February 1, 2003

Big Tobacco’s Big Play

For decades, the country’s tobacco giants have leveraged huge campaign contributions to dictate Washington’s global smoking policies. With George W. Bush in the White House, that influence is only growing.


Up in Smoke
By Michael Scherer
November/December 2002 Issue
States promised to use the tobacco settlement to fight smoking — but some are reinvesting the money in Big Tobacco.

An Engineered Controversy
By Jane Akre
January/February 2002 Issue
Farmers fear that genetically altered tobacco will contaminate their crops.

Tobacco Money Flows Both Ways
By Rick Anderson
July 6, 2000
Trial lawyers squeezed billions out of the Republican-loving tobacco industry in last year’s landmark settlement. Then they took their newfound wealth and contributed millions to federal and state Democratic campaigns.

Big Tobacco Rides East
By Robert Dreyfuss
January/February 1999 Issue
With a squinting cowboy, cute cigarette girls, an American allure, and a poorly funded opposition, America’s tobacco giants lay seige to Asian markets.

Tobacco Strikes Back
A Special Mother Jones Investigation
May/June 1996 Issue
How tobacco executives set out to win the game, with covert political operatives and massive amounts of campaign cash.

DOES IT FEEL LIKE POLITICS IS AT A BREAKING POINT?

Headshot of Editor in Chief of Mother Jones, Clara Jeffery

It sure feels that way to me, and here at Mother Jones, we’ve been thinking a lot about what journalism needs to do differently, and how we can have the biggest impact.

We kept coming back to one word: corruption. Democracy and the rule of law being undermined by those with wealth and power for their own gain. So we're launching an ambitious Mother Jones Corruption Project to do deep, time-intensive reporting on systemic corruption, and asking the MoJo community to help crowdfund it.

We aim to hire, build a team, and give them the time and space needed to understand how we got here and how we might get out. We want to dig into the forces and decisions that have allowed massive conflicts of interest, influence peddling, and win-at-all-costs politics to flourish.

It's unlike anything we've done, and we have seed funding to get started, but we're looking to raise $500,000 from readers by July when we'll be making key budgeting decisions—and the more resources we have by then, the deeper we can dig. If our plan sounds good to you, please help kickstart it with a tax-deductible donation today.

Thanks for reading—whether or not you can pitch in today, or ever, I'm glad you're with us.

Signed by Clara Jeffery

Clara Jeffery, Editor-in-Chief

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our newsletters

Subscribe and we'll send Mother Jones straight to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate

Share your feedback: We’re planning to launch a new version of the comments section. Help us test it.