Stephen C Littlechild

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Stephen C Littlechild, PhD. was a Professor of Commerce and Head of the Department of Industrial Economics and Business Studies, Faculty of Commerce and Social Science, University of Birmingham, England He was also a cash-for-comments tobacco lobbyist, but not part of the formal USA Cash-for-Comments Economists Network run by Robert Tollison and James Savarese for the US Tobacco Institute.

At the University of Birmingham in the UK, he also worked with Jack Wiseman, a York University (UK) economist, who was closely associated with Robert Tollison through George Mason University's Center for the Study of Public Choice. However like Littlechild, Wiseman appears to have operating independently for the tobacco industry outside Tollison's economists' network. He also worked for ICOSI/INFOTAB in Europe with Stephen Littlechild..


Documents and TimeLine

1979 Dec Annual reconciliation for the Tobacco Institute's Special Account #1 (Jan-Dec 79). Payments were made originally via RJ Reynolds and then refunded by ICOSI.

  • Prof. Aaron Wildavsky paid [Inst.Policy & Mgmt Res,] $16,000 (Mar); $20,283 (June); $30,204 (Jul); $2951 (Oct) -- $122,124 for the year.
  • Prof. Sherwin Feinhandler (Social Systems Analysts) paid $15,642 (June), $29,296 in July, $37.358 in Oct -- $82,296 for the year
  • Prof. Robert Tollison paid $2157 (Mar); $2000 (June); $2693 (Jul); $1672 (Oct) -- $ 8,521 for year
  • Prof. Richard Wagner paid $1740 (Mar); $2000 (June); $3208 (Jul); $1600 (Oct) -- $ 8,548 for year
  • Prof. Robert McCormick paid $1,125 in May
  • Prof. Peter Berger paid $ 1,500 (May); $855 (Jul) -- $2,355 for the year
  • Prof. Edward Harris paid $2,900 (May); $2850 (Jul); $6080 (Oct) -- $11,830 for year
  • Prof. Steven Littlechild paid $1877 (July); $2,446 (Oct) -- $4,323 for the year
  • Prof Norman Heimstra received $12,998 in October
  • Prof Robert Nozick received $8,104 in July
  • D Maxey received $4,000 in October (unknown) [2]

1980 Nov (CONTEXT) Ronald Reagan as been elected as President with George HW Bush as his Vice President.

1981 Jan 7 (At time of Reagan's inauguration) The document "Social Costs/Social Values (Progress Report)" has been prepared (probably by George Berman to give the dissembler-executives in the various cigarette companies around the world an overview of the activities of the relatively new international lobby operation called ICOSI (International Committee on Smoking Issues). ICOSI was located in Brussels with Mary Covington as director and its most active subcommittee was known as SAWP.

These conferences were focussed on countering the "Social Cost" argument which blamed tobacco smoke for both health and environmental costs (both with smokers and non-smokers) Smokers were less productive, had greater absentee rates, offices required more air-conditioning and cleaning, etc.
  • A.T. Kearney, a contract company was engaged in some surreptitious activity and was expanding its workforce, and devising a work plan to attack the workplace smoking ban movement.
  • Matrix Corporate Affairs in London was developing a project on smoking as a civil liberty right.
  • ICOSI's main focus was on the World Health Organisation, trying to block it from running an anti-smoking program by questioning its budget priorities. The tobacco industry turned its enormous financial resources onto attacking the WHO for wasting money on smoking, that should (in their opinion) be spent on third-world diseases, research on drugs, fighting malaria, etc.
* ICOSI was having problems with some members of National Manufacturer Associations (NMAs)(some from developing countries) who didn't see anti-WHO activity as a priority. The donations which funded WHO's anti-smoking programs had been 'earmarked' for this; and therefore unlikely to be abandoned.
There is a long analysis piece here about WHO and the anti-smoking movement.

This 9-page document gives a good outline of the activities that the tobacco industry had going worldwide in 1981. [3]

1982 Mar 13 The Waxman Hearings on tobacco labelling is running hearings in Congress.

DAY THREE was devoted to tobacco industry witnesses featuring a panel of research scientists and one of behavioral experts. THE MEDICAL PANEL: [Furst, Sterling, Fisher and Sommers] told the subcommittee that the bill's scientific findings are based on insufficient data and could divert attention and resources from crucially needed research on chronic diseases.

All four panel members told the subcommittee, in response to a question from Rep. Waxman, that they have no professional relationship with The Tobacco Institute, which invited them to testify. [They may not have had a 'professional relationship' with the Tobacco Institute, (they made sure they didn't) but they were all paid serious money on a regular basis by the Council for Tobacco Research or through third-parties -- and most of this came from the CTR's secret Special Project #4 Accounts.]

The hearings also received written submissions. They heard that ...

'A BRITISH ECONOMIST viewed "with suspicion" a part of the Waxman bill that says cigarette smoking costs the U.S. $25.8 billion yearly in lost productivity and $13.6 billion in medical expenses. Such claims assume that if people were not affected by illness allegedly caused by smoking they would be perfectly healthy, wrote S.C. Littlechild, Univ. of Birmingham.

    Any study of "smoking costs" must take into account that nonsmokers who live longer tend to generate substantial old-age medical bills. "Indeed, several studies by economists sympathetic to the anti-smoking cause have concluded that the net medical cost of smoking is negative -- that is, the lifetime costs of treating smokers are in fact less than the lifetime costs of treating nonsmokers," Littlechild wrote.

[This is the infamous 'death-benefits argument that only tobacco economists were allowed to mention.]

Source Tobacco Institute Newsletter

[Every one of the 34 name on this list of quoted 'experts' (included with document), was a long-standing tobacco tout funded by the industry.]

1984 Jan INFOTAB has published a paper by Professors Steven Littlechild and Jack Wiseman in the Policy Studies Institute Journal, January 1984, entitled "Principles of Public Policy Relevant to Smoking" . This work was commissioned by INFOTAB and has been forwarded to all members. [4]

References

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