the two sides were roughly equal.

1991 /E: ETS in the Workplace A legal monograph on ETS, sold to litigation lawyers gives an outline of the history of social-costs, etc. About workplace smoking it says:

Absenteeism
There is no arguing the fact that smokers are absent significantly more than emplbyees who do not srrioke. The Surgeon General has reported that smoking results in more than 81 million lost workdays annually. The absenteeism rate is 57 percent higher for smoking men and 45 percent higher for smoking women than for nonsmokers.

    How this translates into dollars varies according, to the industry and wage levels. Taking all factors into account, a study by Dr Willard G. Manning estimates that the excess annual cost per smoking employee is over $1,100. Multiply this by the number of smokers your firm employs, and the impact on compamy profits becomes clear. Other estimates put the cost of smoking to the US econorny from $53 to $65 billion per year.

Mortality
Not surprisingly, mortality rates for smokers are substantially higher at all ages. It is estimated that smoking is responsible for about 20 percent of all deaths in the United States.

    What does this mean for employers? Mortality rates affect costs in a number of ways, among them contributions to health, disability and life insurance plansãand taxes, fior workers' compensation, Social Security, and Medicare programs.

    There's ariother side to the mortality issue as welll. Smokers tend to die earlier. The average life expectency of a smoker who is now 30 years old is 64.8 years. A 30-year-olid nonsmoker's life expectancy is 82.7 years.

    Any manager who has had to deal with, a sudden death in the department can attest to the emotional toll on co-workersã and the productivity that is lost as a result. Premature death can throw a monkey wrench into the best-laid employee scheduling plans, forcing the department to limp along until a suitable replacement can be found and trained.

Other Insurance Costs

• Cigarette smoking accounts for $22 billion dollars in medical costs each year. In some cases [for non-smoking companies], the discount is as much as 15 percent of the cost of a group health policy.
• Another study estimates that fire and health insurance premiums can run 25
      to 35 percent higher in companies that allow smoking than those for smokefree
      businesses.
• NIOSH reports that smokers have twice as many accidents as
      nonsmokers, which means that cornpanie pick up the addh'tionall accidental injury
      and workers' comp costs.

1991: Book on The Cost of Poor Health Habits by Manning et al for the RAND Corporation.

1991: Willard G. Manning, Emmett B Keeler, Joseph Newhouse, Elizabeth M Sloss, and Jeffrey Wasserman, The Costs of Poor Health Habits, A RAND Study, Cambridge, Mass. Harvard University Press, 1991

The basic data for the study are from the Health Insurance Experiment conducted by the RAND corporation for individuals under age 60 (collected from years 1972 - 1982), supplemented with data from the 1983 National-Health Interview Survey for older individuals. Data are expressed in 1986 dollars.

1991: A study by Jeffrey Wasserman and Willard G Manning of the Uni of Minnesota, Joseph P Newhouse of Harvard and Rand Corps John D Winkler. found "Sin Tax is Win-Win. Smokers are sensitive to price"

1991 Feb 27: Washington Post article Smoking Could Be Hazardous to Pension System;.by Malcolm Gladwell Washington Post

"The implications of our results are that smokers 'save' the Social Security system hundreds of billions of dollars," three Stanford University economists concluded in a recent study for the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Cambridge, Mass, think-tank.

"Certainly this does not mean that decreased smoking would not be socially beneficial. In fact, it is probably one of the most cost-effective ways of increasing.average longevity. It does indicate, however, that if people alter their behavior in a manner which extends, life expectancy, then this must be recognized by our national retirement program," the economists said in their report.

Little is known about whether smoking costs society more than it saves. One recent study by University of Michigan economist Willard Manning, weighed the smoking related expense of higher medical costs, life insurance, fires, and lives lost to "passive smoke" against the higher taxes tobacco-users pay and their lower costs in retirement pensions and nursing home care. It found the two sides were roughly equal.

    But the study was controversial. Manning's team did,not count what they termed internal costs in their figures. For example, if a smoker paid $300 of $1,000 hopital bill, or lung cancer treatment out of his own pocket, then only $700 was counted toward the cost to society. By contrast, the numbers cited by Sullivan counted the whole $1,000 on the theory that even medical costs borne directly by smokers should count as part of the social costs of smoking.

    But even if the overall balance of costs and benefits of smoking is difficult to determine, it is clear that an end to smoking will produce an enormous increase in the financial obligations of the federal goverment.

    Take Medicare, for example. Smokers who die at age 60, if they are employed, are likely to have their final medical bills paid by their company's private health insurance plan. If they never smoke but live to age 70, the burden of health, care shifts from the private sector to Medicare.

1991 May: publication (acceptance 1990 Nov) Journal of Health Economics published "The effects of excise taxes and regulations on cigarette smoking" by

• Jeffrey Wasserman, Health Policy Research Division. SysteMetrics McGraw-Hill, Santa Barbara, CA
• Willard G. Manning, School of Public Health. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI.
• Joseph P. Newhouse, Division of Health Policy Research and Education, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA,
• John D. Winkler, Behaviorat Sciences Department, The RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, CA,

1991 Oct: Journal of Health Economics: Taxation, regulation, and addiction; a demand function for cigarettes based on time-series evidence by Theodor Keeler, TW Hu, Paul G Barnett, Willard G Manning

    They are calculating price elacticity of cigarettes — a measure of the power of addiction.

1994: Willard Manning, Ph.D., Professor, Institute for Health Services Research, School of Public Health, University of Minnesota

1994 March 8: The Manning's studies were the foundation of Jane Gravelle and Dennis Zimmerman's Congressional Research Service (CRS) report on the cost of smoking to the society. This CRS report became a cause cŽl�bres in the tobacco controversy.

    In this document, see these amazing economic statements about the 'costs' to the non-smoker of breathing secondhand smoke:

• " Finally, even if all costs of passive smoking are considered to be external and existing data are used to measure a per pack amount, the costs probably are small relative to current and proposed taxes.
  
      The Manning, study calculates a total cost of smoking. (both external and internal costs in excess of the price of the product) that includes medical expenditures, lost productivity due to illness, lost productivity due to early death, and costs from fires. This total cost equals $2.53 per pack (recall that these numbers are adjusted to 1995 levels)."
  
• "Divide EPA's estimated 3000 deaths from lung cancer due to passive smoking by the lung cancer deaths attributed to active smoking, and multiply this 0.022 result by the per pack total cost. This generates passive-smoking total costs of six cents per pack."

See the CRS paper contents and its Manning study footnotes.

[The assumption being that you can put a dollar value on the premature death of an innocent bystander...! The mind boggles.

This was nothing more than an exercise in social-welfare economics by second-rate accountants who couldn't see past the bottom line. However it was succesfully touted by the tobacco industry as exonerating cigarettes from having adverse 'social' and health effects.]

1997 May 20: Uni of Minnesota (Academic being proposed for a cross-coalition social cost forum) [2076001018]

1997 May 20: Draft: " A Concept Proposal for a Social Cost Forum" has been sent to Philip Morris. [by The Department of Economics at George Mason University under the auspices of Dr Walter Williams... (probably with the backing of Robert Tollison)]

Outlandish claims made by some anti-industry advocates pertaining to so-called costs that products such as automobiles, beer, tobacco and other products impose on society as a whole are generally deemed credible by much of the general public, and are often used as excuses for increased taxes and regulations. This occurs despite the fact that the entire idea of a social cost is generally spurious.

    In order to reverse the tendency of both the media and the general public to blindly accept outlandish statements made by special interest advocates, it has been proposed that an inter-industry coalition sponsor an academic forum to discuss the idea of social costs and social cost theory. This forum will bring together academics, corporate research managers and decision makers to discuss the current state of research concerning these theories and to propose and promote additional academic research to fill in existing gaps in knowledge and answer current questions.

    Corporate funding for the forum will come from a minimum of five separate firms, including Philip Morris, which will cover one-fifth of the costs of the symposia. While corporations will fund the forum, all control over content will rest with George Mason University and Dr Williams. [The standard Faustian disclaimer that denies the influence of Mephistopheles]

    George Mason will use the Social Cost Forum to bring together representatives from academia, industry, government and the public policy community to discuss the current state of the research on social cost theory. As currently envisioned, the forum will bring together approximately: 15 Leading Academics (almost all from Public Choice Society): -

• Dr Walter Williams, George Mason University (network economist)
• Dr Roy Cordato, Campbell University (also Institute for Research on Economic of Taxation (IRET))
• Dr Kip Viscusi, Harvard Law School (long-term tobacco lackey)
• Dr Richard L Stroup, Political Economy Research Ctr. (Montana Uni & network economist)
• Dr Randall G. Holcombe, Florida State University (network economist)
• Dr Russell Sobel, West Virginia University (ex Frances Marion College & associate of Holcombe)
• Dr Fred Foldvary, California State University, Hayward (a relative 'Tim' was anti-FDA lobbyist0
• Dr Donald Boudreaux, Clemson University (also Cato Institute)
• Dr Roger Meiners, University of Texas, Arlington (neo-con anti-environmentalist, ex-Clemson University)
• Dr Charles Rowley, George Mason University (a UK tobacco lackey on sabbatical)
• Dr Francesco Parisi, George Mason University Law School (unknown)
• Dr Willard Manning, University of Minnesota (+ Rand Corp & long-term tobacco lackey)
• Dr Steven Cheung, University of Hong Kong (IEA, Hoover Institution)

• Dr James D Gwartner, Florida State, (unknown) had been added.

1997 May 20: Draft: " A Concept Proposal for a Social Cost Forum" has been sent to Philip Morris. [by The Department of Economics at George Mason University under the auspices of Dr Walter Williams... (probably with the backing of Robert Tollison)]

Outlandish claims made by some anti-industry advocates pertaining to so-called costs that products such as automobiles, beer, tobacco and other products impose on society as a whole are generally deemed credible by much of the general public, and are often used as excuses for increased taxes and regulations. This occurs despite the fact that the entire idea of a social cost is generally spurious.

    In order to reverse the tendency of both the media and the general public to blindly accept outlandish statements made by special interest advocates, it has been proposed that an inter-industry coalition sponsor an academic forum to discuss the idea of social costs and social cost theory. This forum will bring together academics, corporate research managers and decision makers to discuss the current state of research concerning these theories and to propose and promote additional academic research to fill in existing gaps in knowledge and answer current questions.

    Corporate funding for the forum will come from a minimum of five separate firms, including Philip Morris, which will cover one-fifth of the costs of the symposia. While corporations will fund the forum, all control over content will rest with George Mason University and Dr Williams. [The standard Faustian disclaimer that denies the influence of Mephistopheles]

    George Mason will use the Social Cost Forum to bring together representatives from academia, industry, government and the public policy community to discuss the current state of the research on social cost theory. As currently envisioned, the forum will bring together approximately: 15 Leading Academics (almost all from Public Choice Society): -

• Dr Walter Williams, George Mason University (network economist)
• Dr Roy Cordato, Campbell University (also Institute for Research on Economic of Taxation (IRET))
• Dr Kip Viscusi, Harvard Law School (long-term tobacco lackey)
• Dr Richard L Stroup, Political Economy Research Ctr. (Montana Uni & network economist)
• Dr Randall G. Holcombe, Florida State University (network economist)
• Dr Russell Sobel, West Virginia University (ex Frances Marion College & associate of Holcombe)
• Dr Fred Foldvary, California State University, Hayward (a relative 'Tim' was anti-FDA lobbyist0
• Dr Donald Boudreaux, Clemson University (also Cato Institute)
• Dr Roger Meiners, University of Texas, Arlington (neo-con anti-environmentalist, ex-Clemson University)
• Dr Charles Rowley, George Mason University (a UK tobacco lackey on sabbatical)
• Dr Francesco Parisi, George Mason University Law School (unknown)
• Dr Willard Manning, University of Minnesota (+ Rand Corp & long-term tobacco lackey)
• Dr Steven Cheung, University of Hong Kong (IEA, Hoover Institution)

• Dr James D Gwartner, Florida State, (tobacco supporter and associate of Stroup and Wager)

CONTRIBUTORS:JJHS in22 sjc2