Agricultural Politics of Drug Policy

Panel Proposal for 2009 Drug Policy Alliance International Conference

Harvey Wiley

Agricultural policies gave forth the existing drug control regimen; this dates back to its milestone of the 1906 U.S. Pure Foods and Drugs Act granting the Bureau of Chemistry of the United States Department of Agriculture (U.S.D.A.) the power to ban a substance from interstate commerce via declaring an ingredient as deleterious to health, and of limiting its jurisdiction to substances within the U.S. Pharmacopoeia from which Tobacco was conveniently dropped 1 year earlier in 1905.

Since the U.S.D.A. was established to promote agricultural commodities, its empowerment would have severely unappreciated detriments regarding the market protection of the most intrinsically toxic yet domestic agricultural commodity of Tobacco from the foreign 'menace' of least toxic Coca.

With the public health thus beneath mercantilism, the consequences have been thus severe for numerous people, entities and interests.

Potential Speakers:

Sharon Y. Eubanks , former prosecutor for the U.S. Department of Justice, and the lead prosecutor for a R.I.C.O. act suit against the major cigarette companies by the U.S. department of justice, who in 2005 resigned in response to the Bush administration’s commands to reduce the proposed settlement by 90%. She gave interviews to CBS about this.

http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/06/bush-administration-accused-of-rigging.html

Marialuisa S. Gallozzi is a food, drug and insurance company attorney. Since 1987 she has been with the Washington, D.C. law firm Covington and Burling, long established with food and drug law. In 1988, she was assigned “primary responsibility for advising the [Drug Policy] foundation” according to a letter dated March 1990 appearing in the 1988-1990 Biennial Report of the Drug Policy Foundation (a reform organization) by its Presidents Dr. Arnold S. Trebach and Kevin Zeese, crediting her with giving them valuable advice.

http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/03/drug-policy-foundation-advised-by-c.html
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/03/drug-policy-foundation-legal-connection.html

Her activities include that upon GMO plant made pharmaceuticals, as a panelist of “Perils and Pitfalls of Plant Based Pharmaceuticals” with her paper “The U.S. Food Industry’s View of Plant Based Pharmaceuticals”, viewable here.

Her published papers include "Inactive Ingredients in Over-the-Counter Drug Products," Regulatory Affairs FOCUS magazine (August 2002).

She is prominent within insurance law, so described as:

Rising star Marialuisa Gallozzi enters the tables in recognition of her vast experience in asbestos, silica, pharmaceutical and other coverage claims, in addition to insurer insolvencies. Described as “an expert on London insolvency matters and schemes of arrangement,” she works with US, Bermuda and London market insurers and captive insurers. Peers consider her “an intellectually strong negotiator and adviser with excellent judgment.”

2008 DPA's Nadelman on Biden

Ethan Nadelman

http://www.drugpolicy.org/news/pressroom/pressrelease/pr082708.cfm

“Sen. Joe Biden is unquestionably one of the chief architects of the modern war on drugs, but is also an unlikely ally in many important fights. He has been at the center of many of our national campaigns; perhaps more so than any other Senator.

“Earlier this year, Sen. Biden surprised many by introducing legislation, co-sponsored by Sen. Hillary Clinton, to completely eliminate the 100-to-1 crack/powder cocaine sentencing disparity, leapfrogging more modest reforms put forth by Senators Kennedy, Hatch, Sessions and others. Like many members of Congress, he voted for the legislation in the 1980s that created the disparity. Unlike most though, Sen. Biden has the guts and humility to admit he was wrong.

“Sen. Biden’s groundbreaking bill has seven co-sponsors, including Sen. Obama. It is a sign of how politically popular drug policy reform has become among voters that a major presidential candidate not only co-sponsors a reform bill but nominates the bill’s sponsor as his running mate. That Sen. Biden is willing to be on the same ticket with Sen. Obama, who has indicated he understands the war on drugs isn’t working and called for a new paradigm, may be evidence that his views on drug policy are shifting.

“Sen. Biden has been a strong supporter of treatment and prevention. For instance, he helped write the Drug Addiction Treatment Act, which makes it easier for doctors to prescribe buprenorphine and other replacement medication from their offices rather than special treatment clinics. He was one of only five Senators to vote against confirming President Bush’s drug czar, John Walters, who has a history of short-changing treatment.

“On the other hand, Sen. Biden played a major role in enacting the draconian mandatory minimum sentences, in the 1980s, which have filled our prisons with nonviolent drug law offenders. And he sponsored the law creating the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), giving Bill Bennett and other drug war extremists a national stage and increased power. More recently, he passed the RAVE Act, which makes it easier for the government to prosecute bar and nightclub owners for the drug law offenses of their customers.

“The Drug Policy Alliance Network’s relationship with Sen. Biden has certainly been rocky. No matter who wins the White House in November or what positions they take, we’ll keep fighting for drug policies that are grounded in science, compassion, health and human rights. We’ll thank policymakers when they’re right and criticize them when they’re wrong.”

1987 Cig Ind Legal Coordination

The Cigarette Century p 297

By the late 1980s, the tobacco companies recognized that second hand smoke posed a potentially life-threatening risk- to the industry. As John Rupp, a lawyer at Covington & Burling working on tobacco accounts, put it, “we are in deep shit.” Rupp was speaking at a 1987 conference for Phillip Moris’s Project Down Under, organized to devise new strategies to address the threat. 66 Attendees continued to hope for ways to upend the research implicating second hand smoke as a serious health risk. Minutes from the meeting reported, “A scientific battle was lost with the Surgeon General’s 1986 Report. Is there any way of showing the Surgeon General is wrong?” 67 Even as the gathered executives recognized that they were loosing the battle of public perceptions, they understood that they still had considerable advantages in resources and power.”

1964+ Cig Ind Legal Coordination

The Cigarette Century pp 252 – 253

The Policy Committee began as a group of industry lawyers who met to plot the industry’s response to the expected regulatory effort. In late 1963, as the Surgeon General’s Advisory Committee was finishing its report, the committee met almost daily, mapping strategies to deflect any potential regulatory initiatives, especially those that required warning labels on packages and advertisements. Evaluating every possible contingency, they drafted testimony witnesses for legislative hearings. 46 Chaired by R.J. Reynolds’s Henry Williamson, Fred Hass from Liggett & Myers, and Cy Hetsko from American Tobacco, as well as representatives from Lorillard and Philip Moris. “This Committee is extremely powerful; it determines the high policy of the industry on all smoking or health matters – research and public relations matters, for example, as well as legal matters – and it reports directly to the presidents,” explained the two industry representatives from Great Britain. 47

The industry understood that the situation demanded unity. Even as companies competed sharply for market share and pushed the boundaries of health claims, they were committed to presenting a seamless front on science, policy and law. In a February 1964 meeting the executives agreed to appoint a single spokesman to respond to the FTC regulators. “Counsel were in agreement that if representatives of individual companies were to make a presentation to the FTC, they might be faced with embarrassing questions as to particular advertising and that conflicting statements as to the proposed Trade Regulation Rules might be voiced.” As a result they agreed to rely upon attorney Thomas Austern of Covington & Burling to speak for them all. He “would be best able to ‘field’ these questions, to plead ignorance to ads, etc. 46

Tobacco's Relative Toll

The banality of tobacco deaths
http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/11/1/1

Thrift, thrift, Horatio! The funeral baked meats
Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables

William Shakespeare,
Hamlet, Act I, Scene II

The king dies and his son Hamlet mourns. Hamlet's grief is increased by his mother's unseemly haste to marry her late husband's brother. She has calculated too coldly. Health advocates are not evil plotters, but their motives and actions have sometimes been likened to those of Queen Gertrude and King Claudius. The question arises: should they profit from tragedy? And can the tobacco control community appropriate dramatic images for its denormalisation campaigns and not alienate the public?

The 11 September attacks in New York and Washington, and the subsequent anthrax scare, have provided twin lessons in the perils and possibilities of tragedy. The bonds of faith, family, and community can be shattered or strengthened in suffering's wake. In similar fashion, tobacco control advocates' messages can be emboldened, weakened or even repudiated by their proximity to disaster.

Tobacco control has had the dismal luxury of unimaginably "great" statistics to make its case. Globally, an estimated four million people die each year from tobacco related illness,¹ compared to 2.7 million from malaria,² and 2.8 million from AIDS.³ After deaths from malnutrition (5.9 million in 1990)¹ and violence and injury (5.8 million),⁴ tobacco claims more deaths than any other single cause. Between 1950 and 2000, it was estimated that smoking caused about 62 million deaths in developed countries (12.5 % of all deaths: 20% of male deaths and 4% of female deaths). More than half of these deaths (38 million) will have occurred at ages 35–69 years. Currently, smoking is the cause of more than one in three (36%) male deaths in middle age, and about one in eight (13%) of female deaths. Each smoker who dies in this age group loses, on average, 22 years of life compared with average life expectancy.⁵ By 2020, the World Health Organization estimates that "the burden of disease attributable to tobacco will outweigh that caused by any single disease".⁶

Those are numbers, well, to die for, but they fail to create a sense of urgency in the media, nor among policymakers and the public. As Joseph Stalin argued: "A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths are a statistic." Beatle George Harrison's death on 29 November 2001 from smoking induced cancer was noted as much as if he had died from any other cause, despite losing more than 20 years off the average life expectancy of a 58 year old man (fig 1). Indeed the ABC network in the USA went so far as to note that unlike many other rock stars (Hendrix, Joplin, Morrison) Harrison had died of "natural causes". Eighteen years ago, Alan Blum reflected on community and political complacency about tobacco's death toll in an editorial titled "If smoking killed baby seals . . .".⁷ Smokers are not, by and large, cuddly little things with plaintive round eyes. Their deaths, by cancer, heart disease and respiratory distress, tend to be quietly painful affairs, remarked only by those who knew and loved them.

Figure 1 Former Beatle George Harrison, who died 29 November 2001 from tobacco induced cancer. Photograph: Jane Brown, Camera Press, London

Tobacco control advocates have long tried to make smoking statistics resonate with a public numbed by endless quantification rhetoric advanced by myriad interest groups. Annual tobacco deaths in different nations have been routinely compared with deaths from so many jumbo jet crashes, the loss of football stadium crowds, and the obliteration of entire medium sized cities. Conferences and shopping centres display digital death clocks for tobacco where audiences and shoppers transfix on the ever mounting toll.

But, for all this, community concern about health problems can reach its zenith over low probability threats that barely rate an asterisk on national cause-of-death tables. Risk communication research shows that exotic, involuntary, catastrophic, and sudden risks strike fear into the heart far easier than chronic, day-in-day-out dangers like smoking ⁸. Folk wisdom tells us that a small sum spent on prevention is worth a fortune spent on cures, but cancer charities know which emphasis will see larger banknotes flow into collection buckets. Governments, with eyes firmly trained on the next electoral cycle, continue to give budgetary priority to acute health problems. Politicians wish to cast themselves in rescue fantasies where grateful patients and their families form the backdrop to photo opportunities. And the news media are generally happy to perpetuate these myopic myths. One person killed after ingesting the contents of a contaminated tin of food can be more newsworthy than 4 million dying the world over, each and every year, from consuming tobacco products off bought off the same store shelves.

Alan Moir's telling cartoon (fig 2), published in the Sydney Morning Herald in the first days of the anthrax mailings in the USA, shows a group of smokers reading the banner coverage of a single death attributed to anthrax. As we go to press, five people have died as a result of anthrax inhalation. Figure 3 shows an anti-smoking poster plainly appropriating the New York twin towers outrage. Accompanied by a simple call for "No more killing", two upturned cigarettes burn in the shape of the World Trade Center before their collapse. Produced in Hong Kong by graphic artist Michael Miller Yu and designer Eric Chan, tobacco control groups there and elsewhere refused to endorse it, branding it as gratuitous, "cheap, sensationalist and 100 per cent exploitative".⁹ Hong Kong Council on Smoking and Health (COSH) chair Professor Tony Hedley, with an understandable eye toward such sentiments, said, "we want people to look at tobacco deaths on their own merits".¹⁰
However just three weeks later former US Surgeon-General C Everett Koop translated tobacco's toll into a "Trade Tower fiasco" equation.¹¹ There is a saying that tragedy plus time equals comedy. Hitler was not the best subject for comedy right after the second world war, but the Third Reich eventually became the subject of the movie and stage comedy, The Producers, and an American TV sit-com, Hogan's Heroes. Perhaps Dr Koop has signalled that the time for a changed sensitivity about terrorism versus tobacco has come already. It is a journalistic maxim to declare that "if it bleeds, it leads". Tobacco control advocates don't have the sanguinary "luxury" of bold headlines to make their case, but they are not evil plotters. Their cause is relatively simple: smoking kills an obscenely large number of people, about half in middle age. But while smoking kills in large numbers, it does so one quiet, private death at a time. A single jumbo jet crash that kills 300 people makes the front pages for days. The Towers' collapse and anthrax deaths have created a climate of fear that will forever mark the generations that have been through it "live". The "excess mortality" deaths of 300, 3000, or 30 000 tobacco users go relatively unnoticed, except by the smokers' grieving relatives. Hannah Arendt wrote of the banality of evil among the very "ordinary" men who perpetrated the Nazi atrocities.¹² Tobacco deaths have their own banality in desperate need of redefinition so that communities may become outraged in the face of industry misconduct and government inaction.

Whatever we think of the tobacco industry, it would be unfair to claim that, like terrorists, they hope their victims will die. However, the industry certainly knows that up to 50% of its users will, in fact, die as a result of using its products. It has spent decades knowingly and falsely reassuring smokers that they should not worry too much about "statistics" while also opposing every serious tobacco control measure in all global jurisdictions. This is not called terrorism, because the tobacco industry does not intend to strike fear and horror into people's hearts. But its behaviour is undeniably, appallingly criminal, on both the corporate and individual levels.

The tobacco industry does not slow its rapacious campaigns to recruit and sustain its customer base, and the resistance may need to be just as muscular. From Australia's aorta TV ad (see image at http://www.quitnow.info.au/) to Canada's diseased gums package warning label, it's already taken some loud, even shocking images ¹³ to steal a march on the industry. There is a constant need to be forcefully creative, while avoiding insensitivity.

The Twin Towers have fallen, the clean up continues. The anthrax spores leave the mail system, but the investigation proceeds. And tobacco's toll grows higher, but the battle against the industry progresses slowly and fitfully. "It is estimated that one person dies every 8 seconds from smoking", reads the fine print on the Hong Kong poster. Can any presentation of that message be more shocking than the number itself?

Economic Facts about U.S. Tobacco

Economic Facts about U.S. Tobacco Use and Tobacco Production
(updated July 2007)
http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/economics/economic_facts.htm

• An estimated 371 billion cigarettes were consumed in the United States in 2006,¹ and cigarettes account for more than 90 percent of expenditures on all tobacco products in this country.² Total United States expenditures on tobacco were estimated to be $88.8 billion in 2005,² of which $82 billion were spent on cigarettes.²
• Five cigarette companies accounted for more than 90% of all sales in the United States in 2005.³ They were Altria Group Inc. [Philip Morris USA] (49.2%), Reynolds American Inc. (27.8%), Lorillard (9.7%), Commonwealth Brands (3.7%), and Liggett (2.4%).³
• Total reported company revenue for the five largest cigarette companies were as follows: Altria Group Inc. (parent company of Philip Morris USA), $10.4 billion [2005]; Reynolds American Inc., $1.2 billion [2006]; Loews Corporation (parent company of Carolina Group which owns Lorillard), $2.49 billion [2006]; Houchens Industries (parent company of Commonwealth Brands), $2.36 billion [2005]; and Vector Group Ltd. (parent company of Liggett), $52.4 million [2005].⁴ Altria Group Inc. was ranked 20th, Loews 145th, and Reynolds American Inc. 280th, on the Fortune 500 list of the largest corporations in the United States in 2006.⁴
• In 2005, cigarette companies spent $13.11 billion on advertising and promotion, down from $15.12 billion in 2003,⁵ but nearly double what was spent in 1998.⁵ This amounted to more than $36 million per day,⁵ more than $45 for every person in the United States,^5,6 and more than $290 for each U.S. adult smoker.^{5, 7}
• Tobacco is grown in 21 states.⁸ The largest tobacco producing states are Kentucky and North Carolina, accounting for two-thirds of tobacco grown in the United States.⁸ The number of tobacco-growing farms declined from 512,000 in 1954 to approximately 57,000 in 2002.⁹
• United States Tobacco, Conwood, and Swedish Match are the largest smokeless tobacco companies in the United States, accounting for nearly 90% of total sales.¹⁰ Altadis USA and Swisher International Inc. are the largest cigar companies, accounting for about 60% of total United States sales of large cigars, cigarillos, and little cigars.¹¹
• Consumers in the United States spend about $2.61billion on smokeless tobacco products¹² and more than $1 billion on cigars each year.¹¹

Economic Costs and Years of Potential Life Lost Associated with Cigarette Smoking

• For 1997–2001, cigarette smoking was estimated to be responsible for $167 billion in annual health-related economic losses in the United States ($75 billion in direct medical costs, and $92 billion in lost productivity),¹³ or about $3,561 per adult smoker.^14,15,16
• The total economic costs associated with cigarette smoking are estimated at $7.18 per pack of cigarettes sold in the United States.¹⁷
• Cigarette smoking results in 5.5 million years of potential life lost in the United States annually.¹³

References

1. Tobacco Outlook. Harvest Intentions for 2007-Crop Tobacco Advance 2 Percent..(PDF–278KB) Market and Trade Economics Division, Economic Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, April 2007, TBS—262 [cited 2007 Apr 26]. Available from: http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/ers/TBS//2000s/2007/TBS-04-24-2007.pdf.
2. Capehart, Tom. Expenditures for Tobacco Products and Disposable Personal Income, 1989–2005. Compiled from reports of the Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis. [cited 2007 Mar 13]. Available from: http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/Archive/Tobacco/.
3. Maxwell JC. The Maxwell Report. Year End & Fourth Quarter 2006 Sales Estimates for the Cigarette Industry. Richmond, VA: John C. Maxwell, Jr., 2007 [cited 2007 Mar 13].
4. Hoover's Online. Cigarettes, Cigars, and Smokeless Tobacco Products. [cited 2007 Mar 13]. Available from: http://www.hoovers.com/cigarettes,-cigars,-&-smokeless-tobacco-products/--HICID__1204--/free-ind-factsheet.xhtml.
5. Federal Trade Commission. Cigarette Report for 2004 and 2005.(PDF–880KB) Washington, DC: Federal Trade Commission; 2005 [cited 2007 Apr 26]. Available from: http://www.ftc.gov/reports/tobacco/2007cigarette2004-2005.pdf.
6. U.S. Census Bureau. 2005 American Community Survey. [cited 2007 Mar 13]. Available from: http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/ADPTable?_bm=y&-geo_id=01000US&-ds_name=ACS_2005_EST_G00_&-_lang=en&-_caller=geoselect&-format=.
7. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Tobacco Use Among Adults—United States, 2005. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report [serial online]. 2006;55(42):1145–1148 [cited 2007 Mar 13]. Available from: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5542a1.htm.
8. United States Department of Agriculture. Briefing Room: Tobacco—Background. Washington, DC: United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service; 2005 [cited 2007 Mar 13]. Available from: http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/Archive/Tobacco/.
9. Capehart T. Trends in U.S. Tobacco Farming. (PDF–825KB)(Outlook Report No. TBS25702). Washington, DC: United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service; 2004 [cited 2007 Mar 13]. Available from: http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/tbs/nov04/tbs25702/tbs25702.pdf.
10. Maxwell JC. The Maxwell Report: The Smokeless Tobacco Industry in 2005. Richmond, VA: John C. Maxwell, Jr.; 2006 [cited 2007 Mar 13].
11. Maxwell JC. The Maxwell Report: Cigar Industry in 2005. Richmond, VA: John C. Maxwell, Jr.; 2006 [cited 2007 Mar 13].
12. Federal Trade Commission. Smokeless Tobacco Report for the Years 2002 and 2005.(PDF–619KB) Washington, DC: Federal Trade Commission; 2007 [cited 2007 Apr 26]. Available from: http://www.ftc.gov/reports/tobacco/02-05smokeless0623105.pdf.
13. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Annual Smoking-Attributable Mortality, Years of Potential Life Lost, and Productivity Losses—United States, 1997–2001. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report [serial online]. 2005;54:625-628 [cited 2007 Mar 13]. Available from: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5425a1.htm.

196X - Marlboro Man

1960s color Marlboro Country television commercial

David McLean, who appeared in many Marlboro television and print advertisements starting in the early 1960s, also died of cancer at age 73 on 12 October 1995. McLean starred in the short-lived 1960 television Western Tate, and he played roles in numerous television series and feature films during the 1960s and 1970s. McLean took up smoking at age 12, began to suffer from emphysema in 1985, and had a cancerous tumor removed from his right lung in 1993. Despite the surgery, the cancer remained and spread to his brain and spine, and McLean succumbed in 1995. In August 1996 McLean's widow and son filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Philip Morris, Inc., claiming that McLean was unable to stop smoking because of his nicotine addiction, and that his smoking habit was the cause of his lung cancer. (The lawsuit contended, among other issues, that McLean had been obligated to smoke up to five packs per take in order to get the right look while posing for advertisements, and that he received cartons of Marlboro cigarettes as gifts from Philip Morris.) At last report (in 1999) the lawsuit was still pending, having outlasted all attempts by defendant Philip Morris to have it dismissed.

http://www.smokefreesociety.org/InMemory/David%20McLean-1.asp

David McLean (May 19, 1922 – October 12, 1995) was an American film and television actor, best-known for appearing in many Marlboro television and print advertisements, starting in the early 1960s.

David McLean was born as Eugene Joseph Huth in Akron, Ohio^[1]. In addition to his work for Marlboro, McLean also starred as the title character in the short-lived 1960 television series, Tate, and appeared in numerous television series and feature films in the '60s and '70s.

A lifelong smoker, McLean started suffering from emphysema in 1985, and had a tumor removed in 1994. After he found out that he had cancer, he became an anti-smoking advocate. At a meeting of stockholders of Philip Morris, maker of Marlboro, McLean requested they limit their advertising. He died of lung cancer at the age of 73, on October 12, 1995.

In 1996, McLean's widow and son filed suit for wrongful death against Philip Morris, maker of Marlboro, claiming that they encouraged or even required cigarette smoking which caused his lung cancer. A fictitious version of this ironic situation was featured in the comic novel Thank You for Smoking.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_McLean_(actor)

1964 U.S. Surgeon General's Report Smoking and Health

Truncating the growth of the domestic U.S. cigarette market

http://www.nchealthandhealing.com/topic/23/

Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking 1964 - Institutional Event

In 1964, 46 percent of all Americans smoked. They did it in offices, airplanes, elevators and hospitals. Cigarette commercials filled TV airwaves. Even cartoon programs were sponsored by cigarette brands.

So when Surgeon General Luther L. Terry issued the report of his special commission on smoking in January 1964, it was front page news. For the first time, Smoking and Health: Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General emphatically linked smoking to lung cancer and other diseases.

To many people, the findings were not entirely surprising. Evidence of smoking as a cause of lung cancer had surfaced much earlier. For that reason, a national commission was requested in 1961 by an alliance of the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association, the National Tuberculosis Association and the American Public Health Association.

Terry’s 10-man commission met in late 1962. After 14 months of studying 7,000 articles with more than 150 consultants, the commission reported that average smokers had a nine- to tenfold risk of developing lung cancer compared to nonsmokers. Heavy smokers had at least a twenty-fold risk. The report also implicated smoking as a cause of chronic bronchitis, emphysema and heart disease.

Following the release of the report, Congress required all cigarette packages to carry health warnings. They also banned all broadcast cigarette advertising, beginning in 1970.

Information provided by BCBSNC.

1958 "Not Adversely Affected By Smoking Chesterfields"

http://www.youtube.com/comment_servlet?all_comments&v=UyhvHB62ph8&fromurl=/watch%3Fv%3DUyhvHB62ph8%26feature%3Drelated

ZombiedustXXX (1 year ago) Show Hide

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This commercial, no matter how heinous and grossly distorted, shows one fact: FIFTY years ago, the cigarette industry was reacting to the fact that people everywhere ALREADY had a pretty good idea that cigarettes caused health problems. Why anyone starts smoking cigarettes in the first place is a mystery to me.

Indeed, some 40 years after it was so noted in the U.S. Congress in 1914

fromthesidelines (1 year ago) Show Hide

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That "Chesterfield" commercial must have been originally shown on "DRAGNET" [since George Fenneman was not only that cigarette's #1 announcer/pitchman in the '50s, he was also Jack Webb's "good luck charm" in opening each episode of the series as well].

Note the "attractions" in that toy drive-in theater...all CBS-TV "properties" {"HAVE GUN- WILL TRAVEL", "CAPT. KANGAROO", "TERRYTOONS" characters} at the time! This dates that commercial around 1958-'59.

Note the moderator's cause of death- emphysema from smoking cigarettes.

1900s - Big Medical Pharm Cigarette Alliance

Physicians and Tobacco Cigarettes

1906 - 1914 Market Protection Racket: Cig Sales Spikes

U.S. Pure Foods and Drugs Act,
enacted June 30, 1006

U.S. Harrison 'Narcotics' Tax Act,
enacted December 17, 1914

Camel cigarettes,
introduced 1913






1907 cigarette ad

1914 - "tens of thousands in the U.S. who die every year from excessive use of cigarettes..."

Congressional Record, August 15, 1914

... there are tens of thousands of people in the United States who die every year from the excessive use of cigareets; and yet I find Senators still pulling away at the cigarette as though t were a perfectly harmless thing. I believe thet Senator will agree with me that there are many thousands of people who die from what is called tobacco cancer, a cancerous growth affecting the throat from overuse of cigars; and we find perhaps 60 percent of the Senators pulling away at the cigar as unconcenrned as though no one were dying as a result of these cigars...

U.S. Congress, Senator Porter James McCumber (R) North Dakota, August 15, 1914

1904 - 2004 U.S.D.A.

United States Department of Agriculture:
From Plant Based Drugs
to GMO Plant Made Pharmaceuticals

I have searched in vein for the cir 1904 USDA paper on growing Coca and other drug crops at the USDA library in Greenbelt, Maryland. Apparantly they do not have a copy.

Below is a USDA conference one century later with a panel about the recent development of Genetically Modified Plants for growing patentable pharmaceuticals, and the paper of one of the panel speakers- a food, drug and insurance attorney from the law firm of Covington & Burling, who, according to a letter dated March 1990 by Dr. Arnold Trebach and Kevin Zeese of the Drug Policy Foundation, was "assigned to take primary responsibility for advising the Foundation", as reported here.

“The (U.S.) Food Industry’s View About the Development of Plant-made Pharmaceuticals and Industrials” by Marialuisa S. Gallozzi

Covington & Burling - Bio - Marialuisa Gallozzi

Agricultural Politics of Drug Policy Plenary Panel Proposal