Golden Holocaust

Golden Holocaust
Author: Robert N. Proctor
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 779
Release: 2012-02-28
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0520950437

The cigarette is the deadliest artifact in the history of human civilization. It is also one of the most beguiling, thanks to more than a century of manipulation at the hands of tobacco industry chemists. In Golden Holocaust, Robert N. Proctor draws on reams of formerly-secret industry documents to explore how the cigarette came to be the most widely-used drug on the planet, with six trillion sticks sold per year. He paints a harrowing picture of tobacco manufacturers conspiring to block the recognition of tobacco-cancer hazards, even as they ensnare legions of scientists and politicians in a web of denial. Proctor tells heretofore untold stories of fraud and subterfuge, and he makes the strongest case to date for a simple yet ambitious remedy: a ban on the manufacture and sale of cigarettes.

The Cigarette

The Cigarette
Author: Sarah Milov
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 401
Release: 2019-10-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674241215

Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist Winner of the Willie Lee Rose Prize Winner of the PROSE Award in United States History Hagley Prize in Business History Finalist A Smithsonian Best History Book of the Year “Vaping gets all the attention now, but Milov’s thorough study reminds us that smoking has always intersected with the government, for better or worse.” —New York Times Book Review From Jamestown to the Marlboro Man, tobacco has powered America’s economy and shaped some of its most enduring myths. The story of tobacco’s rise and fall may seem simple enough—a tale of science triumphing over corporate greed—but the truth is more complicated. After the Great Depression, government officials and tobacco farmers worked hand in hand to ensure that regulation was used to promote tobacco rather than protect consumers. As evidence of the connection between cigarettes and cancer grew, scientists struggled to secure federal regulation in the name of public health. What turned the tide, Sarah Milov reveals, was a new kind of politics: a movement for nonsmokers’ rights. Activists took to the courts, the streets, city councils, and boardrooms to argue for smoke-free workplaces and allied with scientists to lobby elected officials. The Cigarette puts politics back at the heart of tobacco’s rise and fall, dramatizing the battles over corporate influence, individual choice, government regulation, and science. “A nuanced and ultimately devastating indictment of government complicity with the worst excesses of American capitalism.” —New Republic “An impressive work of scholarship evincing years of spadework...A well-told story.” —Wall Street Journal “If you want to know what the smoke-filled rooms of midcentury America were really like, this is the book to read.” —Los Angeles Review of Books

The Fight Against Big Tobacco

The Fight Against Big Tobacco
Author: Mark Wolfson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 415
Release: 2017-07-12
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1351482823

Tobacco control leaders were extremely proud of the movement's achievements in the state of Minnesota. In sharing their perspectives and experiences with Mark Wolfson, they found a way of making sure that the story would get told. His training in social movements had given him an appreciation of the importance of understanding the social infrastructure on which movements are built, and Minnesota had built heavily on the infrastructure of health care and public health. What became apparent is that the struggle against the tobacco industry in Minnesota involved a close, collaborative relationship between government (or "state") actors and the leaders of the tobacco control movement. Wolfson develops both of these themes: building on the infrastructure of health, and state-movement interpenetration, to understand the emergence, growth, and outcomes of the tobacco control movement in Minnesota. He focuses on the advantages and constraints associated with these two related themes. He goes beyond the case study method to assess the generalizability of the pattern, and whether the same sort of movement can be used by other states in North America, and even in other countries and their social movements. How has the tobacco control movement become such a significant and successful force in shaping public policy, social norms, and the habits of millions of Americans? In this first such detailed study by a sociologist, Wolfson documents how the movement has grown over nearly three decades by building an infrastructure of health organizations and health professionals, and by fostering relationships with government. Rich in survey data, extensive interviews, and archival sources, this text is essential reading for courses in social problems, social movements, and public health. The general reader will also find it engaging, given the issues of tobacco use as an addiction and a social problem.

Merchants of Doubt

Merchants of Doubt
Author: Naomi Oreskes
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2011-10-03
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 1408828774

The U.S. scientific community has long led the world in research on such areas as public health, environmental science, and issues affecting quality of life. These scientists have produced landmark studies on the dangers of DDT, tobacco smoke, acid rain, and global warming. But at the same time, a small yet potent subset of this community leads the world in vehement denial of these dangers. Merchants of Doubt tells the story of how a loose-knit group of high-level scientists and scientific advisers, with deep connections in politics and industry, ran effective campaigns to mislead the public and deny well-established scientific knowledge over four decades. Remarkably, the same individuals surface repeatedly-some of the same figures who have claimed that the science of global warming is "not settled" denied the truth of studies linking smoking to lung cancer, coal smoke to acid rain, and CFCs to the ozone hole. "Doubt is our product," wrote one tobacco executive. These "experts" supplied it. Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, historians of science, roll back the rug on this dark corner of the American scientific community, showing how ideology and corporate interests, aided by a too-compliant media, have skewed public understanding of some of the most pressing issues of our era.

The Cigarette Century

The Cigarette Century
Author: Allan M. Brandt
Publisher: Basic Books
Total Pages: 644
Release: 2009-01-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 0786721901

The invention of mass marketing led to cigarettes being emblazoned in advertising and film, deeply tied to modern notions of glamour and sex appeal. It is hard to find a photo of Humphrey Bogart or Lauren Bacall without a cigarette. No product has been so heavily promoted or has become so deeply entrenched in American consciousness. And no product has received such sustained scientific scrutiny. The development of new medical knowledge demonstrating the dire harms of smoking ultimately shaped the evolution of evidence-based medicine. In response, the tobacco industry engineered a campaign of scientific disinformation seeking to delay, disrupt, and suppress these studies. Using a massive archive of previously secret documents, historian Allan Brandt shows how the industry pioneered these campaigns, particularly using special interest lobbying and largesse to elude regulation. But even as the cultural dominance of the cigarette has waned and consumption has fallen dramatically in the U.S., Big Tobacco remains securely positioned to expand into new global markets. The implications for the future are vast: 100 million people died of smoking-related diseases in the 20th century; in the next 100 years, we expect 1 billion deaths worldwide.

The Devil's Playbook

The Devil's Playbook
Author: Lauren Etter
Publisher: Crown
Total Pages: 497
Release: 2021-05-25
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0593237986

“Juul’s rise and fall teaches us something about greed, capitalism, policy failure and a particular cycle in American business that seems destined to repeat itself. . . . Deeply reported and illuminating.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice) Big Tobacco meets Silicon Valley in this gripping exposé of what happened when two of the most notorious industries collided—and the vaping epidemic was born. “The best business book I’ve read since Bad Blood.”—Jonathan Eig, bestselling author of Ali: A Life Howard Willard lusted after Juul. As the CEO of the parent company of tobacco giant Philip Morris, he believed the e-cigarette had all the addictive upside of the original without the same apparent health risks and bad press. Meanwhile, Adam Bowen and James Monsees began working on a device meant to destroy Big Tobacco but ended up baking the cigarette industry’s DNA into their invention. Juul’s e-cigarette was so effective that it put the company on a collision course with Philip Morris, sparking one of the most explosive public health crises in recent memory. Award–winning journalist Lauren Etter tells a riveting story of greed and deception in one of the biggest botched deals in business history. Willard was desperate to acquire Juul, even as his team sounded alarms about the startup’s reliance on underage customers. Ultimately, Juul’s executives negotiated a deal that let them pocket the lion’s share of Philip Morris’s $12.8 billion investment while government regulators and furious parents mounted a campaign to hold the company’s feet to the fire. The Devil’s Playbook is the inside story of how Juul’s embodiment of Silicon Valley’s “move fast and break things” ethos wrought havoc on American health, how a beleaguered tobacco company was seduced by the promise of a new generation of addicted customers, and how Juul’s founders, board members, and employees walked away with a windfall.

Up in Smoke

Up in Smoke
Author: Martha Derthick
Publisher: CQ Press
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2005
Genre: Products liability
ISBN:

In a landmark report by the U.S. Surgeon General in 1964, the government warned its citizens of the adverse effects of smoking on their health and took a series of steps to discourage smoking. These steps stemmed from “ordinary politics” –that is, actions taken or authorized by legislatures. 1994 heralded a new era in tobacco politics: of “adversarial legalism,” wherein state attorneys general sued leading cigarette manufacturers for the harm they had done to public health. These law-suits culminated in the Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) that directed an estimated $250 billion to state governments over the next 25 years and imposed new marketing and advertising restrictions. In her second edition, Martha Derthick introduces new evidence from 5 years of experience under the MSA to show that the states were more interested in raising revenue than in improving tobacco control, that the enrichment of wealthy tort lawyers violated the legal profession's ethics, and that the agreement, ironically, spawned the rise of small, upstart cigarette manufacturers able to undersell the major companies. In this clearly written, fast-paced case study, Derthick concludes that the tobacco lawsuits not only produced flawed public policy that flouted the American system of checks and balances, but has done little to improve or better safeguard public health.

Tobacco War

Tobacco War
Author: Stanton A. Glantz
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 499
Release: 2000-05-10
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0520924681

Tobacco War charts the dramatic and complex history of tobacco politics in California over the past quarter century. Beginning with the activities of a small band of activists who, in the 1970s, put forward the radical notion that people should not have to breathe second-hand tobacco smoke, Stanton Glantz and Edith Balbach follow the movement through the 1980s, when activists created hundreds of city and county ordinances by working through their local officials, to the present--when tobacco is a highly visible issue in American politics and smoke-free restaurants and bars are a reality throughout the state. The authors show how these accomplishments rest on the groundwork laid over the past two decades by tobacco control activists who have worked across the U.S. to change how people view the tobacco industry and its behavior. Tobacco War is accessibly written, balanced, and meticulously researched. The California experience provides a graphic demonstration of the successes and failures of both the tobacco industry and public health forces. It shows how public health advocates slowly learned to control the terms of the debate and how they discovered that simply establishing tobacco control programs was not enough, that constant vigilance was necessary to protect programs from a hostile legislature and governor. In the end, the California experience proves that it is possible to dramatically change how people think about tobacco and the tobacco industry and to rapidly reduce tobacco consumption. But California's experience also demonstrates that it is possible to run such programs successfully only as long as the public health community exerts power effectively. With legal settlements bringing big dollars to tobacco control programs in every state, this book is must reading for anyone interested in battling and beating the tobacco industry.

Preventing Tobacco Use Among Youth and Young Adults

Preventing Tobacco Use Among Youth and Young Adults
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 22
Release: 2012
Genre: Nicotine addiction
ISBN:

This booklet for schools, medical personnel, and parents contains highlights from the 2012 Surgeon General's report on tobacco use among youth and teens (ages 12 through 17) and young adults (ages 18 through 25). The report details the causes and the consequences of tobacco use among youth and young adults by focusing on the social, environmental, advertising, and marketing influences that encourage youth and young adults to initiate and sustain tobacco use. This is the first time tobacco data on young adults as a discrete population have been explored in detail. The report also highlights successful strategies to prevent young people from using tobacco.

The Cigarette Papers

The Cigarette Papers
Author: Stanton A. Glantz
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 562
Release: 1996
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780520213722

These documents provide a shocking inside account of the activities of one tobacco company, Brown & Williamson, and its multinational parent, British American Tobacco, over more than thirty years.