{"id":798,"date":"2012-01-07T13:49:19","date_gmt":"2012-01-07T20:49:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theloungeisback.wordpress.com\/?p=798"},"modified":"2014-01-11T07:31:51","modified_gmt":"2014-01-11T07:31:51","slug":"golden-holocaust-origins-of-the-cigarette-catastrophe-and-the-case-for-abolition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/?p=798","title":{"rendered":"Golden Holocaust: Origins of the Cigarette Catastrophe and the Case for Abolition"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"proctor_news\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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”<\/p>\n

Ouch, but $44.95? I think I’ll wait to see if I can get a used copy.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

\"golden<\/a><\/p>\n

I’m quoting liberally from a Stanford University article, which you can read in full here<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

Sounds like the kind of thing that will get my rage on. It sounds like it pulls no punches.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Two other powerful quotes from the book.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Proctor explores several tobacco myths in the book. Among them:<\/p>\n

Myth #1.<\/strong> Nobody smokes anymore.<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Myth #2<\/strong>. The tobacco industry has turned over a new leaf.<\/strong> “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.”<\/p>\n

Myth #3.<\/strong> Everyone knows that smoking is bad for you<\/strong>. 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 <\/em>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?”<\/p>\n

Myth #4.<\/strong> Smokers like smoking, and so should be free to do it<\/strong>. And the industry has a right to manufacture cigarettes, even if defective.<\/strong> Proctor called this “the libertarian argument.”<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

There are tobacco industry documents, he noted, in which smoking is compared not to drinking but rather to being an alcoholic.<\/p>\n

Myth #5. The tobacco industry is here to stay.<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n

Anyway, sounds like a heavy read and a real unapologetic voice of anti-tobacco advocacy. Can’t wait.<\/p>\n

Amazon link<\/a> to the book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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. … Continue reading Golden Holocaust: Origins of the Cigarette Catastrophe and the Case for Abolition<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1637,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7,10,69],"tags":[170,192],"class_list":["post-798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anti-tobacco-campaign","category-big-tobacco","category-tobacco-2","tag-robert-proctor","tag-tobacco-industry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/proctor_news.jpg?fit=600%2C400&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4hpEa-cS","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1640,"url":"https:\/\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/?p=1640","url_meta":{"origin":798,"position":0},"title":"Tobacco companies must place full-page ads admitting they lied","author":"Pepe Lepew","date":"January 11, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Interesting and to me surprising story. This week, several tobacco companies -- RJ Reynolds, Altria (Philip Morris) -- agreed with the Justice Department to print \"corrective statements\" in major newspapers around the U.S. admitting that they lied for many years about the health effects of smoking. These full-page ads will\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anti-tobacco campaign"","block_context":{"text":"Anti-tobacco campaign","link":"https:\/\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/?cat=7"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Guilty-Dogs-Of-2013-Hilarious-Dog-Video-Compilation.jpg?fit=630%2C416&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Guilty-Dogs-Of-2013-Hilarious-Dog-Video-Compilation.jpg?fit=630%2C416&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Guilty-Dogs-Of-2013-Hilarious-Dog-Video-Compilation.jpg?fit=630%2C416&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":3045,"url":"https:\/\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/?p=3045","url_meta":{"origin":798,"position":1},"title":"“Merchants of Doubt”: Big Oil, Big Chemical take a lesson from Big Tobacco","author":"Pepe Lepew","date":"March 24, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"I have put this documentary in my Netflix queue, though I have a feeling it will be really bad for my blood pressure. This is a documentary by the Robert Kenner, who also made \"Food, Inc.\" about how the oil industry, chemical industry and pharmaceutical companies have copied the same\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Merchants of Doubt"","block_context":{"text":"Merchants of Doubt","link":"https:\/\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/?cat=474"},"img":{"alt_text":"Merchants of Doubt","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Merchants-of-Doubt.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3977,"url":"https:\/\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/?p=3977","url_meta":{"origin":798,"position":2},"title":"California voters raise cigarette tax by $2 a pack","author":"Pepe Lepew","date":"November 18, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0 Lost in all the hubbub over this election (and a reason why I waited a week and a half to post about it) was California voters approving a $2 a pack increase in their cigarette tax. California will go from having one of the lowest cigarette taxes in the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "California"","block_context":{"text":"California","link":"https:\/\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/?cat=350"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/sjm-tobacco-09xx-021.jpg?fit=512%2C387&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2278,"url":"https:\/\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/?p=2278","url_meta":{"origin":798,"position":3},"title":"The country with the highest smoking rate — East Timor","author":"Pepe Lepew","date":"June 8, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"If you had flat out asked me this question, what country has the highest smoking rate in the world, I might have said Belarus or Bulgaria, something like that. It's not an Eastern European country, it's a county called East Timor. All right, having to whip out my atlas to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Third World smoking"","block_context":{"text":"Third World smoking","link":"https:\/\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/?cat=310"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/75299440_shop-and-ad.jpg?fit=624%2C351&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/75299440_shop-and-ad.jpg?fit=624%2C351&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/75299440_shop-and-ad.jpg?fit=624%2C351&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":3923,"url":"https:\/\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/?p=3923","url_meta":{"origin":798,"position":4},"title":"Samantha Bee: Big Tobacco and Little Vape — and a criticism of “Full Frontal”","author":"Pepe Lepew","date":"July 31, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"This is a really funny and fairly sympathetic piece done by Samantha Bee's \"Full Frontal\" about the new Food and Drug Administration regulations and its effect on the vaping industry. The piece did miss one big point about the vaping industry, however. The proposed regs, while missing a lot of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Big Tobacco"","block_context":{"text":"Big Tobacco","link":"https:\/\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/?cat=10"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Full-Frontal.jpg?fit=1042%2C539&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Full-Frontal.jpg?fit=1042%2C539&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Full-Frontal.jpg?fit=1042%2C539&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Full-Frontal.jpg?fit=1042%2C539&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":2180,"url":"https:\/\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/?p=2180","url_meta":{"origin":798,"position":5},"title":"Great old Mad magazine anti-smoking ad","author":"Pepe Lepew","date":"May 2, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Got this from Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. This is great! Really funny. Mad magazine used to be famous for its fake ads (and some of them looked very real). Here is a scathing ad from way back in 1965 just skewering Big Tobacco with a \"Us Cigarette Makers Would Rather\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anti-tobacco campaign"","block_context":{"text":"Anti-tobacco campaign","link":"https:\/\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/?cat=7"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/MAD-Magazine-Carry-On-Ad_536170b060fa49.59442991.jpg?fit=899%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/MAD-Magazine-Carry-On-Ad_536170b060fa49.59442991.jpg?fit=899%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/MAD-Magazine-Carry-On-Ad_536170b060fa49.59442991.jpg?fit=899%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/MAD-Magazine-Carry-On-Ad_536170b060fa49.59442991.jpg?fit=899%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=798"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1639,"href":"https:\/\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798\/revisions\/1639"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}