SMOKE UP OR THE TERRORISTS WIN: Why cigarettes are good for America
One of the weird things about being a novelist is that it makes you an accidental expert in all kinds of useless areas. A while back I spent a year writing a book about the tobacco industry and to this day, I can’t help picking apart every article I see on the subject.
The main thing I learned about tobacco is that the conventional wisdom is almost always BS—just a product of the push and pull between propagandists on both sides. The truth is that the history of tobacco and the history of America are hopelessly intertwined. This country began as a social experiment financed almost entirely by tobacco exports.
Unfortunately, it turned out that all our puffing wasn’t as harmless as it was made out to be. This wouldn’t have surprised even Christopher Columbus, who, five hundred years ago (and without so much as a single PhD) wrote about the addictive properties of tobacco. As for the health benefits of drawing hot smoke into your lungs, let’s just say there’s a reason they don’t tell you to stand tall and take deep breaths when your house is on fire.
The widespread acceptance of these painfully obvious facts has caused Big Tobacco to go from being one of the most respected industries in the country to being the poster child for corporate evil. Of course, much of this is well deserved. When information about the dangers of smoking began to surface, the industry did everything possible to suppress it. But even with a clientele desperately wanting to believe, no amount of denial and equivocation could continue to conceal tobacco’s staggering death toll.
Cigarettes aren’t the only dangerous product being marketed to us, though. Consider that other American oral icon, the doughnut. Obesity has become a national epidemic and the seriousness of the associated diseases are enough to make you start using cigarettes to suppress your appetite. While young adult smoking rates remain relatively stable, the occurrence of diabetes increased seventy percent between 1990 and 1998. Children are also being victimized, bringing into question whether Cap’n Crunch may someday be remembered as a more ruthless killer than Blackbeard.
Setting aside the carnage resulting from poor health habits for a second, consider the economic costs of smoking. Is this country really being forced to pony up billions of dollars to cover smokers’ inflated health care bills? The answer is probably not. While tobacco’s opponents are quick to point out that smokers die ten years younger than non-smokers, they are slow to credit back the sunny side of that statistic. A study prepared for the National Bureau of Economic Research concluded that the savings to social security, elderly care, and pensions actually creates a net surplus of fourteen cents for every pack sold.
It gets better. Tobacco is the most heavily taxed consumer product in the world. In fact, a tobacco attorney I interviewed for my book considers the U.S. a majority partner in the tobacco business because the government collects as much as a few dollars per pack while the companies themselves have to settle for the scraps. When you include taxes and the payments related to the $247 billion settlement with the states, it could be argued that it’s your patriotic duty to smoke. The more the better.
Of course, none of this has been lost on tobacco executives. Battles over tax increases generally meet only half-hearted resistance. If there is one thing industry strategists understand, it’s promoting dependency. The more reliant the government becomes on tobacco taxes, the less likely it will be to do anything meaningful to curb smoking.
This long and divisive history has left America’s relationship with tobacco completely dysfunctional. Beyond occasional increases in taxes and the uncoordinated banning of smoking in public areas, we seem content to let the courts take the lead in making decisions about whether we’re going to continue to be able to light up. Is that really a good idea? Beyond the lawyers who have collected billions in fees, who benefits from all this legal wrangling? Should we leave public policy decisions to twelve unelected people sitting in a jury box? Do we give up a little bit of our freedom every time we ask to be protected from ourselves?
The question we need to ponder is whether we feel comfortable living in a country where it’s legal to produce, market, and use unhealthy—even deadly—products. If the answer is yes, then each of us needs to carefully weigh the benefits and risks associated with smoking and take responsibility for our decisions. If the answer is no, then we need to pressure our representatives in the government to ban tobacco products entirely and bear the economic consequences. In the end, we can’t have it both ways.