In June, the Executive Committee debated whether SRNT should co-sign an amicus brief in the Engle case, a class action lawsuit that pits Florida smokers against the tobacco industry. The original Engle jury awarded plaintiffs $145 billion in punitive damages, an amount that, if upheld through appeals, might be sufficient to cause several of the defendant companies to declare bankruptcy. On appeal, however, the court decertified the class in Engle. The current appeal attempts to reverse that decision so that both the class and the punitive damages will remain in force. The brief argues three points: first, that tobacco-related illness remains a public health epidemic; second, that class action litigation is an appropriate and necessary tool for addressing the epidemic of tobacco-related illness; and third, that litigation has long been recognized as a legitimate tool for protecting the public's health. The brief is being signed by several of the nation's leading medical and public health organizations. The Policy committee endorsed the Society's signing on. The Executive Committee's discussion revealed considerable ambivalence, not about the desirability of the lawsuit, but rather about SRNT's role in endorsing the brief. Before the Committee could complete its consideration (given little time to do so), the deadline for signing passed.

This is not the only statement pertaining to issues of legal and policy significance that the Society has been or will be asked to endorse. It is an inevitable and appropriate reflection of the Society's growing prominence that we should be invited to join an increasing number of petitions regarding tobacco control initiatives and policies of many stripes. This raises a crucial question for us, however. How should we decide whether or not to sign on to such efforts? We should articulate both the principles underlying a decision and the procedures employed to reach a decision. Further, we should have consistency and Society-wide buy-in on both, to the extent possible. This does not imply unanimity of opinion on either procedures or principles, nor, especially, on the individual issue-specific decisions that will have to be reached.

We have decision-making procedures in place. For those matters that permit ample time for reflection and debate, the Policy Committee considers them first, making a recommendation to the Executive Committee. If the Executive Committee concurs, the issue will be submitted to the membership for discussion prior to an Executive Committee decision. When time does not permit extended reflection and debate, as in the present instance, the Executive Committee is charged with reaching a decision following receipt of a Policy Committee recommendation. I, for one, am comfortable that these procedures are fair and sensible.

Less well articulated, at this point, are the principles underlying whether SRNT should endorse specific initiatives. Our mission statement lists three main aims, one of which is "To provide a means by which legislative, governmental, regulatory and other public agencies can obtain expert advice and consultation on nicotine and tobacco." Thus, it seems natural to me that we should endorse initiatives for which the science base represented in the work of our members supports the function and purpose of the initiatives. Similarly, we should oppose those not consistent with the base of scientific knowledge. I believe that we have an obligation to support initiatives that move well-established research into practice, be it in the domain of smoking prevention, cessation treatment, or government policy. If the findings of our best research are not put into practice, the research itself becomes nothing more than a glorified exercise in conceptual problem-solving.

Hence the first (and I would suggest overriding) principle: we commit to converting research findings into tobacco control practice. On occasion, this will mean that we use the Society's public endorsement of voluntary initiatives, laws, regulations, and even lawsuits with social ramifications to further the basic objective, assuming that the endorsement relates to the relevance of scientific knowledge to the issue in question.

Even were we to achieve widespread agreement among our membership on this principle, the devil would remain in the details. Is there a meaningful distinction between contributing scientific expertise to a policy debate and lobbying for a science-based policy? Should SRNT ever be in the business of lobbying, and if so, under what circumstances? Last April, Nancy Rigotti and I wrote, on behalf of the Society, to CDC to urge the Centers not to abolish the Office on Smoking and Health in the agency-wide reorganization then being considered. We felt that the role of OSH in contributing to and disseminating the findings of nicotine and tobacco research was of vital national and international interest. We lobbied, and have no doubts about the wisdom of doing so. There may be other instances, however, in which the moral clarity of either the issue or the endorsement is not so well defined.

Another question: how direct must the link be between our science and the initiative we are asked to endorse? To return to the Engle case, the amicus brief relies on science only to support its first argument, namely that tobacco produces disease and at an epidemic level. That argument establishes the importance of the case. The core of the brief lies in the second and third arguments, both directed at supporting the legal and public health legitimacy, even necessity, of class actions to combat the tobacco disease epidemic. While scholarship underlies the arguments, it is not the sort that emanates from the research of SRNT members (said with all due respect to the lawyer members of the Society). Many SRNT members may sympathize personally with the goal of the brief, but is it appropriate fare for our institutional endorsement? Note that reinstating the class in Engle, and sustaining the punitive damages, likely would contribute to reducing the toll of tobacco.

This last observation raises yet another question concerning the Society's mission. The mission and aims statement never explicitly addresses whether a core purpose of the Society should be to contribute, through research, to reducing the toll of tobacco. (See the Society's homepage at www.srnt.org.) Should it?

These are all important questions, many of them quite tough. The Executive Committee and Board will continue to grapple with such matters, and I invite members to share their thoughts with us. I can be reached at kwarner@umich.edu.