I can’t wait to get my hands on a book coming out in February, written by a Stanford professor about the evils of the tobacco industry, called: “Golden Holocaust: Origins of the Cigarette Catastrophe and the Case for Abolition”
Ouch, but $44.95? I think I’ll wait to see if I can get a used copy.
In this book, Robert Proctor (I’ve seen his name around in a few articles I’ve read), takes on the tobacco industry and argues the industry is not dying, but people still are. Obviously, with the term “Holocaust” in the title, this book is no shrinking violet. I personally have called tobacco a “slow motion Holocaust,” having watched what it did to people in my mom and dad’s generation.
I’m quoting liberally from a Stanford University article, which you can read in full here:
One author calls it “a remarkable compendium of evil” while another reviewer says “unpacks the sad history of an industrial fraud. [Proctor’s] tightly reasoned exploration touches on all topics on which the tobacco makers lied repeatedly to Congress and the public.”
Sounds like the kind of thing that will get my rage on. It sounds like it pulls no punches.
Big Tobacco tried to stop the publication of the book, actually subpoenaing Proctor’s emails and his unfinished manuscript and costing him $50,000 in legal fees.
Two other powerful quotes from the book.
For the industry, though, the cigarette represents the perfect business model. “It costs a penny to make. Sell it for a dollar. It’s addictive,” says investment guru Warren Buffett.
Proctor notes that “by artfully crafting its physical character and chemistry, industry scientists have managed to create an optimally addictive drug delivery device, one that virtually sells itself.”
Proctor explores several tobacco myths in the book. Among them:
Myth #1.Nobody smokes anymore. If you read the media, smoking sounds like a dying habit in California. That’s far from true, said Proctor. Californians still smoke about 28 billion cigarettes per year, a per capita rate only slightly below the global average.
So why do we have this illusion? “We don’t count the people who don’t count. It’s not the educated or the rich who smoke anymore, it’s the poor,” said Proctor.
Myth #2. The tobacco industry has turned over a new leaf. “The fact is that the industry has never admitted they’ve lied to the public or marketed to children or manipulated the potency of their project to create and sustain addiction,” Proctor said. “A U.S. Federal Court in 2006 found the American companies in violation of RICO racketeering laws, and nothing has changed since then. And the same techniques used in the past in the U.S. are now being pushed onto vulnerable populations abroad.”
Myth #3.Everyone knows that smoking is bad for you. Proctor pointed out that most people begin smoking at the age of 12 or 13, or even younger in some parts of the world. “Do they know everything?” Proctor asked rhetorically. “And how many people know that cigarettes contain radioactive isotopes, or cyanide, or free-basing agents like ammonia, added to juice up the potency of nicotine?”
Myth #4.Smokers like smoking, and so should be free to do it. And the industry has a right to manufacture cigarettes, even if defective. Proctor called this “the libertarian argument.”
“It is wrong to think about tobacco as a struggle between liberty and longevity; that tips the scales in favor of the industry. People will always choose liberty, as in ‘Give me liberty or give me death.’ What people don’t realize is that most smokers dislike the fact they smoke, and wish they could quit. Cigarettes are actually destroyers of freedom.”
There are tobacco industry documents, he noted, in which smoking is compared not to drinking but rather to being an alcoholic.
Myth #5. The tobacco industry is here to stay. Global tobacco use would be declining were it not for China, where 40 percent of the world’s cigarettes are made and smoked. Proctor has a bet with a colleague, though, that China will be among the first to bar the sale of cigarettes, once their financial costs are recognized.
Anyway, sounds like a heavy read and a real unapologetic voice of anti-tobacco advocacy. Can’t wait.
A plastic surgeon came out this week and said smoking can make your nipples fall off — well if you are a woman who has had a certain kind of plastic surgery on her breasts. The guy is dead serious and claims it has happened several times. The smoking kills the circulation to the breasts, which probably already have circulation issues after a breast lift.
He urges women getting breast lifts to quit smoking and says with a couple of his patients, he was forced to resort to using leeches to save their nipples.
Wow, leeches on your nipples. If that isn’t enough to motivate you to quit smoking, I don’t know what is.
Hey thanks to Richard at the Patio for tuning me on to this.
He brought up Mad Magazine’s tobacco parody ads from the 1960s. I vaguely remember their parody ads (The Magazine at its height was before my time, but I used to get these little paperbacks of their old magazine Mad used to put out like 10 years later. I gave away all those paperbacks. I had dozens of ’em. Used to get them at a little cheesy gift shop at Bass Lake, Calif.) I had a bunch of Don Martin and Spy vs. Spy books, too. Don Martin was great.
Mad Magazine is really dated and at the time was kind of edgy, but today it looks pretty staid (and very New York-ish) compared to the humour that’s out there today. National Lampoon and other magazines kind of blew Mad out of the water, but they paved the way. I don’t know if we just grew up, or if Mad Magazine got stale, but it stopped being the cultural phenomenon it was inthe 1960s.
I had a few of their old comics from the 1950s that were really cool. Really subversive stuff for the 50s. Just kind of goofy comics. Then Mad turned into more a satire of politics and culture in the 60s. The 50s comics seem more timeless to me.
So, I went online and dug up a few of them. Most of these are from the late 1960s. Again — FOR THE TIME — this was considered edgy. One of the cartoons with Obama is obviously a newer one.
Oh, whoops, just realized I sneaked a real ad in there. Can you find it? It’s pretty bad.
Philip Morris got its ass handed to it by the Oregon Supreme Court, which shockingly (to me, because the good guys rarely win these cases, at least completely win) upheld a jury award to the widow of a smoker killed by lung cancer. The Supreme Court ruled that Philip Morris must pay another $99 million to the widow of Jesse Williams, Mayola Williams. The original decision was made by a jury way back in 1999, but then got appealed and appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld a punitive damage of $79.5 million, but kicked part of the case back to the Oregon Supreme Court. That figure is now up to $99 million in part due to interest. OK, I know what you’re thinking — $99 million is nothing to a multi-billion dollar company like Philip Morris. True. But ask yourself why the hell would Philip Morris fight this for 12 years and spend millions on legal fees? Because the tobacco industry is TERRIFIED of legal precedent. Philip Morris was essentially fighting the dollar amount. The tobacco company had already paid millions to the widow. The widow and the state of Oregon, prosecuting the case, reached an interesting settlement. If they won before the Oregon Supreme, the state would receive $55 million to go toward its crime victim’s fund (which makes sense, since what the tobacco companies do is a crime), while Ms. Williams would receive $45 million (somehow, that adds up to $99 million). Philip Morris had an interesting argument. The company contended that Oregon had already signed off on its right to the money because in 1998 – one year before the jury’s verdict – the state agreed not to pursue any more claims for injuries from tobacco exposure in the massive 1998 Master Settlement Agreement. The clause was part of a settlement brokered with Philip Morris, other tobacco companies and 46 states for the billions of dollars the states had paid and would continue to pay for health care for ailing, low-income smokers. Under that deal, the tobacco companies agreed to pay Oregon $2.1 billion during the first 25 years and then about $81 million a year in perpetuity. But attorneys for Oregon and Ms. Williams argued that state was simply trying to collect on the 60 percent due to it under the state’s punitive-damages law, separate from the 1998 MSA. The Supreme Court agreed. No word if Philip Morris will appeal, but I suspect it will.
Anti-tobacco advocates — and several Congressmen and U.S. Senators — have been pushing for months to have chew banned by Major League Baseball. It would mean no chew on the field, or during games. Before you laugh, that rule has been in effect in Minor League Baseball for 15 years. (And smoking during games in the dugout is banned by MLB.).
The reason for this is plenty of kids get to watch their favourite players chewing during games and that helps encourage them to take up the habit.
Well, advocates won a partial victory. During negotiations between the players’ union and MLB, the union did agree to limitations on chewing tobacco. No chewing tobacco tins on the field in players’ pockets and players cannot be seen with chew in their cheek during television interviews.
Not everyone is happy with the agreement.
“Baseball players are idols to millions of youth, and they should strive to be healthy role models. The failure to ban smokeless tobacco is bad for the health of the players and worse for the kids who emulate them,” said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif.
“The fact is that smokeless tobacco use by baseball players will still appear on television screens across the United States,” said Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J.
This is a compromise, not exactly what we were looking for, but at least it’s a first step. The players’ union was fighting a tobacco ban tooth and nail. Perhaps this will lead to an eventual ban on tobacco chew in ballparks. Players can chew if they want on their own time, but when they are in an MLB, they are on the clock, and there aren’t very many workplaces that would allow you to chew on the job.
The other big news from the agreement is that players will now be tested for HGH, human growth hormone.
It’s just a damned football team, but like the Boston Red Sox, the San Francisco 49ers have a special meaning for me — and it has a lot to do with my dad.
My first memory of the 49ers was when they were shocked in the postseason in 1972, losing in the playoffs to the Dallas Cowboys when they had a 28-16 lead with two minutes left in the game. This was the beginning of a long slide and heartbreak for the Niners. In 1976, the Niners started 6-1 and were the hottest team in the NFL, but then they remembered they were the 49ers and ended up 8-6, missing the playoffs. The Niners went 15-43 over the next four years.
My dad died in 1981, I was just a kid. Obviously, it was a bad year for me, not only did my dad — a four-pack-a-day smoker — die of lung cancer, but my mom fell into a deep pit of despair. It went wayyy beyond normal grief, a lot of talk about killing herself and putting an end to it all. I felt ignored. I was too young to know how to deal with it, I was mostly just angry.
Patrick Willis
Then, along came the 49ers. My dad hated the 49ers, because he hated San Francisco, because it was full of liberals, hippies and gays … which is maybe why I became a 49ers fan — to spite him. But, it was something for me to care about and take my cares away from the real world, if only for three hours a week.
I remember when the 49ers became a big deal with early in the season, when they beat the Dallas Cowboys 45-14. The Cowboys were a consensus pick to win the Super Bowl that year and were obnoxious as all get out; this is when they began they asinine “America’s Team” bullshit. I started thinking, “hey, these guys might actually be for real.”
The Niners ended up crushing everyone that year behind this new kid Joe Montana and then won — for me personally — the greatest game in the history of the NFL in early 1982, beating the cocky-ass annoying Cowboys in the NFC championship with Dwight Clark’s spectacular “catch” with 58 seconds left. For a moment, it was a respite of what I was going through with my mom and my dad’s death.
The Niners went on to win the Super Bowl, and my love affair began with the Niners. Honestly, when I think of the Niners, I think of that awful year after my dad died and dealing with a mom deep in the throes of clinical depression, while I was just beginning high school. It was too much, too young, but the 49ers actually helped get me through those difficult months.
Vernon Davis
As you know, they won 5 Super Bowls over the next 14 years. The entered an era of excellence no other team in the NFL has sustained for so long. They won 239 games in 22 years, made the postseason 18 times and the NFC title game 10 times. No one has ever been that good for that long.
There’s more memories than I can count. The goal line stand in the fourth quarter of the 1982 Super Bowl, the monster season in which they beat Dan Marino in the Super Bowl, the up-and-down season (which had 50-yard touchdown runs by both Roger Craig and Steve Young to win games and a 70-yard bomb from Joe Montana to Jerry Rice in the final seconds to win a game) in which they beat Chicago in the NFC championship in Chicago then won the Super Bowl in the final seconds on a pass to John Taylor, Joe Montana getting knocked out — twice — in the NFC championship game, the most dominant season ever by any team when they beat Denver in the Super Bowl 55-10, the incredible battles against the Dallas Cowboys and New York Giants.
Frank Gore
After a couple of crushing, heartbreaking defeats in the NFC championship, the Niners rose again under Steve Young to beat the Cowboys in two incredible games in 1994, and went on to win the Super Bowl. Throughout this whole era, you simply expected the 49ers to win each and every game. They didn’t. But, you expected it … and when they didn’t, it was a shock. I could see why the rest of the NFL came to hate the 49ers during this era. Their swagger was unparalleled.
Then, disaster struck. First, their owner Ed DeBartolo Jr., got busted for trying to bribe the governor of Louisiana to build a riverboat casino, then the NFL took the team away from DeBartolo and handed it to his sister, Denise York.
DeBartolo was allowed by the NFL to take control of the 49ers again, but his sister and her husband, John York, would have nothing of it. Eddie was out of the picture … and with the Yorks running the team, the 49ers went into a long and painful decline beginning in 2002. The 49ers have not been in the playoffs for 9 years, and during that time, the team hasn’t just been bad, they’ve been an embarrassment. The Yorks are painfully inept owners; they hired bad general managers, and even worse coaches … and then, worst of all, after hiring bad people, they did the worst thing owners can do, they meddled. Several surveys listed them as the worst owners in the NFL.
During the next 8 years, the 49ers only won 46 games. They were arguably the worst franchise in the NFL. Frankly, it got hard to keep caring about them. Bad owners, bad team, bad coaches and shitty stadium. They hired an offensive coordinator, Mike Martz, who brought in his personal hand-picked quarterback from Detroit, some schmoe named J.T. O’Sullivan, who proceeded to the turn the ball over 17 times in 7 games and had to be benched. I don’t think Martz’s “wunderboy” is even in the league anymore.
To me, the nadir of the team was Mike Singletary. Constant delay of game penalties. Unbelievably bad offences and play-calling. Horrendous play clock management. Constantly changing quarterbacks. He once called a running play up the middle in a close game when the 49ers were on the 3-yard with 10 seconds left to play and no time outs. The runner got stopped at the 2-yard-line and time ran out before the 49ers could spike the ball to stop the clock. And a field goal would have tied it. How bad is that?
The 49ers still play in a crap stadium, and are likely moving 40 miles south to Santa Clara, but this year, a funny thing happened. Despite the crap stadium, the crap owners, the team got good. All those high draft picks started paying off (plus two or three surprisingly good free agent signings — Justin Smith and Braylon Edwards.). A couple of years ago, co-owner John York was removed as President of the team by the team’s board of directors. That maybe had something to do with the 49ers finally getting on their feet.
The 49ers are 8-1 this year and have won two monster games against good teams — Detroit and New York Giants — arguably the two best games of the year in the NFL (they also beat a 6-3 Cincinnati team). They are winning with a ferocious defence that simply doesn’t let teams run the ball and a monster running game. They are No. 1 in the NFL for fewest points allowed — by quite a bit. Alex Smith, their No. 1 draft pick from 2005, is playing the best football of his career, and a fiery young coach, Jim Harbaugh, seems to have a plan. After the disasters of Dennis Erickson, Jim Nolan and Singletary, the 49ers seem to have found a coach with a semblance of a clue.
Alex has had a sad sack career. He was the No. 1 draft pick, taken about 20 picks ahead of Aaron Rodgers, but then floundered over the next several years. He has shown flashes (especially when Norv Turner was his offensive coordinator for one year), but he’s played for four head coaches and SEVEN offensive coordinators in seven years. None of those head coaches were offensive coaches until Jim Harbaugh came along. He had a major shoulder injury early in his career, then was forced to play with it when his idiot coach Nolan questioned his toughness. I remember the game. Alex came back to play and couldn’t throw the ball worth a damn because he was in so much pain. He screwed up his shoulder even worse and required surgery. Nolan was fired less than a year later. You don’t fuck with a permanent injury to your No. 1 draft pick like that. Nolan will never be a head coach again as a result.
Singletary was almost as bad, switching back and forth between Alex, David Carr and some guy named Troy Smith. It was like Singletary couldn’t figure out who he wanted to play quarterback. Troy Smith is a terrible QB and is barely in the league anymore.
Alex survived all that to have the best year of his career this season. He doesn’t throw a lot, but he doesn’t make mistakes — only three INTs in 9 games. He is on pace for his first 3,000-yard season and 20-TD season, and just keeps proving his detractors wrong every week.
The 49ers will definitely win their division and make the postseason and host a first-round game. They have a five-game lead with seven games left. One of the best descriptions I’ve seen of them is “a team no one wants to play.” The question now is, can they pick up the No. 2 seed in the NFC? That’s a distinct possibility, as they have a two-game lead over the next best team — New Orleans.
I seriously doubt the 49ers will make the Super Bowl this year. That would mean getting past Green Bay, at Lambeau, but this is an exciting year nonetheless, an incredible leap in one year from a laughingstock for nearly a decade to one of the most feared teams in the NFL. After a near decade of almost total ineptitude, the 49ers are fun … and interesting … and most all, relevant.
(Thanks to Classical Gas for the scoop on this story!)
Australia is attempting to force cigarette companies in that country to have utterly, entirely plain cigarette packages, with no artwork, no logos, no graphics whatsoever, except for graphic images of lung cancer and other diseases caused by cigarette smoking.
The Australian Senate passed a bill to require the plain packages. The Australian House is expected to approve the bill, as well, requiring plain packaging by next year. Tobacco companies are expected to file lawsuits. New Zealand is considering similar legislation.
In the U.S., these graphic warnings have been put on hold. A U.S. District Court judge issued an injunction stopping the FDA from requiring graphic warnings, saying they violated tobacco companies’ First Amendment rights by forcing them to advocate for something they didn’t want to advocate.
French cigaratte pack
Someone showed me a pack of French cigarettes the other day with a pretty gross graphic warning of a rotting mouth. Their point was smokers really aren’t going to pay attention. My attitude is the vast majority of smokers probably don’t care about the warnings — I mean if they’re smoking, they’re probably already addicted to the nicotine. But, maybe, maybe, maybe, just maybe, it will put an inkling in a few smokers’ minds that, “Wow, I really need to quit,” and maybe, maybe, maybe, it will discourage some kids from beginning. Who knows? I can hear the nanny-state argument on this one.
November is both National Lung Cancer Awareness Month and National COPD Awareness Month:
Here’s my contribution to raising awareness
Death toll in 2009
All causes 2.4 million
1) Heart disease 600,000
2) Cancer (other than lung cancer) 400,000 3) Lung cancer (28 percent of all cancer deaths) 160,000 4) Respiratory disease (primarily COPD) 130,000
5) Stroke 128,000
6) Accidents 117,000
7) Alzheimer’s 79,000
8 Diabetes 68,000
9) Flu, pneumonia 53,000
11) Suicide 36,000
13) Chronic liver disease and cirrhosis 30,000
15) Parkinson’s disease 20,000
16) Homicide 16,600
√ So, basically 12 percent of the people who died in 2009, died of lung cancer or COPD. 12 percent. Roughly one death out of eight.
√ Lung cancer is 28 percent of all cancer deaths.
√ Lung cancer and COPD in 2009 killed more people than Alzheimer’s, diabetes, the flu, suicide, cirrhosis of the liver and homicide … combined.
√ 85 to 90 percent of the people who died of lung cancer or COPD were smokers or former smokers, which means they are preventable deaths
√ That means about 250,000 deaths could have been avoided
√ 250,000 is about the population of Lincoln, Neb. or Madison, Wis.
√ Did I mention these were preventable deaths?
The tobacco companies might actually win this round. A federal judge in Washington, D.C., Richard Leon, slapped an injunction against the graphic warning labels, saying there is a likelihood he would rule against the Food and Drug Administration. The tobacco industry (every major company but Philip Morris joined the lawsuit) argued that the labels violated their free speech.
The judge ruled that the images were in violation of a “First Amendment principle that prevents the government from compelling speech in the commercial arena.”
In issuing the injunction, Judge Leon states:
“It is abundantly clear from viewing these images that the emotional response they were crafted to induce is calculated to provoke the viewer to quit, or never to start smoking — an objective wholly apart from disseminating purely factual and uncontroversial information.”
Shit, shit, SHIT!
“Today’s ruling reaffirms fundamental First Amendment principles by rejecting the notion that the government may require those who sell lawful products to adults to urge current and prospective purchasers not to purchase those products.”
— Floyd Abrams, a partner in the law firm of Cahill Gordon & Reindel that’s representing Lorillard (Newport).
It doesn’t look good for the graphic warnings, which are in place and perfectly legal in places like Canada, the U.K. and Australia. Those countries don’t have a First Amendment and the kinds of legal protection for the tobacco industry that the U.S. does.
Someone did make a good point to me, though, that “do you really think that a smoker is going to care what the images are?” Most probably won’t. Most I’m sure will ignore them, but if one, or two or three or a few more than that ARE affected by them and say to themselves, “Shit, I really need to quit,” than yeah, I think they make a difference.
The case is still active, but with the injunction in place, the graphic warnings on cigarettes, in the U.S. at least, are probably a few years off at best.
There was an interesting and fun discussion last week on Current.com about Tim Tebow.Tebow is one of the most weirdly polarizing figures in the NFL. It’s weird, because he’s never been arrested, never gotten a DUI, never been accused of slapping a woman. He’s polarizing because he’s extremely religious (and belongs to a very conservative sect), and because his most rabid fans worship him as the second coming of Jesus (an exaggeration — but not by much).
Last week, I was actually shocked at the venom I heard on TV talk shows being directed at Tebow. It was some of the most scathing, withering invective I’ve ever heard flung at any athlete — I didn’t hear a couple of quarterbacks who murdered dogs and were accused of terrible acts in a bar bathroom catch the amount of flak Tebow was catching.
He had a terrible game against a team with a good defence — Detroit. He was ripped down one side and up the other; he was called awful, horrible, an embarrassment. Commentators said he had no business being in the NFL and worse . One commenter, a guy I usually despise named Skip Bayless, said the hatred toward Tebow was bordering on pathological. It might be the one and only time I ever agree with Skip Bayless. At a certain point, this doesn’t have anything to do with football anymore — it has to do with annoyance over his public displays of faith and annoyance with his rabid fans. (An interesting column about that here.)
Well, what I’m hearing is the haters appear to be JUST as rabid. They are simply feeding the frenzy that is Tebow by turning him into a martyr … and hard core conservative Christians absolutely LOVE martyrs. We live in Bronco territory and I’m still trying to find a Bronco fan that doesn’t literally despise Tebow. I mean literally HATE him. I haven’t found one yet!
What did Tebow do Sunday? He started terrible, but then finished 4-for-5 for 55 yards, threw 2 TDs, ran for 117 yards, had no INTs, and had 240 yards of total offence — and brought his team back from being down 17-7 to win 38-24 (It will be interesting what his haters have to say this week.). Tebow has started a total of six games and is 3-3 as a starter. Denver was 1-4 without him and is 2-1 with him and suddenly they’re in a playoff chase. In a weird way I find myself cheering for him, as much as I am uncomfortable with his conservative brand of religion (but, hey, it’s America, right? He can worship who he wants, however he wants.). I find myself more uncomfortable with the virulent level of hate toward him, hate that seems to be as much if not more about his personal faith than about his play of the field.
I just wonder sometimes if Tebow were a devout Muslim, how some people would feel about some of the vitriol being thrown at him.
Does his latest good game mean he is a good quarterback? No. Does it mean he will be a good quarterback someday? No. He may. He may not. It will probably take a couple of years to know for sure. Should he have been a first-round draft pick? Probably not, but that’s not his fault Denver drafted him too high. What it means is he is raw, inexperienced, has an eccentric throwing motion that may never fit the NFL, but he is not quite as bad as the vitriol being spewed about him. It means he is playing well enough to be given the opportunity to keep playing. How good was John Elway after six games? Steve Young? Michael Vick? Brett Favre?
