In late 1997, the institute set up a research program emulating the UK's Social Affairs Unit, called the Social Affairs Centre. Its founding director was Patrick Basham. The program's funding came from Rothmans International and Philip Morris. When Rothmans was bought by British American Tobacco (BAT) in 1999, its funding ended, and in 2000 the institute wrote to BAT asking for $50,000 per year, to be split between the Social Affairs Centre and the Centre for Risk and Regulation. The letter highlighted the institute's 1999 publication "Passive Smoke: The EPA's Betrayal of Science and Policy", "which highlighted the absence of any scientific evidence for linking cancer with second-hand smoke received widespread media coverage both in Canada and the United States". At this time the CEO of BAT's Canadian subsidiary, Imasco, was also on the Fraser Institute's board of trustees. The Fraser Institute ceased disclosing its sources of corporate funding in the 1980s.