[Halfmanhalfamazing]

None of what's in this link is cross referenced with other links for verification purposes, so take this with a grain of salt. I'm hoping that others around here have heard of this stuff and can make these claims solid. If true, this info is useful.

[Carley]

They’re a big successful corporation, they must be stopped.

[DJ MacWoW]

I don’t know if you remember the commercial but J&J had one where he says “My father removed fluorocarbons from our products before anyone else did”. So I would think they are very lefty.

[starzed_]

Opponents of Ohio Bans have put the light on the sponsorship of their agenda through the back door, right now. It's been this way since the 80's, and watch as more and more there is no longer seperation between science, funding and gov't decision makers. In Canada the VP of Pfizer Canada is now in the governing council of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) link; people who decides what gets funded. It's getting scary ho integrated big pharma is intgrated into the gov't.

"According to their November 2005 publication, "Taking on tobacco: The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Assault on Smoking", from 1991 to 2005 the foundation paid $446,398,054 in tobacco-control grants. Grantees that did not move from tobacco education to tobacco control became ineligible for further grants.

As of March 31, 2008 the foundation owns 35,435,189 shares of Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) common stock (valued at nearly 2.3 billion dollars) and is one of the company's largest institutional holders. As a tax exempt foundation RWJF pays 1 percent tax on realized capital gains and dividends from its investments, while other investors pay 15 percent. Johnson & Johnson profits from the sales of Nicoderm CQ and Nicorette products. The foundation therefore directly profits from cigarette tax and smoking ban laws they've provided grants to create. In January 2008, 1,000,000 boxes of the company's nicotine replacement products were reportedly sold and Nicoderm CQ is touted as the "best selling smoking cessation patch in history". April 15, 2008, Forbes reported that Johnson & Johnson profit jumped 40% during the first quarter of 2008.

The foundation created the National Center for Tobacco-Free Kids and has provided more than $84,000,000 in grants to fund that advocacy group. As a non-profit the foundation can't legally lobby but the center can. The center aggressively promotes increased taxation on tobacco products.

The foundation sponsors conferences on "how to identify ways to increase the use of evidence-based tobacco cessation treatments" and awarded the American Cancer Society a nearly $1,000,000 grant to "expand the use of tobacco cessation treatments". It's about the money, profits for stockholders and control. Tobacco control is the best marketing strategy that pharmaceutical dollars can buy.

The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons has been warning the government for over a decade of the RWJF's desire to control the health care policies of this country. Following the pattern for tobacco control, the foundation has pledged $500,000,000 in grants for anti-obesity. Johnson & Johnson will profit once again from anti-obesity public policy advocacy through its Splenda brand of artificial sweetener."

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