A staff of seven with a budget of $10M. Just imagine what people who weren’t geeked to the gills on The West Wing episodes could do with that kind of money.

There are think tanks out there that aren’t like that, they just don’t get recognized bc it’s very difficult to compete with corporations that disguise themselves as “think tanks” in order to create the “research” that is then presented to the lobbyists, who then lobby Congress to only pass laws and policies that will benefit their business. It’s a very convoluted and dumb system.

The Heritage Foundation was started with funding from the Coors family. They (along with all their offshoots) still lobby for the alcohol industry to this day.

You know how Ozempic is so expensive and insurance usually refuses to cover it? There’s this whole narrative that it’s bc insurance shouldn’t have to pay for medication that helps people lose weight when they can just do it for free with enough willpower.

What’s odd about that, is that doctors began noticing that GLP-1s like Ozempic also coincidentally helped some alcoholic patients cut back on drinking in addition to helping them lose weight. Some doctors started writing it off label for alcoholism that couldn’t be managed with other treatments bc it worked so well.

One of the most well known researchers studying this effect said he was directly contacted by a lobbyist for the alcohol industry who asked how much they needed to be worried about this.

Once-Weekly Semaglutide in Adults With Alcohol Use Disorder

GLP-1 Receptor Agonists: Promising Therapeutic Targets for Alcohol Use Disorder

Non-alcoholic beverages, GLP-1s an ‘existential threat’ to beverage business, José Andrés Group CEO says