A Question of Intent: A Great American Battle with a Deadly Industry

""My understanding of the industry's power finally forced me to see that... the solution to the smoking problem rests with the bottom line, prohibiting the tobacco companies from continuing to reap profits from the sale of a deadly addictive drug.... "" These strong words from Kessler, now dean of the Yale University School of Medicine and commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration from 1990 to 1997, testify to his commitment to regulating tobacco, as well as to the frustration involved in taking on the powerful tobacco industry. In understated, lucid language, he details how his interest in smoking as a public health issue grew into a full-scale investigation into the practices of the tobacco industry. Drawing on legal and scientific research and the notes he kept during his terms as commissioner, Kessler documents how the team he assembled built a case that implicated the industry in nicotine manipulation that increased the addictiveness of cigarettes. With the assistance of informants like Jeffrey Wigand, a former Brown and Williamson researcher and subject of the film The Insider, the team learned about genetically altered plants created to produce higher nicotine levels. Kessler indicts the tobacco industry for lying to Congress and the public about these activities, denying the strong relationship between smoking and lung cancer and launching ad campaigns to encourage smoking, particularly among children. With the backing of Vice-President Al Gore, the FDA issued regulations to curb smoking that were eventually overturned by a 5-4 Supreme Court decision in early 2000. This is an important study of the influence of big tobacco and the high cost to the public health of the nation that smoking has caused. (Jan. 10)