Cigarettes: Anatomy of an Industry from Seed to Smoke

Observing that ""the cigarette is the only consumer product that, when used as the manufacturer has intended, can be deadly,"" Wall Street Journal reporter Parker-Pope writes an absorbing and informative history of cigarettes, addressing why we start smoking, why we continue and what it costs us, while simultaneously charting the growth of an industry that boasts profit margins as high as 40% to 50%. With its extraordinary profits, low-cost product and loyal and expandable customer base, the cigarette industry, she claims, is the envy of modern business, though not all industries can hope to manufacture a product that is as addictive. Since nobody naturally craves nicotine, the industry has had to persuade its customers to buy something they don't really need--a conundrum that has been handily resolved with $5 billion worth of seductive advertising that sells $53 billion worth of cigarettes per year in the U.S. alone, according to Parker-Pope. Her up-to-date coverage of the recent tobacco industry litigation is not only concise and accessible, but illuminating about tobacco companies' ability to use the litigation to stay in business, reduce their future liability and increase sales. While business may proceed as usual in the cigarette industry and the ranks of smokers may grow worldwide, Parker-Pope makes certain that her readers cannot ignore that once a person becomes a regular smoker, nicotine becomes such a necessary part of the body's chemistry that only 10% of smokers can successfully quit, that in 1999 smokers spent $730 million on smoke cessation products such as patches and gum, that 3.5 million people worldwide die annually of smoking-related ailments and that Americans spend $50 billion each year on smoking-related health care. Illus. (Feb.) Forecast: Jacketed in an eye-catching cigarette pack design and less intimidating in girth than other recent chronicles of the cigarette industry, this slim and hard-hitting report--part everything-you-needed-to-know-about-cigarettes and part documentary expose--could ride the wave of continuing public concern about cigarette manufacturers and their advertising techniques.