Three strikes and out for the Australian Tobacco Institute?

The tobacco industry in Australia has twice recently been castigated for misleading the public in its attempts to defend the indefensible. Recent public hearings of an Australian senate committee examining “the tobacco industry and the costs of tobacco related illness” suggest that the industry is at it again. The Hansard records from the hearings provide a catalogue of faux pas by the industry.

The tobacco industry has long been huddled in its bunker, sneaking out to trumpet the arrival of an international scientific confabulator or to whinge about the latest policy squeeze. For its spokesmen have had virtual lockjaw in any public forum. Most journalists seem to have decided that they are poor media talent, so, in the words of a US industry spokesman, they “are forever dogged with being …