Political Quotes

“CEI lobbied politicians, conducted symposia, and published policy papers and op-eds with titles such as ``Safety Is a Relative Thing for Cars: Why Not for Cigarettes?'' CEI's then-policy analyst, Alexander Volokh, even went so far as to describe the act of smoking as a civic duty. As the documents that we have just submitted for the record detail, CEI's mission was to portray the FDA as ``an agency out of control and one failing to live up to its congressional mandate.'' For a time, CEI was successful. Congress took a closer look at FDA's appropriations requests, and lawmakers slashed agency funding and passed language to restrict FDA's authority to regulate tobacco. In fact, at one oversight hearing, Members of Congress even questioned whether the FDA was acting legally and responsibly in pursuing a course that would lead to tobacco regulation. If this sounds like deja vu, that is because it is. CEI and other front groups are using the same playbook, the same tactics to deny climate change that they used to deny a link between tobacco use and fatal disease. CEI is now on a new mission to confuse and mislead the public on climate change. It is financing and directing ad hoc groups like the so-called Cooler Heads Coalition, which claims that global warming is a myth and that many scientists are skeptical of climate change.…”