Nick Naylor is a handsome, smooth-talking tobacco spokesman who attempts to influence the act of people in daily life and the vice-president of a tobacco lobby called the "Academy of Tobacco Studies", which has been researching whether smoking tobacco causes lung diseases or not. They claim that their research—funded primarily by tobacco companies—has found no definitive evidence for it. Nick's job is mainly defending Big Tobacco on television programs by presenting this research to the public. Naylor and his friends, firearm lobbyist Bobby Jay Bliss and alcohol lobbyist Polly Bailey, meet every week and jokingly call themselves the "Merchants of Death" or "The MOD Squad".