Smoke in Their Eyes

Michael Pertschuk

Description

The classic American struggle between the public interest and corporate interests is perhaps nowhere better illustrated than in the decades-long struggle between the tobacco industry and advocates for public health. The failure of the "global settlement" legislation is now viewed by many public health experts as an historic missed opportunity, and in this extraordinary book, Smoke in Their Eyes, Michael Pertschuk brilliantly describes the forces brought to bear.

A lifelong public health leader and tobacco control advocate, Pertschuk provides uncommon insight into the movement and its opposition. Questions that reveal themselves here can be applied to public advocacy as a whole: how can movement leaders gauge and best employ popular support? Who has legitimacy to speak on behalf of a particular public cause? And perhaps most crucially, how is it possible for those whose cause is a moral one to strike political compromise? With a narrative as compelling as the issues it raises, Smoke in Their Eyes will be of great interest to everyone from students of public advocacy and political science to general readers.

Sujets

• History
• Political Science
• Public Health
• Political Process
• Political Advocacy
• Public Policy

Informations

• Publié par: Vanderbilt University Press
• Date de parution: 30 novembre 2001
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780826591494
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Michael Pertschuk

Lessonsin Movement Leadership from the  Tobacco Wars

Smoke in Their Eyes

Smoke in Their Eyes Lessons in Movement Leadership

from the Tobacco Wars

Michael Pertschuk

Vanderbilt University Press Nashville

Copyright © 2001 Vanderbilt University Press

All rights reserved

First edition 2001

This book is printed on acid-free paper

Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Pertschuk, Michael, 1933- Smoke in their eyes : lessons in movement leadership from the tobacco wars / Michael Pertschuk. p. ; cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8265-1390-5 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 0-8265-1393-X (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Antismoking movement—United States. 2. Tobacco industry—Government policy—United States. [DNLM: 1. Lobbying—United States. 2. Tobacco Industry— legislation & jurisprudence—United States. 3. Consumer Advocacy—United States. 4. Leadership—United States. 5. Public Policy—United States. 6. Smoking—prevention & control—United States. HD 9137.U5 P469s 2001] I. Title. HV5763 .P47 2001 362.29’67’0973—dc21 2001003506

To Karla Sneegas and all the other less-sung, warm-spirited, bridge-building movement leaders who continue to make the tobacco control movement alive with promise.

Foreword

Introduction

Part I.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

Part II.

12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

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1

Contents

Leading toward Settlement

Thinking the Unthinkable 13 Why Matt Myers? 21 Sinking the Unthinkable 28 The Search for Common Ground Begins Why Stan Glantz and Julia Carol? 40 “Everyone” Agreed! 49 The Real Leadership? 53 A Suspect Consensus 59 Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner 64 Day One: Four Meetings, Two Directions One Stays, One Stays Out 78

The Settlement

36

70

Progress 89 Betrayed? 94 Slings and Arrows 103 With Friends Like These . . . 110 The Line Hardens 113 A Divorce in the Family 119 The Nicotine Fix 123 “I Say It’s Immunity, and I Say the Hell with It” “When to Walk Away” 142

131

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21 22

Smoke in Their Eyes

The Two Ks to the Rescue 146 The Deal Is Struck—and Stricken

Part III. The Rise and Fall of the McCain Bill

23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

153

The Struggle for Clinton’s Nod 161 Unity under Clinton’s Umbrella? 173 Things Fall Apart—the Center Cannot Hold 176 The Moving Kessler-Koop Line 186 The All-Inclusive Anti-Immunity Club 194 McCain to the Rescue 201 A Cliffhanger on Liability 207 Not Good Enough 211 Worse Than Nothing! 217 Guess Who’s Not Coming to Dinner 220 The Window of Opportunity Slams Shut 226

Part IV. Lessons from the Settlement and Its Aftermath

34 35 36 37 38

What Was Gained? What Was Lost? 237 And the Rest of the Globe? 249 Thirteen Ways to Lead a Movement Backward 255 The Wrong Leaders for the Right Moment 280 Engaged in the Work of Democracy 285

Conclusion: With a Little Bit of Luck 293 Afterword: Lessons of the Tobacco Wars 299 Epilogue 305 Chronology of Key Events 311 Acknowledgments 313 Index 317

Foreword

David Cohen

Sound and sober contemporary political history by historians and jour- nalists is not rare, but lively and evenhanded storytelling of political struggles by those who have lived them is. And historical analyses of landmark political challenges that actually yield practical lessons for those who might face such challenges in the future are even less com- mon. You are about to read a book by my colleague and friend of nearly forty years, Mike Pertschuk, that captures the essence of a landmark event in the history of American civic movements. For three decades leading up to the spring of 1997, the tobacco industry had fiercely re- sisted all serious efforts to enact regulatory and other public health policies appropriate to the vast human damage cigarettes were proven to cause. Suddenly, that spring, the companies offered concessions of a breadth and magnitude that no tobacco control advocate had ever considered remotely possible. As a result, Congress came within a hair’s breadth of enacting comprehensive tobacco control legislation that would have transformed the tobacco industry from an unregulated, unrestrained marketer of the world’s best-selling addictive lethal product into a tightly regulated marketer of a controlled substance. But it did not hap- pen. Why not? No one could have been better prepared and situated to find the an- swer than Mike Pertschuk, no one better able to extract the broad les- sons for the leadership of civic movements. He brings converging sets of skills and experience to this story. Mike came to Washington in 1962 to work as a legislative assistant to a strong consumer advocate, Senator Maureen Neuberger of Oregon. He was soon energetically working with her to press President Kennedy

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