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As a field of endeavour, as a never-ending source of intense fascination, the tobacco issue has just about everything: vast sums of money, truckloads of drugs, mass addiction, disease, untold dead, corporate malfeasance, pandemic corruption, bribery, organised crime, and high propaganda. It involves government, law, economics, big business, culture, science, medicine, ethics, the powerful new science of mass suasion, and the increasingly bald-faced purchasing of everything from governments to the media to special interest groups to even health organisations and science journal articles. Like tobacco smoke itself, its influence slithers into every corner of the globe, lacing itself into the bones and blood and sinews of every aspect of society. From the bidis in rural Indian villages—and San Diego junior high schools—to the fat cats' expensive cigars in the board rooms, halls of government, and yuppie bars, tobacco as fact and issue is everywhere. The problem is complex and ever-shifting, intractable and multi-levelled. Those with a classical, if vivid, imagination may see it as the Laocoon, the Hydra and the Gordian knot all in one, its solution as remote as the proverbial conundrum wrapped in a enigma lost in a quandary. In all these ways and more, tobacco remains a fascinating and engaging challenge. And yet, for all that, the only thing it really doesn't have is sex. Anyone will tell you, tobacco's just not a sexysubject.—GB
“John Bahnzahf [sic] [of United States Action on Smoking and Health], for example, is alleged to be involved in the porno industry. Can't we use this somehow?”
Appendix by a Philip Morris executive dated 29 March 1985 to “The perspective of PM International on smoking and health issues: text of the discussion document used at the meeting of top management” (Bates 2023268329/8337).
www.pmdocs.com/getallimg.asp?DOCID=2023268329/8337 (Accessed 5 September 1999).
Wow. What an allegation about …