Introduction
The UCSF tobacco industry documents archive has been a key source for developing understanding of the internal workings and external influence of tobacco companies [
1‐
3]. A large literature has accumulated, though, in the case of excise taxes, a key policy priority for the industry, there have been only a few studies, with a focus mostly on the United States (US) context given the nature of the available data [
4‐
7]. Across regulatory and policy issues, one common finding has been the importance of coalition-building, in which the tobacco industry has formed alliances with other industries or organisations, in addition, to close working relationships among tobacco companies.
Excise taxes directly affect the profitability of several industries, including tobacco, alcohol, ultra processed food and transportation. During the 1980s and 1990s, as governments looked to pay down deficits or generate additional revenue, excise taxes became a preferred policy lever for many governments. This political environment created new incentives for stakeholder groups, including the tobacco and alcohol industry, to mobilise against these excise tax policy changes [
8]. In the 1980s and 1990s, the tobacco industry faced significant reputational challenges [
4,
6,
9,
10]. This shift in the political context led key tobacco organisations, including the Tobacco Institute, to play a much less visible role in policy advocacy. According to one study, “the industry sought to create an image of broad support for its [policy] positions in the face of growing public pressure around tobacco control” [
6]. Framing policy issues in broader terms can thus be important in mobilising broader coalitions. For example, focusing on the distributive impacts of tax changes, or fairness, has allowed the tobacco industry to build coalitions that include less traditional allies, including progressive groups concerned about the regressive nature of excise taxes [
9]. In the case of US federal excise tax policy, tobacco industry actors have previously been found to have recruited representatives from the alcohol and trucking industries, as well as labour unions [
9,
10].
Much less is known about the alcohol industry, in comparison with tobacco [
11,
12]. It is known that the two industries have cooperated over several policy issues in the US, particularly when their political goals have aligned, including efforts to reduce or minimise rates of taxation [
9]. Phillip Morris bought Miller Brewing Company in 1970 and thoroughly controlled how it operated from soon after the purchase. This included influencing public perceptions of alcohol, and promoting alcohol education as a strategy designed to prevent the adoption of policy measures such as raising excise taxes. Attention to alcohol policy was integrated within company-wide thinking, and Phillip Morris was able to play a leading role in key alcohol industry organisations nationally and globally (McCambridge J, Garry J, Kypri K, Hastings G: Using information to shape perception: Tobacco industry documents study of the evolution of Corporate Affairs in the Miller Brewing Company. Globalization & Health, Forthcoming). The company has also been shown to apply marketing strategies developed in tobacco to food through ownership of Kraft General Foods [
13].
There are also other longstanding inter-relationships between alcohol and tobacco, so that studies based in the UCSF tobacco industry documents library can yield important insights into the development of long term political strategies by the alcohol industry [
14]. The existing literature on the alcohol industry identifies a range of strategies used by actors to influence public policy debates. These give particular attention to framing and lobbying, and also identify a flexible approach to developing novel organisations [
15]. Yet understanding of the internal processes that determine the scope of these political activities is limited. The tobacco documents archive presents an opportunity to fill some of that gap, albeit retrospectively given the age of the bulk of the data.
This study seeks to identify the range of activities that alcohol industry actors engaged with in conjunction with tobacco industry actors to advance their common interests vis-à-vis excise tax policy in the US during the 1980s. Excise taxes in the US have been the subject of previous research examining the tobacco documents. Jiang and Liang scrutinized the coordination efforts of tobacco and alcohol companies during the 1980s in the US on excise tobacco taxes, clean indoor air policies and tobacco advertising [
9]. They identified the formation of major anti-tax coalitions that functioned at both the national and state level. Our analysis focuses on both sites of political action but does so from the perspective of alcohol industry actors.
Undertaking this study holds potential for better understanding the operations of specific actors within the alcohol industry, including trade associations. The Beer Institute, for example, has evolved into a key coordinating body for the alcohol industry in the US, but has been little studied [
16,
17]. Phillip Morris/Miller Brewing Company has recently been shown to have exercised a veto over its activities in 1995, along with the two other major brewers (Anheuser Busch and Coors) (McCambridge J, Garry J, Kypri K, Hastings G: Using information to shape perception: Tobacco industry documents study of the evolution of Corporate Affairs in the Miller Brewing Company. Globalization & Health, Forthcoming.). The analysis can also illuminate specific policy debates. In the 1980s and 1990s, the US federal government and numerous state governments sought out new revenue sources to finance deficit reduction and other expenditures. Exploring how the tobacco and alcohol industry responded to these efforts can offer insights into the organisation of efforts at political influence and the nature of collaborative relationships between the two industries.
The paper is organised as follows. In the next section, we present the methods and data sources used to examine the activities of the alcohol industry. In the Results section we begin by providing some background and context for the detailed analysis by giving particular attention to the Coalition Against Regressive Taxation (CART). The analysis then focuses specifically on the case of Proposition 5 Oregon in which alcohol industry actors led the fight against a ballot initiative to excise raise taxes on beer and tobacco in 1988. This brought together national and state level players in the campaign. We then identify subsequent efforts by the tobacco and alcohol industry to shape excise tax debates at the federal level, specifically the Consumer Tax Alliance (CTA). The study then considers the implications of the findings, taking account of study limitations, and giving attention to issues for further research.
Methods
We performed searches of the UCSF Industry Documents Library (
https://www.industrydocuments.ucsf.edu/tobacco/) between January and March 2021. The first author conducted a preliminary search to assess the availability of materials relevant to the political activities of the alcohol industry in shaping excise tax policy debates. This process was informed by prior experience of examining this resource for alcohol data. Broad search terms were employed, including “taxation”, “excise taxes” along with the names of key alcohol industry actors, including “Miller Brewing Company” and the “Beer Institute.” Based on prior studies [
9,
10], we also identified the CTA and the CART as two highly relevant organisations. The first search enabled us to identify specific policy debates that involved both alcohol and tobacco industry actors. The second stage of searches was undertaken in which stricter parameters were applied. The main focus was on documents produced between the 1980s and 1990s and used keyword searches to collect materials on federal and state-level political activities (see
appendix). This era was marked by an unusually high degree of public attention to taxation and public revenue in the United States.
Documents were screened, and then analysed, retaining approximately 150 relevant documents. These documents were thematically coded by the first author, and both authors discussed the emerging findings in an iterative manner. The content of documents was cross-referenced with external sources to assess validity, and address information gaps where possible.
Closer examination of state-level activities led us to identify Proposition 5 in Oregon as distinct in that it represented an effort to raise taxes on both alcohol and tobacco, with substantial data available on the roles played by alcohol actors.
Discussion and conclusion
This study draws on evidence from the UCSF tobacco documents archive to better understand the political strategies of the alcohol industry. Focusing specifically on the issue of excise taxes in the US, we add to existing evidence of the alcohol industry’s efforts to shape policy, both at the national and state-level, in collaboration with the tobacco industry. In the 1980s and 1990s, excise taxes were defined by alcohol and tobacco companies as a key threat to both their profits and their positions within policymaking and broader society. Our analysis shows how the alcohol industry confronted this challenge in the late 1980s in the US, specifying the range of monitoring, coordinating, and public-facing activities they engaged in. These policy-influencing activities were pursued in conjunction with the tobacco industry, providing additional evidence of coordination between the two industries identified by previous studies [
9] (McCambridge J, Garry J, Kypri K, Hastings G: Using information to shape perception: Tobacco industry documents study of the evolution of Corporate Affairs in the Miller Brewing Company. Globalization & Health, Forthcoming.). Notably, in Oregon, we present an example where alcohol industry actors were not simply operating at the behest of the tobacco industry, but actively led on a campaign affecting both brewing and tobacco interests.
Existing studies have pointed to coordination between tobacco companies and other interests, but the understanding gained from this research, is that the tobacco industry is the pre-eminent actor, manipulating other interests in its own interest [
4,
6,
9,
77]. The Oregon case study also provides new insights into how the tobacco industry responded to its increasingly defensive position during the late 1980s. As other studies have documented [
10,
31], this era was marked by mounting political pressure for the industry, particularly due to the threat of increased regulation and taxation. Our findings show that the tobacco industry sought to adapt to this shifting political context, aligning itself with other industries which had less unfavourable public images, in this case, the brewing industry. In Oregon tobacco was content to have alcohol lead on Proposition 5, perhaps at least in part, because they were orientated to Proposition 6. Tobacco may or may not have been the more powerful actor in the decision-making, the key point here is that beer was not merely a passive object in the process, the brewers determined that the alliance with tobacco was in their interests, even if it was only in taking their money. The resulting division of labour suited both sets of interests.
The analysis draws particular attention to the range of tactics employed by both tobacco and alcohol industry actors and their allies, showing the political dexterity of these interests. For example, in the case of national-level activities, when legislators withstood this pressure by proposing tax increases, industry actors shifted their focus to the public, seeking to turn public opinion against the idea with their advertising campaigns. When the issue was being debated among politicians, they emphasised the breadth of the anti-tax coalition, continually referencing the membership of CART. When the public began paying more attention, however, CART took a backseat to CTA, which had altogether less the appearance of representing business interests. These findings echo other research findings on the importance of coalition-building activities for alcohol and tobacco companies, flexibilities in forming campaign groups [
15] and the use of front groups [
4,
6]. Efforts by alcohol and tobacco industry actors to use other campaign groups and actors that have more favourable public reputations has important implications for future study of this subject. It demonstrates the need for researchers to focus their attention on the operation of these issue coalitions, paying particular attention to the membership and funding sources for such groups.
At the state level, our findings provide insights into how the alcohol industry seeks to influence public opinion on excise taxes. In Oregon, the beer industry sought to focus attention on, and minimise the importance of the identified policy problem: a funding shortfall for the state’s post-secondary athletics program. This involved careful targeting. Efforts to raise the excise taxes, then, were presented as a fiscal policy tool. This framing works to distract attention away from other possible reasons for increasing excise taxes on beer and cigarettes, and thus away from the products themselves. This framing, and how it played out in the policy debate, contrasts significantly with more recent efforts to adopt pricing-based alcohol policies such as minimum unit pricing (MUP). In jurisdictions where MUP was adopted, including Scotland, Wales and Ireland, the measure was framed successfully in opposition to industry interests as a measure designed to protect public health [
78‐
82]. The industry’s success in defeating the tax proposal in Oregon suggests that problem-definition and framing are key ideational processes for understanding public receptivity toward alcohol policy measures. The specific nature of the framing tactics of the opposition in Oregon thus warrants careful scrutiny in other contexts, as part of an effort to deepen understanding of the nature of the effects of framing.
The findings also demonstrate the potential value of financial documents, including balance sheets and campaign finance filings, in generating inferences about the alcohol and tobacco industries and their political activities. Polling, political advertising and lobbying required the mobilisation and disbursement of monies for which there are records within the tobacco documents. Such data offer a largely untapped resource for researchers studying corporate political activities alongside the tobacco companies [
15]. Financial documents may also exist in other public repositories [
83] and thus could be a useful data source in this work.
The methodological challenges involved in working with the tobacco documents archive are well established [
1‐
3,
84]. These documents do not provide a full record of decision-making, and this may be particularly an issue for alcohol actors, whose activities are primarily viewed through the prism of records kept for tobacco purposes. They nevertheless can contextualise and provide insights into some of the key strategic decisions made by alcohol industry actors, with some content more visible than others. The present focus on joint activities of alcohol and tobacco actors has been chosen with these considerations in mind.
A potential limitation of this analysis is that it primarily draws on historical documentary evidence to generate its inferences. The documents analysed here provide a rare window into the private world of corporate decision-making when interests are threatened and political action is needed. There have been important developments over time [
85], perhaps most notably with the emergence of so-called social aspects organisations [
14], though the consistency in key messages used by industry actors across the decades is striking [
14]. Given the under-development of research on the alcohol industry and the scale of the health and social problems caused by its activities, this study makes a valuable contribution to understanding strategic thinking in ways which have contemporary implications. Of course, a broader dataset could offer better context, particularly in understanding the role of other actors such as public officials and the media, but this would not necessarily translate into a deeper understanding of industry actors themselves.
Finally, the findings contribute to broader discussions about the nature and functioning of corporate power and its broader implications for public health [
86,
87]. Specifically, the findings help us better understand ways in which corporate actors cooperate across sectors to achieve shared policy goals, including strategies to shape public opinion. The influence of industry actors, particularly in tobacco, alcohol and food, on scientific evidence and public policy is increasingly well established [
87,
88]. Researchers have identified several mechanisms that link corporate power to these outcomes but have often lacked data sources to test hypotheses [
15,
89]. Closer analysis of documents that already exist in the public domain, including the tobacco documents archive [
90], correspondence between industry and government officials [
91] as well as campaign finance records [
92], provide researchers with data that can help address these gaps.
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