John Staddon is James B. Duke Professor of Psychology, and Professor of Biology and Neurobiology, Emeritus, at Duke University.
The main thread running through Professor Staddon’s book is the notion of ‘private health’ versus ‘public health’. His strong contention is that smoking is not a cost to society and he backs this up with references to published papers. And that is even without considering pension savings or tobacco taxation.
He also explains, with evidence, that environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) poses no significant health risk to third parties. And disputes the notion that smoking is ‘addictive’ in any normally understood sense.
Given this, he argues that smoking is in no sense a ‘public health issue’ and instead is a private one. Thus, there should not be any public health campaign at all against smoking.
He begins with a very brief history of tobacco and continues with the issues raised by Fisher in the 1950s. He concludes that the evidence of health risk from active smoking is now overwhelming although he does not say why he is so sure. He then points out that many activities are risky but are a matter of personal, informed, choice. We at freedom2choose fully agree with this sentiment.
In many ways, he appears to have come into the debate from a different angle from other writers. Regrettably, it seems that the only group speaking up for smokers that he has heard of is ‘Forest’. He can’t really be blamed too much though because despite our efforts; groups such as Freedom2Choose, Forces, CAGE, NYClash and the Smoker’s Club (to name just a few) still tend to have a rather small media presence.
The book is also crammed with information on anti-tobacco litigation and the Master Settlement Agreement (MSA).
The MSA appears to violate both Article 1, Section 10 of the constitution barring compacts between states as well as federal anti-trust statutes (it enforces a legal cartel).
… it is in essence a protection racket (extortion). You (the tobacco companies) pay me (the states and trial lawyers) a large amount of money. In return you get protection from competition (the agreement forms a cartel) and from state lawsuits.
And smokers rather than the tobacco companies are forced to pay for it all without even being consulted.
On the downside, this is, at 130 or so pages, a very short book. Despite that, he covers a lot of ground and such conciseness has merit in itself.
That said, it is very well written and highly readable. Numerous colour illustrations by David Hockney are provided which help to illuminate his case. Strongly recommended.
And as to the question posed at the end of the top quote: the answer is YES, we fully agree.
Update:
The publishers of ‘Unlucky Strike’ have been in contact and have uploaded this review to Amazon. It is on the front of the book’s website page as their main review of the book. As such it appears in the ‘Product Description’ section.
The only downside is that the Amazon facility has removed all formatting so it is a little difficult to read.
Amazon.co.uk: Unlucky Strike – John Staddon and David Hockney