SLOW BURN: The Great American Antismoking Scam
By Don Oakley
Eyrie Press, $15.95, 600 ppAs Benjamin Disraeli observed, there are lies, damned lies and statistics.
Upon this premise does Don Oakley, an unrepentant smoker for over a half-century, build his challenge to the antismoking movement, which he brands a "dishonest crusade" that has contributed mightily to the decline of civility and the erosion of personal freedoms in late 20th-century America. Hey, he's got a point.
The book, heavily annotated and sporting copious asides, opens with the publication of Luther Terry's 1964 Surgeon General's Report and offers a 35-year history of-and spirited responses to-numerous subsequent studies concerning the dangers of cigarettes to smokers and to those who consort with them.
While ostensibly not making a case for smoking per se but rather addressing the furor over environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), Oakley maintains that, although not a single study demonstrates a link between ETS and health risks, the public considers sidestream smoke a "given" cause of cancer, heart disease and all manner of ills, both physical and social. He blames a suspension of journalistic skepticism, charging that reporters have swallowed the party line whole. And he has no kind words for C. Everett Koop, former FDA chief David Kessler or the ubiquitous Ralph Nader, either.
Thanks to skewed science and avaricious attorneys, says Oakley, we have become a nation of crybabies, seeking retribution for life's little curve balls anywhere we can. Hot coffee on your crotch? Sue McDonald's! Don't like your new hooters? Go after Dow Corning! A Texas woman just won $23 million from Wyeth Ayerst after alleging that her heart ailment was caused by the diet drug fenphen. And smoking has now replaced accusations of child abuse as the armament of choice in divorce-court spite-fights over parental custody.
The cigarette litigation, still being "adjusted" in various states and sure to enrich only the lawyers, already amounts to hundreds of billions of dollars that will eventually be paid by smokers, in the form of elevated prices. But if you think it is only a tobacco issue, start with Chapter 6 and kiss your notion of a free country goodbye.
Reviewed by Peggy Barber
PEGGY BARBER, Barron's copy editor, is a smoker
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