Smoke gets in your...

The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product That Defined America by Allan M. Brandt


My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It is difficult to find a person who has not been touched in some way by the all-encompassing reach of the tobacco industry -- from the carefully crafted marketing manipulations to the well-documented health risks associated with smoking and second hand smoke.  The cigarette has featured prominently in our culture, politics, legal system and public health debates for more than a century. 

In The Cigarette Century:  The Rise, Fall and Deadly Persistence of the Product that Defined America, Allan Brandt draws upon an exhaustive array of historical documents (i.e., secret in-house memos, court records, advertisements, government reports, scientific research, etc.) to illustrate "how the cigarette reflects the most powerful cultural and political debates of our time." 

Brandt sheds light on the tobacco industry and its masterful efforts, at the turn of the twentieth century, to capitalize on Edward Bernays's (Sigmund Freud's nephew) insights from the budding field of public relations or "the science of 'group mind' and 'herd reaction.'"

Long before the latest health insurance industry staged "town hall" fiascoes, Bernays's approach called for the manipulation of public opinion by "staging" public events that could then generate news that could be tainted to serve the self-interests of the corporation.

Under the guidance of the PR expert, the tobacco industry initiated a campaign to solicit new female smokers by planting photos and news items in local papers connecting cigarette use with women, beauty and smoking accessories. Thus, the new science of public relations delivered a fresh new group of consumers upon which to profit.

When scientific evidence, supporting a connection between cigarette smoking and disease, began to accumulate in the 1940's and 1950's, the industry shifted tactics.  Industry representatives began to raise questions about the basis for research findings that established a link between smoking and chronic illnesses like cancer.   Tobacco companies hired their own scientists to create a smokescreen that effectively hid the mounting truth about the health impact of cigarettes behind a shroud of "controversy". 

Throughout the latter part of the twentieth century, as these strategies effectively shielded the industry from accountability, tobacco executives managed to deftly dodge a variety of efforts to limit the potential harm of cigarette smoking through efforts to bring forward civil lawsuits and governmental regulation.

Even in the moment when it looked like the weight of whistle-blowers' disclosures of previously hidden documents, class action lawsuits and punitive damages would bring the industry to its knees, cigarette manufacturers demonstrated a keen persistence in "cultivating" new markets in the developing world for its deadly products.

As Brandt makes painfully clear, the tobacco industry has employed a variety of tactics to explicitly market and profit from the sale of a product that caused death and disease for millions for over a century.  They conducted this campaign largely beyond the scope of public scrutiny and government regulation.

In documenting this sinister history, Brandt has provided us with an important, well-researched and engagingly written analysis of exactly how corporate greed and power have come to take precedence over our health and well-being.

Check out this video segment of Jon Stewart's interview with Allan Brandt on The Daily Show.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Allan Brandt
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