To:  Regents of the University of California

We, the undersigned UC students, staff, faculty, alumni and community members, urge you to complement your existing policy of not investing in the tobacco industry by adopting a similar policy to not accept or solicit any new funding from the tobacco industry, whether in the form of grants, contracts, fellowships, or gifts. 

The tobacco industry has a 50-year history of using its funding of academic research to interfere with the University’s fundamental mission of discovering and disseminating knowledge.  It has done so by implementing a sophisticated strategy to manipulate the scientific process in a way that has slowed the development of knowledge and promoted public confusion about the effects of smoking and secondhand smoke.  The University of California enjoys a prestigious reputation for academic excellence and important, cutting-edge research.  This hard-earned reputation is under assault from tobacco companies.

• A recent article in the journal, Pediatrics, exposes how Philip Morris, a division of Altria Group Inc., successfully encouraged an author to change his conclusion in a 2001 scientific review of the risk of secondhand smoke;
• A UCSF study found that tobacco companies shifted their funding from “secondhand smoke” to “other indoor air contaminants” research when the industry found that secondhand smoke research did not support their position.