Tobacco.org

• Historian of Science Can Keep His Scribblings on Tobacco Studies, Judge Rules  

A Florida circuit court has ruled in favor of a Stanford University professor who is trying to keep his unpublished book manuscript out of the hands of tobacco company R.J. Reynolds, which had subpoenaed it as evidence for an upcoming suit.

Historian Robert Proctor plans to testify as an expert witness against tobacco companies in a number of cases brought by smokers in Florida. He is also working on an 800-page book, The Golden Holocaust, which describes, Proctor claims, the shaky scientific rhetoric and bogus clinical studies that tobacco companies used to sell their products. A judge in Volusia County (which contains Daytona Beach) ruled last August that Proctor had to surrender the manuscript, which Proctor says is largely jottings and notes at this point and not ready for other people to scrutinize.

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The Golden Holocaust
A judge in Florida has ruled that Robert Proctor does not have to give his notes and unpublished manuscript of his forthcoming 800-page book to RJR.

Kings of Tort to be released nationwide on December 2nd I 

The amazing story behind tort magnate Dickie Scruggs’s judicial bribery scandal is presented by Pediment Publishing. Kings of Tort is the authoritative work on documenting this nationally known story and the relatively unknown 25 year history behind it. The book will be made available in retail outlets throughout the country on December 2nd. More Information including advance ordering of the book is available at http://www.kingsoftort.com.

Kings of Tort chronicles the sordid tale of judicial bribery and political intrigue in Mississippi, birthplace of the tobacco litigation and long known as one of the most tort-friendly jurisdictions in the nation. It features the story of Dickie Scruggs, who was largely credited with bringing down Big Tobacco in the early 1990s. From his ascent to a net worth of nearly a billion dollars to his seemingly unfathomable downfall stemming from his role in attempting to corrupt two local judges by improperly influencing the outcome of cases, the book documents how those in Scruggs’s own trusted circle of tort barons turned on him and cooperated with federal authorities. It also shows the political influence he wielded with judges, attorneys general, and even his own brother-in-law, former US Senator Trent Lott. . . .

The book also chronicles the legal bribery story of Scruggs confidante and tobacco lawsuit partner Paul Minor, son of Mississippi political columnist Bill Minor. He was convicted, along with the two judges he improperly influenced, and is currently serving an 11 year prison sentence.

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Scruggs Prosecutor Writes Tell-All Book 

The recently retired lead prosecutor in the case against Mississippi trial lawyer Richard “Dickie” Scruggs has written an insider’s account of the sensational judicial bribery scandal that sent the billionaire tobacco litigator, his son and several associates to prison.

Veteran former prosecutor Tom Dawson teamed up with conservative Mississippi legal blogger Alan Lange to examine the Scruggs case and the conviction of another Mississippi trial lawyer named Paul Minor.

“Kings of Tort: The True Story of Dickie Scruggs, Paul Minor and Two Decades of Political and Legal Manipulation in Mississippi” will be published in December. . . .

In the 1990s, Scruggs teamed up with Missisippi’s Democratic state Attorney General, Michael Moore, to sue major tobacco companies. One of Scrugg’s adversaries in the tobacco wars was his former fraternity brother at Ole Miss, Haley Barbour, then chairman of the Republican National Committee and an ally of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a vigorous advocate of tort reform.

Barbour was elected governor of Mississippi in 2003, a position he still holds today. The state legislature passed a Barbour-sponsored law limiting the ability to file tort claims in the state.

Scruggs reportedly earned $1 billion in fees from the tobacco litigation, and his role was memorialized in a movie, The Insider. . . .

Prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Oxford continue to investigate Scrugg's former associate, P.L. Blake, a Mississippi Delta farmer who reportedly was paid $50 million for helping Scruggs in the tobacco litigation in the 1990s.

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• Scholars' Right to Keep Unpublished Work Private Is at Issue in Lawsuit 

In a case with potentially major implications for scholars and publishers, a Stanford University professor who often serves as an expert witness against tobacco companies is fighting an effort by lawyers for the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company to obtain the manuscript of his unpublished and unfinished book on that industry.

A Florida state court judge has already authorized the tobacco company's lawyers to issue a subpoena requiring Robert N. Proctor, a Stanford professor of the history of science, to make his book manuscript available to them so they can comb it for possible material to use in cross-examining him in a civil lawsuit pending there.

But the lawyers for the plaintiffs suing the tobacco company last week filed a motion asking the court to reconsider that decision and protect Mr. Proctor from being forced to grant access to the unpublished manuscript. Their motion calls Mr. Proctor their "single most important witness" in their case against the tobacco company, and argues that forcing him to share the manuscript would violate his privacy, his free-speech rights, his academic freedom, and his rights as an author.

Mr. Proctor, for his own part, refused to produce the manuscript at a recent deposition in the case and has retained a San Francisco law firm to fight the subpoena—as well as any other efforts to obtain his book—in California state courts.

In an interview Monday, he said of the book: "It's my private thoughts. They are not organized yet. They are not in finished form." . . .

The Florida court where the case is pending, the state's Seventh Judicial Circuit Court in Volusia County, possibly could entertain arguments for and against the subpoena at a hearing scheduled for Thursday. . . .

Robert M. O'Neil, director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression at the University of Virginia and a veteran scholar of issues related to academic freedom, said Monday that the legal fight over the manuscript "has profound implications" for academe. . . .

Mr. Proctor said Monday that lawyers for the tobacco company have sought for more than a year to obtain the manuscript to his planned book, tentatively titled "Golden Holocaust: A History of Global Tobacco." . . .

In a deposition filed in connection with the Florida case, he describes himself as one of only two professors of history in the nation who regularly testify against the tobacco industry, and alleged that "the tobacco industry has spent years trying to harass, intimidate, and use multiple legal means to prevent me from testifying in litigation." He said that his book "will contain previously unpublished information regarding tobacco-industry practices,"

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Golden Holocaust: A History of Global Tobacco
Tentative title of Robert N. Proctor's work-in-progress. RJR is battling in a Florida court for a sneak preview.

Scholars' Right to Keep Unpublished Work Private Is at Issue in Lawsuit ($$) 

In a case with potentially major implications for scholars and publishers, a Stanford University professor who often serves as an expert witness against tobacco companies is fighting an effort by lawyers for the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company to obtain the manuscript of his unpublished and unfinished book on that industry.

A Florida state court judge has already authorized the tobacco company's lawyers to issue a subpoena requiring Robert N. Proctor, a Stanford professor of the history

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Climate Cover-Up / The Crusade to Deny Global Warming  

"Climate Cover-Up documents one of the most disgusting stories ever hidden about corporate disinformation. What you'll discover in this book amounts to proof of an intergenerational crime." DAVID SUZUKI, Author of The Sacred Balance and Good News for a Change.

"This book explains how the propaganda generated by self-interest groups has purposely created confusion about climate change. It's an imperative read for a successful future." LEONARDO DICAPRIO, Actor and Producer . . .

Starting in the early 1990s, three large American industry groups set to work on strategies to cast doubt on the science of climate change. Even though the oil industry's own scientists had declared, as early as 1995, that human-induced climate change was undeniable, the American Petroleum Institute, the Western Fuels Association (a coal-fired electrical industry consortium) and a Philip Morris-sponsored anti-science group called TASSC all drafted and promoted campaigns of climate change disinformation.

The success of those plans is self-evident. . . .

Although all public relations professionals are bound by a duty to not knowingly mislead the public, some have executed comprehensive campaigns of misinformation on behalf of industry clients on issues ranging from tobacco and asbestos to seat belts.

Lately, these fringe players have turned their efforts to creating confusion about climate change.

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Regina man quit smoking and wrote book on how to stop 

“People would come into my gas station and say, ‘I really need to get off these cigarettes’ and I would share with my customers how I was able to quit smoking and a lot of them were having good success at it,” Smith said. “They would add a little twist to it, so this method was really improved, smoker by smoker.”

To help people break their tobacco addiction, he incorporated the methods in his newly-released book, I Legally Sold Drugs: Changing Mindsets for a Smoke-Free You.

Preparing mentally and breaking the routines around smoking are key to butting out, he said.

“The reader actually smokes while they read the book and they challenge their addiction every day over the course of 28 days,” Smith said. “So many smokers are afraid that they’ll fail and that’s why there are less and less attempts.”

The book challenges smokers to go without a cigarette for progressively longer periods of time.

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• Jaques Chirac may have cigarette habit erased 

Officially, Mr Chirac, 76, delayed the release of Mémoires – the much-awaited tome recounting his life from birth until 1995 – so he could re-read it one last time.

But Le Parisien claimed there were concerns the picture would break laws banning the "direct or indirect" promotion of tobacco and may have to be airbrushed.

The cover photo, featuring Mr Chirac in deep thought and thick glasses, was taken in 1976, some 12 years before he kicked the habit.

Mr Chirac is the latest in a string of celebrities to have their tobacco habit airbrushed out of photos or posters. . . .

Mr Chirac's publisher, Nil, denied any "censorship or self-censorship", insisting the release had been delayed as Mr Chirac was abroad on a visit to Africa, and the fuss was "absurd".

The newspaper Le Figaro remained dubious, saying it understood that a politician might no longer want to be associated with this "accursed object", but that it was "questionable to want to erase from the past anything that doesn't correspond to our contemporary values".

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Author Lynn Barber’s smoking mad 

As if to prove that the sanctimony of the anti-smoking movement knows no bounds whatsoever, the local council in Richmond, England, home of the Book Now festival, has objected to a publicity photograph of Lynn Barber, winner of five British Press awards and author of the memoir An Education, because it showed Barber smoking. Barber, who was scheduled to appear at the festival in November, responded to the request for another photo by withdrawing from the roster of attendees. The stated reason for the Richmond council's objection? Depicting an author smoking would contravene the city's responsibility to promote "good health habits."

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• 'Smoking Martyr' Lynn Barber pulls out of festival  

Not encouraging 'good health habits' ... the offending photograph of Barber. Photograph: PR

Author and journalist Lynn Barber has withdrawn from a literary festival after the local council refused to include a photograph of her smoking in its brochure for the event. Her ferocious interview technique earned her the soubriquet Demon Barber, but this is the first time she has been branded a potentially corrupting influence.

Barber, who writes for the Observer, was due to appear at Richmond's Book Now festival in November to discuss her memoir, An Education, which tells of the destructive affair she began as a teenager with an older man who picked her up at a bus stop. Her publisher Penguin had supplied a black and white photograph of Barber for inclusion in the festival's brochure, embroidered scarf around her neck, head thrown back, cigarette in mouth.

But Richmond council deemed that using a picture of an author smoking went against its responsibility to encourage "good health habits", and asked Barber to provide another. She declined and pulled out of the festival, saying that she had "always wanted to be a Smoking Martyr and obviously this is my opportunity".

"If a pic of me smoking is such a threat to the good burghers of Richmond, imagine what my presence would do," she said this morning. Barber, winner of five British Press awards, is also the author of a study of Victorian naturalists, The Heyday of Natural History, along with How to Improve Your Man in Bed and The Single Woman's Sex Book.

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Inherent Vice, Thomas Pynchon  

Part noir, part psychedelic romp, all Thomas Pynchon— private eye Doc Sportello comes, occasionally, out of a marijuana haze to watch the end of an era as free love slips away and paranoia creeps in with the L.A. fog. View more: http://us.penguingroup.com

[VOICE OVER:]

If you're driving south from L.A. International, you should take no more than a hit or two off of your favorite brand of cigarette before you're right here in Gordita Beach, Calif.

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Yup, It's Him: A Thomas Pynchon Mystery Solved  

Last Tuesday, long-suffering fans of the reclusive writer Thomas Pynchon received a double gift. Pynchon’s latest book, “Inherent Vice,” a stoned-out detective story set in early-‘70s L.A., was released by Penguin Press (read the Journal’s review). And to promote it, the publisher put out a cool video trailer featuring a narrator whose slow, lazy cadence sounds suspiciously like that of Pynchon’s . . .

We should point out Primeau is an unbiased witness, having never read Pynchon (“I don’t know this guy but it looks like he has some history as an author,” he said). Nevertheless, if he hasn’t been taken by the man’s work, Primeau is intrigued by his voice, which he describes as “a tobacco-driven soft rasp.”

Primeau’s conclusion: “Beyond a reasonable degree of professional certainty, I believe these voices were delivered by the same person.” Confronted with Primeau’s findings, Tracy Locke, a publicist at Penguin, came clean and admitted, “It is, in fact, Thomas Pynchon doing the narration.”

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LETTER: Book helped smoker quit, 

Re: Pros will try to help Durham trio quit smoking habit, Aug. 5.

I smoke first thing in the morning to help wake me up. . . .

Did I ever give those cigarettes a lot of power over the 25 years I was a smoker.

But 14 months ago my husband and I read a book (one chapter a day) until on the last day, May 8, 2008, we closed our last chapter and haven't smoked another cigarette since. . . .

I think I've done some pretty amazing things in my life, but the one that makes me smile from ear to ear every single day is the fact that I broke free from cigarettes.

Allen Carr's EasyWay to Stop Smoking has saved our lives and I'm hoping it can help your readers too.

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Congressional Memo - In Books on Two Powerbrokers, Hints of the Future  

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, and Representative Henry A. Waxman of California, the Democratic chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, are indisputably inside guys. Neither man is exactly overflowing with charisma, but they have used their decades in Congress to learn precisely how to pull the legislative levers, making them formidable powers in the Senate and House.

Both are now at crucial junctures. Mr. McConnell, 67, is the leader of a depleted minority and the chief hope of Republicans trying to derail an ambitious Democratic policy agenda. Mr. Waxman, 69, is at the epicenter of the two biggest policy fights of the moment -- health care and climate change.

Both are now also the subjects of new books that explore how Mr. McConnell became the scourge of Democrats and campaign finance reformers and how Mr. Waxman took on the tobacco industry and Major League Baseball.

Their histories, as laid out in "The Waxman Report" and "Republican Leader," give hints of how they can be expected to conduct themselves in the difficult months ahead, and how events earlier in their careers foretold their current tactics. Both have proved to be tenacious in pursuit of their objectives, devoting years to chosen causes even when those causes seemed lost. . . .

Mr. Waxman's legislative patience is well documented. The book, titled for the nickname of a Los Angeles newspaper once published by his uncle, opens with his 1994 inquiry into tobacco industry practices. That long-running investigation reached fruition only this year with the enactment of a law putting tobacco products under the jurisdiction of the Food and Drug Administration. . . .

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Television Review - 'J. K. Rowling - A Year in the Life' - A Portrait of Harry Potter's Creator 

She lets the mask slip, though; her need for control is not as thorough-going as that of your average movie star or corporate executive. Visiting the church where she earned money as a child by sweeping up, she squeals at the sight of her name in the guestbook -- "Oh look, it's me! There I am" -- in a way that feels spontaneous, and revealing. In the car on the way to the book release event, she describes her craving for a cigarette: "With me it's 40 a day or nothing."

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