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"Tobacco and Health" Expert Witness Report Filed on behalf of Plaintiffs in: "The United States of America, Plaintiff, v. Philip Morris, Inc., et al., Defendants," 

I am a Distinguished Professor of History at Pennsylvania State University in University Park, Pennsylvania, where I am also Co-director of the Science, Medicine, and Technology in Culture initiative. I have been asked to review the history of tobacco health hazards, focusing also on the history of the tobacco industry's response to evidence of a tobacco hazard. I have also been asked to respond to the February 2002 reports submitted by Kenneth Ludmerer, Theodore A. Wilson, Richard D. Thomas and Peter C. English. I will begin with some historical background, followed by a review of the discovery of tobacco hazards and the tobacco industry's response to these discoveries. I will then respond to the four reports prepared by expert witnesses for the defense.

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Tim Giago: Here's another nail in your coffin 

Most Americans, and I am sure the chief executive officers of the major tobacco manufacturing plants, knew that smoking was not good for your health more than 50 years ago. . . .

50 - 60 years ago, no one in a position of authority, not doctors or the tobacco industry, told us that smoking could cause lung cancer and other deadly illnesses. There were television shows totally sponsored by cigarette companies. . . .

Tobacco was a crop cultivated by Native Americans centuries before the arrival of the white man. It was used primarily in spiritual gathering and was smoked in a ceremonial pipe, a pipe that was misnamed "Peace Pipe" . . .

Millions of Americans got hooked on smoking when they joined the U. S. Armed Forces. When I served, I could buy a pack of cigarettes at the PX for 10 cents. . . .

I give my employees at Native Sun News a smoke break in the morning and one in the afternoon. They have to smoke outside because it is not allowed in the office. And since I have been a non-smoker for a very long time, as I see them heading out for their smoke break, I cannot help but wonder if they realize the danger they are courting or I wonder what pleasure they can get from something that may eventually kill them. It's a curious thing.

But they won't quit.

Many states now have anti-smoking laws and we seem to be moving, as a Nation, in that direction. But we are facing the same situation confronting the gun lobby: "When guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns." Can the same be said in defense of cigarettes? Here's another nail in your coffin!

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tim-giago/heres-another-nail-in-you_b_301160.html

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Woodwork handcrafts tell WNC tobacco history 

Business: New Leaf Historical Woodwork, furniture and other housewares made from the wood of Appalachian tobacco barns.

Who: Terri King, owner; Roger Shelton, master craftsman.

Headquarters: Asheville.

Offerings: Everything from picture frames and small wooden trays to tables, chests and custom furniture. Each item comes with a written history of the barn where the wood originated.

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Black Americans and Tobacco  

The onset of slavery in America can be directly linked to the beginning of tobacco production in this country. Though many factors contributed to slavery in the New World, tobacco was the main reason that slavery first flourished as an industry.

By the mid-1600s the slave trade flourished with established routes connecting North America, Africa and the West Indies. Manufactured goods were traded for African Natives; the African Natives were taken to the West Indies to be broken in before being taken to mainland North America. . . .

Tobacco companies began advertising in Black newspapers and magazines in the 1940s, when typically they would profile prominent African Americans in their ads. To lure more African Americans to smoke, the tobacco industry would combine images with remarkable claims in their advertising. In one Lucky Strike ad, gold medal Olympian Jesse Owens states, “I smoke Luckies. So do Mrs. Owens and my eldest daughter. To all of us, Luckies taste better.”iv

In the 1930s, menthol brands were introduced, and by the 1960 it was clear to tobacco companies that menthol brand popularity was due to Black Americans consumption of menthol cigarettes. . . .

What can be done? Know your personal and cultural history. Tobacco production has exploited African American people. You can also plan to attend the training program, Follow the Signs II to learn more about the impact of Big Tobacco in Black communities and what you can do about it. This training is designed for Denver area youth and community leaders. If you use tobacco stop! Also support others who desire to stop using tobacco because the struggle isn’t theirs, it’s ours.

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Report: ‘Death panels’ author worked with big tobacco to scuttle health reform 

The person credited with inventing the "death panels" claim about health care reform worked with tobacco giant Phillip Morris to railroad health care reform in the Clinton administration, Rolling Stone magazine reports.

In an article in the magazine's October 1 issue, not yet available online, writer Tim Dickinson reveals that Phillip Morris "worked off-the-record with … writer Betsy McCaughey as part of the input to the three-part expose in The New Republic on what the Clinton plan means," Rolling Stone reports.

McCaughey, a conservative columnist and former deputy governor of New York, penned a 1994 article in The New Republic that was credited with helping to kill the Clinton-era health reforms. As RS noted, the magazine later retracted the story. And The Atlantic magazine ran a story in 1995, entitled "A Triumph of Misinformation," debunking McCaughey's arguments at TNR.

Now McCaughey appears to be playing a pivotal role in efforts to shut down this year's health reform efforts.

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'Death Panel' Inventor & Critic of Healthcare Reform Betsy McCaughey 'Has Close Ties' to Philip Morris; Healthcare Industry Today Offers Complete Coverage 

According to the Web site Raw Story, Rolling Stone Magazine is about to reveal that during the Clinton administration Philip Morris "worked off-the-record with . . . writer Betsy McCaughey" to help derail health care reform which would have been partly funded by a huge increase in tobacco taxes.

McCaughey is also credited with inventing the term "death panels" used by anti-healthcare reform activists determined to scuttle Barack Obama's reform plans.

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• Rolling Stone Finds A Smoking Gun: Betsy McCaughey Lied About Healthcare Reform For Tobacco Lobby  

McCaughey's lies were later debunked in a 1995 post-mortem in The Atlantic, and The New Republic recanted the piece in 2006. But what has not been reported until now is that McCaughey's writing was influenced by Phillip Morris, the world's largest tobacco company, as part of a secret campaign to scuttle Clinton's health care reform. (The measure would have been funded by a huge increase in tobacco taxes.) In an internal company memo from March 1994, the tobacco giant detailed its strategy to derail Hillarycare through an alliance with conservative think tanks, front groups and media outlets. Integral to the company's strategy, the memo observed, was an effort to "work on the development of favorable pieces" with "friendly contacts in the media." The memo, prepared by a Phillip Morris executive, mentions only one author by name:

"Worked off-the-record with Manhattan [Editor's note: At the time, McCaughey was a fellow at the Manhattan Institute] and writer Betsy McCaughey as part of the input to the three-part expose in The New Republic on what the Clinton plan means to you. The first part detailed specifics of the plan."

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LAWSON: Lost in the clouds 

A quiz question: what is the link between ex-President Jacques Chirac, the composer Rachmaninov and interviewer Lynn Barber? If this were a picture round, you'd get it immediately, from the little angled strip of white on their hand. The answer is that attempts have been made to ban photographs of them on the grounds that they were shown smoking.

The publication of Chirac's latest volume of memoirs has mysteriously been delayed, allegedly because of concerns over a dustjacket image which shows him having a puff. . . .

Apart from the authorities in Richmond, Britain seems more relaxed on this issue than the US or France. The cover of Professor John Carey's biography of William Golding shows the author of the Lord of the Flies indulging in a practice now almost as frowned upon as torturing small boys on desert islands.

It would have been difficult, though, for the publisher's picture researchers to avoid depicting the author in the grip of the solitary vice because, until around the 1990s, writers were as likely to have a cloud of smoke above their heads as saints to wear a halo on holy icons. This seems to have been particularly the case with dramatists. My shelves of play-texts show Pinter, Stoppard, Osborne, Coward, Rattigan and Tennessee Williams all dripping ash above their desks. A Martian looking at these books might conclude that scripts were written with a special burning stick.

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Tobacco Barn Photography Exhibit To Open To Public 

After a successful by invitation only private showing, a photography exhibit featuring the work of Benton Henry will open to the public this week.

On Friday June 26th at 5:00 pm at the Latta Art Center, Black Creek Arts Council and the Latta Revitalization Commission will be sponsoring an opening reception for Tobacco Barns of the Pee Dee.

The exhibit, featuring photographs by Latta’s Benton Henry, will remain on display through the end of August. Admission to the opening is free.

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Remember When: Tobacco market brings in record prices 

75 YEARS AGO From the Greensboro Daily News, Sept. 20-26, 1934

The Reidsville tobacco market had spirited bidding for the good grades and strong prices for inferior grades, and consequently ended up with the best prices in the history of the market, ending the day well above $30 per hundredweight.

Rockingham County's other two markets on the Old Belt of North Carolina and Virginia didn't do badly either, with Stoneville finishing the day with an average estimated at $28 to $30 for approximately 120,000 pounds and Madison selling 175,000 pounds at an estimated average of $27.30.

• 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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The man who invented exercise 

In the early years after the second world war, health researchers in Britain noticed a curious epidemic: people had begun dying of heart attacks in unprecedented numbers. Nobody knew why, and so a scientist in London named Jerry Morris set up a vast study to examine the heart-attack rates in people of different occupations – schoolteachers, postmen, transport workers and more.

Morris is today a neat, bird-like man who uses a cane to get around. He turns 100 next May but still regularly makes his way to his poky little office at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. It is here that he describes the day he saw the data that changed medicine. “The very first results we got were from the London busmen,” says Morris, in Glaswegian tones undimmed by seven-odd decades in London. “And there was a striking difference in the heart-attack rate. The drivers of these double-decker buses had substantially more, age for age, than the conductors.” . . .

Morris’s political hero, Nye Bevan, created the National Health Service, the world’s first completely free healthcare system. And what epidemiology there was in the world was led by Britain. In 1950, another London health researcher, Richard Doll, published a study showing that smoking – and not Tarmac or car fumes, as many had suspected – was causing the new epidemic of lung cancer. . . .

Even in the 1950s, Morris foresaw that when poor countries developed, they would have the same problems. He remembers warning then: “Their time will come to develop these diseases, and not to make the mistakes that we made, eg a lack of exercise, eg smoking, eg our lousy diets. Of course, nobody paid any attention.” . . .

Because the civil servants in his study were middle-class British males, 91 per cent were gardeners. “It’s what keeps us sane,” they repeatedly told Morris’s team. Morris had thought gardening would protect them from heart disease. It turned out not to. Only vigorous exercise, such as swimming or playing football, was enough.

These findings were made in an era when many British adults got no exercise beyond lighting cigarettes. Morris, however, applied all the new epidemiological findings to himself. Long a “stress smoker”, he read Doll’s studies and quit cigarettes even before Iain Macleod, the health minister, held the famous press conference in which he confirmed Doll’s findings while chain-smoking throughout. Morris also began to jog. “I was the first person to run on Hampstead Heath, in the 1960s.

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RICHARDS: Fairbanks guests clear the air with old-time smoke stories 

Most guests are aware of the no-smoking policy prior to making reservations, but occasionally someone arrives who is a smoker. Such was the case for Kim. Kim was a polite smoker and went outside to smoke no matter the time of day, the weather or the smoke from the fires. One morning after breakfast, Kim scooted out for her after-breakfast smoke. She came back inside with a pack of cigarettes in her hand and rejoined the table group for a second cup of what she referred to as “Mary’s brown water.” Along with her cigarettes, Kim liked the spoon to stand up straight in her coffee.

One of the guests at the breakfast table mentioned to Kim that he was a former smoker.

An employee commented about third-hand smoke, which was a new term to me. She explained that third-hand smoke was under discussion as possibly being hazardous to your health. As a new mom up on such things, she said it was the odor or smoke saturation on clothes, car seats, furniture and carpets.

These simple statements led to other guests joining in with their own smoking tales. As those of us know who grew up during the 1960s and the ’70s, not only did everyone smoke but you could smoke anywhere. Even my high school had a smoking rink for students bold enough to use it. I never know where the table talk will lead, but that particular morning it led to amusement for all. . . .

Part of Richard’s training was with a doctor in the emergency room who was a chain smoker. This fellow had a standing order for the staff that when a patient was put on a gurney there should be an ashtray placed between the patient’s legs so he would always have one nearby.

He said the emergency room was well stocked with old beanbag-style ashtrays that would not tip over. Seems the only thing he ever got into trouble for during his ER rotation was removing an ashtray.

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Veteran ad exec says 'Mad Men' really were about sex, booze  

AMC cable TV drama Mad Men-- a critics' favorite that recently opened its third season to its largest audience ever -- depicts a hard-drinking, chain-smoking, casual-sex-in-the-office lifestyle for top ad agency executives in the 1960s. How much of this is made-for-TV embellishment -- and how much is real?

USA TODAY marketing reporter Bruce Horovitz took that question to Jerry Della Femina, the veteran ad exec widely regarded as one of Madison Avenue's biggest personalities, most creative thinkers and an over-the-top publicity-seeker. At 73, Della Femina is still a force in the ad biz. . . .

Q: Did agency executives really smoke that much?

A: I smoked three to four packs a day. Everybody smoked at all times in all meetings. Once, when I was sitting in a meeting for the Contac account, I had a (lit) cigarette in my hand and another in the ashtray. When I put down the cigarette to do a chalk talk, I tried to light the piece of chalk.

Q: Was some of that smoking to kiss up to tobacco company clients?

A: We had two R.J. Reynolds brands (Winston Super Kings and Carter Hall pipe tobacco). The R.J. Reynolds guys would get off the elevator on our floor where we had two of those tall ashtrays filled with sand. The RJR guys would claw through the sand to see if there were butts from any other brands. These were executives. They wanted to know what our people were smoking.

Q: Did those clients smoke?

A: One time I went to visit RJR in Winston-Salem (N.C.). They hosted a big party at some country club, and they had a giant dance floor with everyone milling about. I walked up to the balcony and looked down and noticed that everyone was holding a cigarette -- all the clients and all of their wives. But something wasn't right. I noticed that none of the cigarettes were lit. They were simply holding them. They believed the statistics.

Q: Do you still smoke?

A: I haven't touched a cigarette in 20 years. I have heavy allergies and developed asthma. The doctor said if I touched another cigarette, I'd die.

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WARNER: Why pretend the past was cigarette-free?  

Send for the Sanity Inspector - quickly. There is work for him among the denizens of Liverpool city council. The council is proposing to use its powers to upgrade to an 18-certificate the classification of films "if they depict images of tobacco smoking", in order to protect the vulnerable youth of Merseyside from exposure to such depravity. . . .

Accepting the axiom that what Liverpool city council proposes today, the world implements tomorrow, we must come to terms with the prospect that this is just the beginning of a new age in cinema. For political correctness is never a static force; it seeks always to break new ground. Assuming young cinema-goers are successfully kept from exposure to smoking, the next logical step would be to extend this protection to over-18s as well.

Tentative moves have already been made towards a more broad-based censorship. In Paris, the cigarette was removed from a picture of Jean-Paul Sartre on a poster from an exhibition. Sartre, when asked what was the most important thing in his life, replied: "I don't know. Everything. Living. Smoking." Posthumously, he has managed to give up the latter. In a more directly Liverpudlian context, Paul McCartney's cigarette was excised on US posters of the cover of Abbey Road.

The really exciting thing about such initiatives is that they represent the first, cautious moves towards rewriting history - towards creating an alternative past that is more palatable to the promoters of political correctness To some extent, things are already moving that way, for example when we hear a powdered 18th-century aristocrat in a television period drama referring to "the under-privileged". Such anachronisms are attributable to the increasing historical illiteracy of scriptwriters; but why not harness ignorance to progress?

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