smoke screen

The New York Times reports that in the mid-1990s, Kirsten Gillibrand, the New York senator who has replaced Hillary Clinton,

'played a significant role on behalf of the tobacco industry in battling the government’s attempts to prove wrongdoing by cigarette makers'.

Within its report, the Times reproduces this - almost comical - picture of tobacco executives telling Congress in 1994 that they did not believe there was a proven link between smoking and cancer.

Nancy Oreskes, George Monbiot, and others, have detailed the links between Big Tobacco and climate-change denial.