Susan Stuntz

Susan M. Stuntz was a Tobacco Institute Vice President of Public Affairs and also served as the Institute's Issues Manager circa 1986. By 1992 she was Senior Vice President of Public Affairs at the Institute.

Records indicate Ms. Stuntz started working for the Tobacco Institute around 1980. At that time, she was hired as a Staff Writer in the Public Relations department at the Institute. In this position, she was responsible for researching and developing brochures, pamphlets and articles, and editing the pro-industry Tobacco Institute newsletter, the The Tobacco Observer.

She is a native of Virginia, and prior to working for the Institute lived for three years in Connecticut where she worked as a public relations writer for the University of Connecticut, Storrs. Ms. Stuntz assisted the Tobacco Institute in implementing a host of programs designed to counteract public health efforts to reduce smoking-related disease and death, including thwarting mandated fire-safe cigarettes, counteract the American Cancer Society's Great American Smokeout, punishing the insurance industry for offering nonsmoker discounts and thwarting public efforts to reduce secondhand smoke exposure.

Little is known about Ms. Stuntz's background other than that she holds a Master's degree in journalism.

A search of the Internet shows that in 2007 she was employed as Vice President of Marketing Communications for the 2007 Steering Committee of the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation.

Tobacco industry documents
In a 1988 speech, Tobacco Institute executives explained industry strategies for fighting clean indoor air laws, creating allies, mobilizing "grassroots" support and marginalizing public health authorities. The first speaker was Susan Stuntz, then Director of Issues Management at the Tobacco Institute. She explained how promoting ventilation as the sole solution to tobacco smoke pollution helped the Institute "ensure that smoking restrictions are no longer seen as the best solution to cleaning up the indoor air..."

Stuntz introduced an idea for a tobacco industry front group to help counteract public concern over secondhand smoke called, the "National Institute for Conflict Education," or N.I.C.E. NICE was to feature celebrity-actor Hal Holbrook as it's  spokesperson, and would perform "research," the pre-determined conclusions of which would be that by pursuing smoke-free indoor air, public health advocates were over-reacting to one of "life's everyday annoyances." The research would conclude that public health advocates were "anti-social," and smokers were just getting a "bum rap."

Stuntz explained,

We believe that annoyance is one of the keys to the social acceptability question. Smokers believe that their smoke is annoying, that they are the problem, that they are the ones who are acting in an anti-social way. Our program will demonstrate that it is the overreaction to life's everyday annoyances, including anti-smokers' overreaction to smoking, that is, in fact, the anti-social behavior. Our program would establish a broad-based coalition with a celebrity spokesperson who will cite research to show smokers that obnoxious anti-smokers are the problem... To make all of this happen, we would work with other organizations to establish a National Institute for Conflict Education...known by the acronym N.I.C.E., to conduct quantitative and qualitative research to demonstrate how normal, everyday people deal with common everyday annoyances. The organization would show that Americans as a group view smoking as but one of life's many every day annoyances...Actor Hal Holbrook has indicated that he is interested in being the spokesman for the group. He will be supported by a team of social scientists who will help interpret and communicate research findings. With Hal Holbrook in the lead, the coalition will release its research findings through advertising in national decision-maker publications, and through media tours, op-eds and feature stories. We will enlist Holbrook's help in speaking directly to smokers..."

Stuntz cites a benefit of N.I.C.E.: "It puts a respected celebrity in our camp, to offset some of the Captain Kangaroos out there.

The speech also talks about the industry's highly successful use of labor unions, how the industry worked to undermine the Cancer Society's Great American Smokeout, and says the Institute spent about $29.5 million over 18 months to implement public affairs programs like those described in the talk.[

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