Let’s say a government agency pays for a study and is involved in the design, data collection, analysis, writing, and interpretation of that study. Would you find it plausible that the agency had zero influence on the results?
In 2025, the academic journal Tobacco Controlpublished just such a study. The paper investigated what happened when two California towns, Beverly Hills and Manhattan Beach, became the first U.S. cities to ban all tobacco products.
The study tried to determine prohibition’s impact on sales of both tobacco and non-tobacco products, both in the cities themselves and in surrounding neighborhoods. It was funded by the California Department of Public Health (CDPH), and co-author Nita H. Mukand also received a National Institutes of Health grant…