Overview
Corporate Political Activities (CPAs) refer to strategies that companies use to shape the political, legal, and social environment that are considered outside the scope of market strategies or business decisions. This can include:
-
Lobbying: meeting with policymakers, lawmakers, and/or decision-makers to influence the way regulations are created or enforced
-
Campaign contributions: donating money or resources directly to political actors or initiatives
-
Political Action Committees (PACs): pools of money coalesced by those employed by a company that allocate funds to political candidates
-
Trade Associations: groups or networks that pool money for shared interests across the industry
Industries wrapped around substance use have always been heavily politically active.
The alcohol and tobacco industries have famously lobbied against regulations on marketing and warning-labels. In fact, they even lobby against media that featured cautionary themes about substance use, like The Lost Weekend (1945). Allied Liquor Industries, a trade association for the alcoholic beverage industry, led an influence campaign against Paramount Pictures’ distribution of the movie that claimed the film’s messages would reignite a Prohibition movement. Mad Men references the tobacco industry’s pattern of funding science and research that muddies the water of real policy discourses.
Pharmaceutical companies, medical trade associations, and healthcare providers are incredibly influential through their CPAs. The specialized nature of their fields leaves most lawmakers without any firsthand experience in the process of scientific research or even the latest findings about basic human biology. Policymakers in regulatory agencies who do have credentials often cut their teeth through these groups. Nora Volkow is a prolific researcher whose brain imaging studies with Positron Emission Tomography (PET) were instrumental in establishing that chronic substance use produced physiological changes in neurobiology that elevated addiction into a health issue from a moral one. She also has been involved as an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Association of American Physicians. She’s also won awards and recognition from the American Psychiatric Association, the American College of Psychiatrists, the Society of Biological Psychiatry, and Children and Adults with ADHD. These organizations certainly offer research infrastructure and industry guidelines that aren’t solely rooted in the political bureaucracies of the state, but mainly by decentralizing political bureaucracies into what arguably amounts to an extension of academic alumni networks.