In The Land Of The Smoke Drinkers

Abstract

When European explorers set foot on the shores of the “new world” in the fifteenth century, they took great fascination in observing the natives igniting rolled-up dried leaves and then “drinking” the smoke.1 The explorers returned to Europe with tobacco plants, and the odd behavior rapidly took hold throughout the continent, although not without opposition or controversy.2 Indeed, with the exception of its origins in the Americas, controversy has always accompanied the use of tobacco. For example, in 1633, Turkish Sultan Murad IV implemented what is likely the world’s most draconian tobacco control policy, one that demonstrated conclusively that smoking was a health hazard: He declared the use of tobacco punishable by death and reportedly executed smokers daily.3 The fact that smoking persisted, and indeed flourished, in spite of such policies speaks volumes about the seductiveness and tenacity of the behavior. All species, save one, instinctively flee from smoke. Humans choose to suck it into their lungs, at the peril of death. Over the past century, the U.S. citizenry has done so with particular zeal. As Allan Brandt demonstrates, Americans have been aided and abetted by an equally zealous tobacco industry. Brandt, a professor of the history of medicine and science at Harvard University, devoted a fifth of the cigarette century to the evolution of this book. Although the book’s focus never wanders from the tobacco story per se, Brandt effectively guides the reader through the multiple impacts that this story has had on America writ large. For example, he explains how research on smoking and lung cancer helped define the field of epidemiology and, more broadly, redefine the nature of medical evidence. He elucidates the central role of tobacco in the development of the modern advertising and public relations industries and in the process shows us the myriad techniques an industry uses to manipulate the nation’s cultural life. He demonstrates the grip of special interests on Congress through the lens of one of the most powerful of those groups. And he critiques the use and intentional distortion of science to serve the ends of a greed-infested corporate interest. Brandt divides his thirteen chapters into five sections: culture, science, politics, law, and globalization. Each theme is covered in detail, and each is graced with a mellifluous writing style that makes the detail that much more accessible. The political story is perhaps too big to be relegated to a mere three chapters; fortunately, the interested reader can consult a wealth of writings on the subject, many referenced in the book. (The book’s prodigious referencing is itself a contribution, with seventytwo pages of small-font sources for the hopelessly addicted.) Brandt does justice to the still-emerging story on the globalization of the tobacco pandemic, but we will have to await future historians’ assessment of what is undoubtedly one of the most important public health stories of the twenty-first century. Ironically, while The Cigarette Century covers