The Tobacco Industry ran so that Big Oil, anti-vaxxers and e-cigarette makers could fly
The tobacco and carbon-based energy situations strike mas as are rather different. Without coal, no Industrial Revolution. Tobacco never provided benefits to mitigate the harms.
This story brings to mind to mind two experiences relevant to tobacco.
Already in 1957, Leon Festinger, A Theory of Cognotive Dissonance, used the known harm of tobacco products as an example of how smokers justified their bad behavior to themselves (and others). When his magnum opus was published, Festinger taught at Stanford — after stints as MIT, Michigan, and Minnesota. So, this was not some crank or an outsider crying out in the wilderness.
Some time in the 1980, a Ph.D. student in marketing took my Administrative Law course. This was a valuable experience for her, and for the law students — who obtained a different perspective on Federal Trade Commission regulation of advertising. [This worked because I understood that for Doctoral students any grade below a B+ was a disaster — and I agreed, sotto voce, to grade accordingly.]
In one of the most striking classes I ever taught, the discussion of FTC sanctions was transformed when the business student laid into the other students (and me, as well) for the foolishness of thinking that the tobacco disclosures would have any meaningful impact. Her central point was that disclosures, no matter how powerful, simply would have no serious impact on individual behavior — even among the highly educated. In short, lawyers and the FTC were fools for thinking otherwise.
And, she was correct.
Steve Huber
Professor of Law, Emeritus
University of Houston