Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)In this book, Pertschuk attempts to rewrite history with
himself as a hero. He also demonstrates how little he
has learned from that history. The two may be related.
Fortunately, the history is well documented; we are
not dependent on unreliable accounts of it. The key
fact is: the tobacco industry killed the McCain bill
as soon as it started to get tough on tobacco and
good for the public. 3 out of 4 members of the Congress that
killed the bill, had taken money from the tobacco industry.
So it wasn't too hard for the industry to kill a bill it
didn't like.
Pertschuk's rewrite would have us believe that victory
for public health was almost within our grasp. The
key fact is, the industry had a veto at all times,
which it didn't hesitate to use. In this battle
there was no danger at any time of public health
prevailing over industry profits. No historic
opportunity was missed; the opportunity never existed.
Not with this Congress.
On the contrary: if anything was narrowly missed,
it was a federal bailout of Big Tobacco. This
same Congress that killed a bill that was getting
too good for the public, also had the power to give
the tobacco industry a get-out-of-jail-free card:
legal immunity, special rights in court. That
was what the industry wanted, because it would
keep it safe and profitable.
This was no hypothetical danger: various forms of
immunity appeared in the McCain bill at different times.
Indeed it was without immunity in the bill that
the industry turned against the bill and killed it.
So what was missed, if anything, was a legal device
to keep Big Tobacco profitable and powerful into
the next century.
This history forms a pattern: the tobacco industry
has many times, in many states and localities, tried
to enter into closed-door, private negotiations.
The history of such closed-door deals also forms a
pattern: they turn out to protect industry profits
and do little to protect public health. Secret
negotiations with tobacco industry lawyers have
a long, sad, history: they don't tend to produce
results notably in the public interest.
It is sad that Pertschuk has not learned from
this history. It is even sadder that he attempts
to rewrite a recent instance of it. But perhaps
this is not a coincidence. Perhaps it would indeed
be difficult to write "I later realized that
I was mistaken in my approach, and that the
predictions that I differed with at the time,
were proven correct by the plain facts of history."
And perhaps we could apply Santayana here:
those who rewrite the past, surely will not learn
from it, and are then condemned to repeat it.
That would be saddest of all, because the tobacco
industry is still fighting hard to get
special rights in court. And is still a master
of closed-door negotiations. All it needs is
a couple of public health figures to endorse them.
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Smoke in Their Eyes: Lessons in Movement Leadership from the Tobacco Wars
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