“Time for a quick reality check. Despite the hysteria from the political class and the media, smoking doesn't kill.”
Republican Vice-Presidential Candidate, Mike Pence
Why would anyone running for political office want to encourage people to smoke? What possible upside could there be in telling voters and their children that smoking might not be so bad for them?
At first blush, you might conclude that Donald Trump has selected an utter ignoramus as his Vice-Presidential pick:
In 2000, Gov. Mike Pence (R-IN), then running for an open U.S. House seat, came out against a proposed settlement between government and the tobacco industry, calling it “big government.” In a shocking editorial, he wrote: “Time for a quick reality check. Despite the hysteria from the political class and the media, smoking doesn’t kill.” Pence acknowledged that smoking is not “good for you,” but claimed that two-thirds of smokers do not die from smoking related illness and “9 out of ten smokers do not contract lung cancer.”
And it gets worse, if that can be imagined:
In a debate that September, his Democratic opponent pressed him on the suggestion that smoking does not cause cancer and noted his contributions from tobacco companies. According to the Indianapolis Star’s coverage of the exchange, “Pence clarified that he wrote that there was no causal link medically identifying smoking as causing lung cancer.”
The link between smoking and lung cancer—and death-- has been established since 1964. You would be hard-pressed to find many people in this country unaware of this basic, elementary fact. From the Centers For Disease Control:
Cigarette smoking is responsible for more than 480,000 deaths per year in the United States, including nearly 42,000 deaths resulting from secondhand smoke exposure. This is about one in five deaths annually, or 1,300 deaths every day. On average, smokers die 10 years earlier than nonsmokers.Dec 11, 2015
Of course, once you get past the flabbergasting idiocy of Pence’s remarks, you get to the heart of the matter:
After the debate, the paper reported, Pence acknowledged he had received an estimated $5,000 and $10,000 in contributions from tobacco companies. His actual total was already at least $13,000 in contributions from the political action committees for Brown & Williamson, Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds, and US Tobacco, according to Political MoneyLine data reviewed by ThinkProgress. A May 2000 letter from the Reynolds PAC to Pence, now available in the Truth Tobacco Industry Documents archive archives, conveyed a $1,000 check and praised his “position on issues important to our company.”
According to ThinkProgress, the tobacco industry’s support of Pence has only increased since 2000. He would receive nearly $40,000 in political donations from RJ Reynolds while in Congress, and over $60,000 from tobacco companies for his gubernatorial campaigns. As payback he slashed money allotted for smoking cessation programs from the tobacco settlement and tobacco taxes he opposed. Indiana now has the highest adult smoking rate of the Midwestern states. Twice as many pregnant women smoke in Indiana (17%) than in any other state of the nation, costing the state $28 million last year alone in health care for infants’ health problems as a result.
While he was a Congressman, Pence was one of a minority of members of the House to vote against the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, which gave the FDA power to regulate cigarettes.
So what makes Pence such an avid promoter of an industry that has been proven over and over as a purveyor of death to Americans, an industry that exemplifies the denial of scientific and medical evidence in order to squeeze as much profit as possible from its victims?
Because that’s how his family made its money.
Kiel Brothers Oil Company, run by Pence’s brother Gregory Pence, was also known as KB Oil and Tobacco Road convenience stores, a chain of about 200 gasoline and cigarette “stop-and go” stores. Pence reported six figure holdings in the company from 2000-2003. Ultimately the company declared Bankruptcy in 2004, caused in part due to higher cigarette and more online cigarette sales. And with that Bankruptcy went a portion of Pence’s annual income.
So maybe this is just Pence’s way of exacting revenge against everyone who doesn’t smoke.