Christopher Snowdon
Velvet Glove, Iron Fist
Global Tobacco Control Will Be Exposed
2009-09-16 Former tobacco control frontman David Goerlitz has published further exposure of the corruption and appalling practices that continue to jeopardise the tobacco control industry. Goerlitz displays his disgust with the deceit that the tobacco control movement has employed in an article by Simon Eldon-Edington for the hospitality trade magazine The Publican. The article detailed how California, one of the birth-places of smoking bans, allowed indoor smoking restrictions that safeguarded the freedom and rights of its citizens. He comments, “There is no reason in the world with all our technology and brainpower that we have not been able to come up with something more reasonable, fair and logical than the junk science the anti-smoking power hungry zealots are throwing at us. The media has to be held accountable as well, as more and more evidence has been uncovered showing the lies and corruption being used by tobacco control as we know it.” (1) David Goerlitz, well-known as the former Winston Man, caused a stir in 1988 when he denounced the tobacco industry and joined the anti-smoking movement. Since then he has campaigned tirelessly against tobacco and has been honoured by the WHO, the American Lung Association and the American Cancer Society. He has also been highlighted on the ASH (UK) website for his relentless pursuit against smoking. (2) Andy Davis, chairman of pro-choice organisation Freedom2Choose states, “David has already confirmed in an explosive interview with historian Christopher Snowdon how guilty and embarrassed he now feels by his association with the tobacco control industry. (3) He is a man of virtue and knows the anti-tobacco industry inside-out.” “David’s comments come in a week where tobacco control has continued its tactic of science by press release,” continues Andy Davis. “Ignoring the fact that the heart attack reductions have already proven to be junk, they continue to rattle out these fairy stories before publication or even peer review.” Goerlitz concludes his comments by vowing to work with TICAP, Freedom2Choose and Forces International to “help make the changes necessary so that dignity and respect can once again replace control, prohibition and coercion.” Spokesperson: Phil Johnson: 07773 926818. Read
Look To History To See The Future: A review of Christopher Snowdon's Velvet Glove, Iron Fist June 19th, 2009 By Michael J. McFadden Christopher Snowdon's Velvet Glove, Iron Fist: A History of Anti-Smoking is being officially released this week and I believe it will be an important addition to the bookshelves of anyone seeking to understand where the antismoking movement has come from and where it is headed.
"Velvet Glove" will rank in history up next to Jacob Sullum's For Your Own Good and Richard Kluger's massive Ashes to Ashes. It may even end up outshining both previous works as his combination of excellent research skills combines with an engaging writing style to make Velvet Glove, Iron Fist both more readable and more fulfilling than either of them.
At roughly 400 pages, Snowdon doesn't present the sheer mass of information that Kluger's Pulitzer Prize winning Ashes does, but his focus on the antismoking movement (as opposed to Kluger's wider ranging examination of the tobacco industry and its battles) manages to convey far more information about this one important aspect of the subject and does it in a far more accessible manner. His exacting care for references and facts duplicates Sullum's, but although Sullum's style is readable and enjoyable I believe he has been outdone by his British counterpart.
Velvet Glove will be particularly attractive to British and European audiences as they suffer under their imported bans because, while Snowdon provides a comprehensive overview of the American antismoking movement, he pays special attention to the building and history of that movement across the sea. Far more than Sullum, he shows the international aspect of a Crusade that has clearly taken on global proportions with the UN's World Health Organization's "Framework Convention on Tobacco Control" which is becoming, almost unnoticed by the world's press and people, the first true example of a "World Law" under which nations have surrendered their sovereignty to the world body.
While not as strongly focused on Antismokers' psychological language tricks and dubious scientific deceptions underlying smoking bans as my own Dissecting Antismokers' Brains, Chris Snowdon does not neglect these areas and on the contrary has done an excellent job of showing how they form an integral part of the history. His approach embodies a strong neutrality that will win him friends and enemies on both sides of the issue, but I believe that overall, that neutrality only serves to underscore the damning facts that will eventually bring judgment against what historian Jeremy Richards has called "America's Second Great Prohibition Experiment."
As Richards has pointed out, the "New Prohibition" is smarter than the old one, seeking to use the tools of propaganda, media manipulation of science, and the classic human weakness of loving to have someone to hate rather than using the simple force of law for its purposes. The "New Prohibition" may have arguably improved the health of many by reducing the prevalence of smoking, but the social and psychological costs involved are tremendous and very deliberately uncalculated.
Snowdon's work will provide some basis for that eventual calculation to be totted up, no matter how diligently the Winston Smiths of the world try to rewrite history. I am proud to go on record in giving this book a fully deserved five stars.
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Velvet Glove Iron Fist A History of Anti-Smoking by Christopher Snowdon Read
Former "Winston Man" Speaks Out Against Hypocrisy in Anti-Smoking Movement March 18, 2009 By Michael Siegel Read
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Anti's- Who they are. ????
Goerlitz Tapes Exposed – International Tobacco Control
2009-06-18 00:44:38 - An explosive interview between anti-tobacco campaigner David Goerlitz and historian Christopher Snowdon is set to send shock-waves throughout the Tobacco Control industry.(1)
In it Goerlitz, passionately committed to tobacco control, exposes the movement as a ‘corrupt’ and ‘greedy’ institution dominated by extremists and ‘wackos’.
David Goerlitz caused a stir in 1988 when he denounced the tobacco industry and joined the anti-smoking movement. Since then he has campaigned tirelessly against tobacco and has been honoured by the WHO, the American Lung Association and the American Cancer Society.
The interview begins with Goerlitz explaining why he joined the movement after working for the Tobacco Industry, and how he now feels guilty by association with the anti-tobacco movement.
He discusses the corruption and states, “They (tobacco control) said: ‘This is no longer going to be about health, it’s going to be about money.’ That’s what I saw.”
The interview continues with Goerlitz explaining how health programs were abandoned in favour of an aggressive war against smokers with the introduction of ‘junk science’ to pass through smoking ban legislation and prohibitionist agendas by those he describes as “some of the most obnoxious, egotistical people I’ve ever met in my life.”
Goerlitz also exposes how he was asked to lie when giving testimony in court against the tobacco industry, “They (tobacco control) said: ‘You can add in anything you want to even if it’s a lie.”
Andy Davis, chairman of Freedom2Choose, states “David Goerlitz is a man of virtue and knows the anti-tobacco industry inside-out. He has seen the corruption and these tapes are stunning evidence of the appalling practices used and corruption within the industry. Members of Freedom2Choose would like to express their gratitude for his honesty and frankness.”
Freedom2Choose also thank historian Christopher Snowdon, author of Velvet Glove, Iron Fist (A history of anti-smoking), for conducting this interview. (2)
References: 1 The Goerlitz Tapes - Read2 Velvet Glove, Iron Fist - Read
Anti-smoking activism
Puff by puff, inch by inch Jun 11th 2009
From The Economist print edition “DON’T forget the cigarettes for Tommy,” ran one patriotic British ditty during the first world war. American generals told their government they needed “tobacco as much as bullets”; charities sent cigarettes to the front-line. After the war, non-smokers seemed odd. The crime writer, Agatha Christie, even apologised for not smoking. She had tried many times, she said, but just could not like it. In this solidly researched, interesting and only occasionally strident book, Christopher Snowdon, an independent researcher, documents the cigarette’s journey from patriotic necessity to pariah status. There had always been those who found smoking “loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs,” as James I put it in 1604. Some despots, in Hindustan and Persia, went further, slitting smokers’ lips or pouring molten lead down their throats. American prohibitionists claimed that smoking led to moral decay; Nazis that it was a decadent Jewish habit. But few non-bigots thought that their personal distaste warranted limiting the freedom of others. Once the awful effects of smoking on health became clear, however, smokers could be harassed for their own good. And the notion of passive smoking allowed campaigners to go even further, and seek to stamp out smoking almost everywhere. In America, lawyers got involved. “Flies to honey, vampires to blood—but we’ve got a glut of lawyers out there just looking for someone to sue,” said John Banzhaf, the founder of ASH, an anti-smoking group. The Master Settlement Agreement of 1997, which cost tobacco firms $246 billion, much of it to be spent on anti-smoking measures, meant that after decades of barefaced lying, Big Tobacco found itself outspent and outmanoeuvred. Campaigners shamelessly ramped up the evidence that the vice harmed others, and attacked anyone who said otherwise. “The effect of other people smoking in my presence is so small it doesn’t worry me,” declared Sir Richard Doll, who with Sir Austin Bradford Hill had proved in the 1950s that smokers were killing themselves. Anti-smoking activists dismissed the eminent scientist as a crank and a tool of the tobacco industry. “No one is seriously talking about a complete ban on smoking in pubs and restaurants,” said the director of ASH (UK) in 1998, adding that the suggestion was a “scaremongering story by a tobacco front group.” In June 2005 Britain’s public-health minister described talk of such a ban as “false speculation”. Parliament voted it into law just eight months later. Even then campaigners called for further illiberalism, citing everything from litter to toxins from cigarette butts leaching into groundwater and the harm smoking allegedly does to birds. Other activists now follow anti-smokers’ lead. Flying, drinking bottled water, wearing perfume and burning wood have all been called “the new smoking”; terms like “passive obesity” and “second-hand drinking” do the rounds. “Today it’s smoking. Will high-fat foods be next?” asked a tobacco firm in an advertisement in the 1990s. No doubt the ad seemed ridiculously alarmist at the time. Read
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