Cigarettes may kill, but their makers know that the addiction will last
THE single most shattering statistic about life in America in the late 1990s was that tobacco killed more people than the combined total of those who died from AIDS, car accidents, alcohol, murder, suicide, illegal drugs and fire.The deaths of more than 400,000 Americans each year, 160,000 of them from lung cancer, make a strong case for the prohibition of tobacco, and particularly of cigarettes. The case, backed by solid evidence, has been made in every public arena since the early 1950s, when the first convincing link between smoking and cancer was established in clinical and epidemiological studies—yet 50m Americans still go on smoking.
Most smokers in America eventually manage to quit, and local laws banning smoking in public have become common, but the industry prospers. The tobacco companies have survived virtually everything their opponents have thrown at them. At the end of his story, Mr Brandt writes: “The legal assault on Big Tobacco had been all but repelled. The industry was decidedly intact, ready to do business profitably at home and abroad.”
Cigarettes overcame any lingering opposition to the pleasure they gave when American soldiers came to crave them during the first world war. Cigarettes were sexy, and the companies poured money into advertising.
That was simply because, until the 1940s, not enough men had been smoking for long enough to develop fatal cancers (women did not reach this threshold until the 1970s). The first clinical and epidemiological studies linking cigarette-smoking and lung cancer were published only in 1950. By 1953 the six leading companies had agreed that a collective response was required. They paid handsomely for a public-relations campaign that insistently denied any proof of a causal connection between smoking and cancer. This worked well until 1964, when a devastating report from the surgeon-general's advisory committee in effect ended medical uncertainty about the harmfulness of smoking.
But Big Tobacco rode the punches. When the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ruled that health warnings must appear on each pack, the industry consented. But it shrewdly exploited the warning: “In a culture that emphasised individual responsibility, smokers would bear the blame for wilful risk-taking,” notes Mr Brandt. Many cases for damages against the companies foundered on that rock.
However, the industry was powerless to prevent a flood of damaging internal documents, leaked by insiders. The companies were shown, for instance, to have cynically disregarded evidence from their in-house researchers about the addictive properties of nicotine. Internal papers also showed that extra nicotine was added to cigarettes to guarantee smokers sufficient “satisfaction”.
For those who thought the settlement was akin to “dancing with the devil”, it appeared in retrospect that the devil had indeed had the best tunes, reports Mr Brandt. To his credit, he manages to keep his historian's hat squarely on his head. But you can feel the anguish.
THE single most shattering statistic about life in America in the late 1990s was that tobacco killed more people than the combined total of those who died from AIDS, car accidents, alcohol, murder, suicide, illegal drugs and fire.The deaths of more than 400,000 Americans each year, 160,000 of them from lung cancer, make a strong case for the prohibition of tobacco, and particularly of cigarettes. The case, backed by solid evidence, has been made in every public arena since the early 1950s, when the first convincing link between smoking and cancer was established in clinical and epidemiological studies—yet 50m Americans still go on smoking.
Most smokers in America eventually manage to quit, and local laws banning smoking in public have become common, but the industry prospers. The tobacco companies have survived virtually everything their opponents have thrown at them. At the end of his story, Mr Brandt writes: “The legal assault on Big Tobacco had been all but repelled. The industry was decidedly intact, ready to do business profitably at home and abroad.”
Cigarettes overcame any lingering opposition to the pleasure they gave when American soldiers came to crave them during the first world war. Cigarettes were sexy, and the companies poured money into advertising.
That was simply because, until the 1940s, not enough men had been smoking for long enough to develop fatal cancers (women did not reach this threshold until the 1970s). The first clinical and epidemiological studies linking cigarette-smoking and lung cancer were published only in 1950. By 1953 the six leading companies had agreed that a collective response was required. They paid handsomely for a public-relations campaign that insistently denied any proof of a causal connection between smoking and cancer. This worked well until 1964, when a devastating report from the surgeon-general's advisory committee in effect ended medical uncertainty about the harmfulness of smoking.
But Big Tobacco rode the punches. When the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ruled that health warnings must appear on each pack, the industry consented. But it shrewdly exploited the warning: “In a culture that emphasised individual responsibility, smokers would bear the blame for wilful risk-taking,” notes Mr Brandt. Many cases for damages against the companies foundered on that rock.
However, the industry was powerless to prevent a flood of damaging internal documents, leaked by insiders. The companies were shown, for instance, to have cynically disregarded evidence from their in-house researchers about the addictive properties of nicotine. Internal papers also showed that extra nicotine was added to cigarettes to guarantee smokers sufficient “satisfaction”.
For those who thought the settlement was akin to “dancing with the devil”, it appeared in retrospect that the devil had indeed had the best tunes, reports Mr Brandt. To his credit, he manages to keep his historian's hat squarely on his head. But you can feel the anguish.
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