Play It Again is a section of the journal where we re-publish quotes, gaffes, and immortal lines from friends and foes of tobacco control. It is compiled by Gene Borio, the webmaster of Tobacco BBS, which is the premier tobacco news-gathering site on the internet. Send contributions (including an original version or photocopy of the sourced item) to him at Tobacco BBS, PO Box 359, Village Station, New York 10014-0359; fax +1 212 260 6825. Send quotes from online stories (including the full article) or scanned documents (in GIF or JPEG) format, togborio@mindspring.com.
The tobacco control community doesn’t have addictive drugs to sell, so can’t hire US$300 000-a-year spin doctors to work our way through generation-upon-generation of focus groups, to develop just the right way to frame our arguments, to find the most apt sound bite to appeal to each particular personality, to delicately yet succinctly phrase our viewpoint in the precise way that will have the greatest impact. So we must depend on our own resources, we must share and build upon each others’ insights. In that spirit, then, a new section of “Play it again”: “Nicely put”—GB
Nicely put
NICOTINE
“[Cigarettes are] the dirtiest possible nicotine delivery system. . . . [Regulation of nicotine products is] not only an unlevel playing field, but we’re doing it exactly bass-ackwards.”
Kenneth Warner, professor of public health at the University of Michigan. Source: Levin M. The ‘Good Nicotine, Bad Nicotine’ debate. “Los Angeles Times” 1999 Feb 11.
HEALTH RESEARCH
“We’re scientists, not litigators.”
George Lucier, director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences environmental toxicology programme. A subcommittee of the national toxicology programme’s board of scientific counsellors voted unanimously (13–0) that secondhand smoke should be labelled a carcinogen. Source: Panel says secondhand smoke, alcohol should be considered carcinogens. “Winston-Salem (North Carolina) Journal” 1998 Dec …
