Collecting the registration data

Lobbyist records were obtained by visiting the lobbying registration websites for all 50 states and the District of Columbia. These public records were searched for tobacco companies, tobacco industry trade associations, and tobacco retailers currently employing lobbyists or lobbying firms. To view each state’s lobbying disclosure ranking, please visit Open Secrets here.

Keywords searched included Altria, Philip Morris, RAI, Reynolds American, RJR, Juul, Swisher, SI, Swedish, ITG, Vector, Liggett, Xcaliber, Diversified, Cheyenne, AIR, cigar, tobacco, smoke, smoking, vape, vaping, vapor, and others suggested by state or local partners to identify tobacco industry activity in their respective states.

For each “lobbyist principal” (tobacco company, trade association, or retailer) identified, the names of all lobbyists and lobbying firms registered to represent them were tabulated. Because lobbyists and lobbying firms sometimes register to represent more than one tobacco company, trade association, or retailer, total registrations were also tabulated. Online links to the lobbying registration sites for each state were cited.

Compiling and standardizing the data

The tracker is built the same way as in years past. Each state’s public lobbying registration directory is reviewed, and every tobacco-related registration is recorded in a per-state table. The 2021 through 2025 figures are ASH’s compilations from those years, and the 2026 figures were assembled by the same process. Company names in public records vary, so registrations were standardized to a consistent set of companies before counting. Filings under names such as RAI, RJR, and Reynolds American are grouped as Reynolds American, and filings tied to Swedish Match or Philip Morris International’s service entities are grouped as PMI, reflecting Philip Morris International’s acquisition of a controlling interest in Swedish Match in November 2022. ITG Brands is reported as its own company only from 2026 forward. In earlier years, its activity was counted within the “Other” category, so its year-over-year trend is not directly comparable. Anti-tobacco advocacy organizations that appear in the same registration systems under searches of “tobacco,” such as the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, are carefully excluded so that the record reflects tobacco industry activity alone.

Collecting lobbying expenditures (new in 2026)

For the first time, the Tracker records disclosed lobbying compensation and spending using downloaded files, records extracted from public portals, parsed PDFs, and manual entry. Coverage for 2026 reached 31 of the 51 jurisdictions. Of these, 28 have records reporting a single amount, Florida has a mix of single amounts and reported ranges, and Tennessee and Texas have banded ranges. Records reporting a single amount include both compensation and broader lobbying expenditures. Every figure traces to a named public source, and raw source files are saved for every state. Five sources illustrate the range of systems the Tracker reads:

• California: exact compensation, from the Secretary of State’s CAL-ACCESS Form 625 lobbying disclosures.
• Florida: single amounts and reported ranges, from the Division of Lobbyist Registration’s aggregate compensation reports for both the legislative and executive branches. Legislative figures are exact above a threshold and banded below it; executive figures are reported as ranges.
• Minnesota: exact principal spending, from the Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board’s official filings.
• Washington: exact compensation and expenses, from the Public Disclosure Commission’s open-data lobbying dataset.
• Alaska: exact registration and lobbying fees, from Alaska Public Offices Commission filings, entered by hand.

These states report on different bases, so the figures are not interchangeable. Most covered states disclose compensation paid to firms, which is the fee a tobacco company pays each outside lobbyist or lobbying firm it hires, reported one relationship at a time. Minnesota, for example, instead discloses principal spending, which is the tobacco company’s own report of its lobbying expenditures in the state, a broader figure that can also include in-house lobbying costs and is not broken down by firm. Because a total-expenditure number and a fees-to-firms number measure different things, they cannot be meaningfully combined. Expenditure figures cover available reporting periods within 2021–2026; coverage varies by jurisdiction, and some years are partial.

Where a state names the payee, compensation is also attributed to the specific lobbying firm or individual, and firm names are standardized to combine obvious variants of the same firm. The Minnesota and Washington totals used in this dataset are not attributed to individual lobbying firms.

Recording bills and positions (new in 2026)

The analysis includes bills and lobbying interests collected from eight jurisdictions (Colorado, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Alaska, Connecticut, Hawaii, Idaho, and Maine). The Tracker records the specific bills tobacco companies are lobbying on and, where available, each company’s stated position. Colorado and Hawaii publish explicit positions such as support, oppose, amend, and monitor. Positions are recorded in the filer’s own words and are not interpreted by ASH. These records reflect the sources collected for this analysis, not a complete inventory of every state’s disclosures or tobacco lobbying activity.

Analyzing the data

All figures on this site are produced by a documented, repeatable analysis that reads the compiled registration and expenditure records and regenerates every chart and table, so results can be reproduced and reviewed. The main analyses are:

• Company composition and share: each company’s registrations as a count and as a share of the annual total.
• Growth over time: each company’s registrations indexed to its 2021 level, to show multi-year direction independent of size.
• Category grouping: companies grouped into the diversified majors, cigar and smokeless, vapor and e-cigarette, and other, to show how the mix is shifting.
• Lobbyist persistence and turnover: how many lobbyists and firms recur year to year, and how many are new or departing, based on standardized names.
• Cross-sector overlap: for the five states where client lists were collected and analyzed using automated methods (Washington, Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, and New York), the other industries that tobacco’s representatives also serve. Iowa’s analysis identifies overlap for individual lobbyists; the other four states identify overlap for lobbying firms or entities. These counts should be interpreted separately because they measure different units of representation.

Limitations

Where the records collected for this Tracker identify a lobbying firm or employer, they do not always show how many individual lobbyists perform work on behalf of the tobacco industry. A firm-level entry in this dataset does not necessarily mean the state allows firms to register without identifying their individual lobbyists. Because most lobbying firms employ multiple lobbyists, the extent of tobacco industry lobbying in these states may be greater than the data suggest. There may be only one firm registered to lobby a state legislature on behalf of a particular tobacco company, yet that firm might have any number of individual lobbyists actively representing that client. In the 2026 data, tobacco registered at the firm level in 12 states: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Indiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nebraska, New York, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island. In New York, every tobacco registration was filed by a firm rather than a named individual. Illinois and the District of Columbia also permit firm or employer registration, though their 2026 tobacco filings were made by individuals.

A registration is a visible entry in a state’s public filings, not a nationally deduplicated person or firm. Because some lobbyists and firms represent multiple clients, or register in multiple states, the same person can appear more than once, and registration counts should be read as a measure of activity rather than a headcount of individuals.

The expenditure figures cover 31 of the 51 jurisdictions, on differing bases, and must never be summed into or read as a national spending total. Minnesota principals report after the calendar year ends, so Minnesota’s most recent full year lags the other states, and 2026 Minnesota figures are not yet available. A September 2026 review of the 20 jurisdictions outside the expenditure dataset found that Iowa and Louisiana disclose compensation that has not been collected here. The reviewed reports for the other 18 jurisdictions did not include compensation totals. This does not mean tobacco companies spent nothing on lobbying in those jurisdictions. Cross-sector overlap is currently analyzed for Washington, Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, and New York, where client lists were collected and processed using the available automated methods. This coverage does not imply that other states lack public client lists.