Nobel laureate in medicine Sir Paul Nurse (Associated Press, Feb 25, 2002):
"We will always have cancer with us because of natural mistakes in the natural body, so it will never be eliminated, but I think we can do much better than we are doing now...The single most major hit we can get for short-term cancer rates is to eliminate the use of tobacco."
Harm Reduction
You have to admit: Law firms defending the behavior of cigarette companies, especially from 1950-1980, really have their work cut out for them. Their mission is to defend a client who for decades systematically misrepresented the truth about cigarette smoking and health.
Oh, no. As if smoking weren't dangerous enough, now comes tobacoo genetically-modified to entrap and sicken us more effectively.
New laws limit the amount of money that tobacco companies have to post as a bond while court judgments against the companies are being appealed (normally in most non-tobacco cases the defendant has to put up the entire amount of the damages awarded to the plaintiff while the appeal fight is going on). Such laws have been passed in Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Wisconsin and introduced in other states. American Lung Association president John L. Kirkwood reacted:
"It's outrageous that state legislatures are passing laws whose only purpose is to provide special legal protection for tobacco companies."
Currently the media is covering two "safer tobacco stories," one dealing with the claim by Vector Tobacco that its Omni cigarette is "the first reduced carcinogen cigarette" (a topic addressed on HealthFactsAndFears.com last week), the other dealing with claims that chaw use is safer than cigarette smoking. Indeed, U.S. Tobacco, the maker of the chewing tobaccos Skoal and Copenhagen, is currently asking the Federal Trade Commission for permission to advertise that its products could be a safer way to consume tobacco than cigarettes.
Authoritarian governments killed some 100 million people during the twentieth century. Simon Chapman, in an essay on Tobacco.org, notes a similarly lethal but less hotly debated menace:
"Between 1950 and 2000, smoking caused about 62 million deaths in developed countries...but they fail to create a sense of urgency in the media, policy-makers, or the public. As Joseph Stalin argued: 'A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths are a statistic.'"
Cigarette manufacturers have always argued that they produce just another ordinary, legal, consumer product. One manufacturer, Philip Morris, has a long-running advertisement which displays cigarettes in a shopping cart chock full of its other in-house merchandise: Jello, Miracle Whip, Kraft Ranch salad dressing, Velveeta and Marlboros. Such a display is about as homogeneous as the scene in E.T. in which the alien attempts to blend into a cluster of teddy bears and other stuffed animals.
George Harrison, the "quiet Beatle" died in December, 200l at age 58. The cause of Mr. Harrison's death a death which clearly by any definition can be characterized as "premature" was cigarette smoking. In their December l0th issues, both Time and Newsweek extensively covered Harrison's death. Coverage noted, among other details, his devotion to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi but neither magazine mentioned the most critical factor: cigarette smoking as the cause of death. Both magazines carry cigarette ads. The omission of reference to cigarettes is significant and raises the question of whether the magazines' own addiction to cigarette ads is a factor in deleting pejorative references to cigarettes.
British conservative journalist Roger Scruton came under fire in recent weeks after admitting that he has taken money to write positive articles about the tobacco industry.
For free-marketeers, who defend the right of individuals to make free choices in a marketplace, constrained only by property rights, it is tempting to say that Scruton's error calls into question only his journalistic integrity, not his philosophical principles. But is it that simple?
The first issue of Priorities: For Long Life and Good Health was published in l988, with a mandate to fill an information gap left by popular health magazines specifically, to assist consumers in distinguishing between real health risks and phantom ones. For the last 12 years, Priorities/PfH accomplished this with articles exposing how the health risks of pesticides, chemicals at trace levels in the environment, and commercially processed or high-tech foods, for example, are overstated, as well as articles focusing on real health risks, such as those of tobacco use, passive smoking, and failure to use life-saving devices, like bicycle helmets, seat belts, and smoke detectors.
Do Americans really know enough about the dangers of smoking to make an "informed" decision to light up? Of course they should. Even Philip Morris, as we now know from a company-funded study in the Czech Republic that caused an international flap last week, was aware of early death rates among smokers. The rates were touted in the study as "indirect positive effects" that netted the country savings on health care, pensions, welfare and housing for the elderly.
Yet still some commentators, disgusted by huge damage awards and government deals with the tobacco industry, trumpet the mantra: "Everyone knows the dangers of smoking!"
Executive Summary
Many women young and old devote a significant amount of time to reading women's magazines. Some turn to these publications for relaxation and/or to review the latest fashions, but others also seek reliable lifestyle and health information. Those seeking medical advice will often depend more on these magazine articles than on their doctors or other healthcare professionals.