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Q: TELL ME FIRST OF ALL WHAT THE IMPORTANCE OF BROWN & WILLIAMSON'S DOCUMENTS ARE?
Glantz: The Brown & Williamson documents give the public the first really clear and comprehensive view inside the tobacco industry during the period in which the evidence that nicotine was addictive became available, that smoking caused cancer, heart disease, and other diseases, and shows us that at least this tobacco company and its multinational parent, British American Tobacco, fully understood that nicotine was addictive, fully understood that smoking caused cancer and other diseases, and was actively working to try and reduce those dangers. At the same time that they had a massive and high quality scientific enterprise underway in secret, their public posture was that the case wasn't proven, that there was nothing wrong with smoking, that it was controversial and the documents show how they developed a bevy of legal strategies and public relations strategies to keep this information away from the public, away from the courts, away from the government, to keep people smoking.
And other documents have come to light since then. For instance, Congressman Henry Waxman got hold of a bunch of documents from Philip Morris which he put into the public record. I've read those documents, and they're not nearly as complete and comprehensive as what we have from Brown &Williamson, but the important thing is that they are completely consistent with the kinds of things we see in the Brown &Williamson documents. And so the industry, for 40 or 50 years has succeeded in building an incredible wall between itself and the public, and running a completely separate reality inside and outside, and I think many millions of people have died as a result. And that, I think, is going to be much harder for them to continue getting away with when the public has a chance to look at these things and understand them. It's going to generate a tremendous amount of public pressure. It think it's going to make it much easier for the courts to deal with them, for the federal government to deal with them. And the kinds of subterfuges and ridiculous statements that they've gotten away with for years, are just going to be much harder to do.
Q: JOURNALISTICALLY HOW WOULD YOU RATE THIS STORY?
Glantz: I was really looking at it more as a scientist than a campaigner really. I've obviously been involved in tobacco control for years because when you know what I know about the science, you have no choice in the matter. I mean there's an ethical imperative on you. But really when these documents arrived on my doorstep, the things that sucked me into them was not their potential political or legal import, it was the documents as history, the documents as science. It as just an unbelievable find. As a professor, it would be like an archaeologist finding a new tomb in Egypt or something. And in fact, historically, I hadn't really been that interested in the issues these documents deal with. My work had been on passive smoking, and tobacco policy work, not on nicotine pharmacology and cancer. And I'd actually read about the documents in the New York Times a week or so before I got them. Phil Hilts had run a story. But, and you know, and I thought it was very interesting, but I...was very interesting, and I went about my business. But when the documents first arrived and I realized what they were, my initial reaction was, well, these are very interesting, and I'll make them available and somebody can deal with them. But spending 20 minutes looking at them, you just get sucked into the story that they tell. I mean it's an amazing, amazing story of what was going on inside these cigarette companies during this crucial period. I mean I dropped what I was doing, or piled this on top of the other things I was doing, because it was such a compelling story. That's not exactly answering your question.
Now to answer your question, I think that the thing this shows to journalists is how they've been duped all these years, you know. And it outlines the tremendously effective public relations campaign that the industry has used, and how cleverly they've manipulated the press in terms of keeping the public confused about the actual dangers of tobacco use. They've had a tremendously sophisticated public relations campaign underway, which has not only used public relations firms and all those standard things, but made use of high level executives, the...lobby high level executives of media outlets, which is involved in the sub rosa funding of scientists, who were so called independent experts, that the media could then be referred to. It involved hiring people or underwriting the costs of writing articles critical of the Surgeon General and other anti-tobacco forces. And that continues to this day.
Q: IN A SENSE YOU FACED THE SAME PREDICAMENT AS ACTUALLY SOME OF THE NETWORKS FACE, WHICH WAS WHETHER TO PUBLISH THIS MATERIAL. AND WHAT WENT THROUGH YOUR MIND?
Glantz: Yes. There was never any question about publishing it with me. I mean that's what you do at university. And it was very clear to me very shortly after I started looking at these documents that we were going to write something about them. I didn't have a clue that we were going to write as much as we ended up writing. I thought we'd write a paper and send it to a scientific journal, which is what you're supposed to do when you are a professor. And as I got...assembled the research team and got into it...it was very clear that this was turning into a very major project, so then we thought we were going to write a couple of papers, and then we ended up writing a book and 5 papers, which were published in JAMA which took a tremendous amount of guts on their part. And my hope had been that, as it is in anything we do, whether it's this or the research I do in my laboratory on how hearts work, was that the quality of the work we could produce would overcome the fear of the tobacco industry, and I think when you are dealing with the academic community, there is a very strong commitment in that community to the truth, and that commitment, I think, carried the day in helping to get these papers published, because of the commitment to have information out there. I mean, that's one of the core values of the university. And I...when these documents arrived...it was very clear to me that sooner or later the shit was going to hit the fan. The tobacco companies, the kind of seige warfare that they run against everybody, it was just a matter of time before they started doing that against the university and against me. And I went down and informed the attorney at U.C. that these had arrived, and that I intended to use them as research materials. And I'd been told, I'm not to talk about exactly what was said, but the university was obviously very supportive, and have not wavered, and it's been from the highest level down. And the chancellor of this campus, people in the General Counsel's office, have just been very strong and very supportive.
And I have to say there were periods when Brown & Williamson came in and started threatening the library, and it was obvious, threatening to sue the university, and I figured this is where the rubber hits the road. And I remember being called down to a meeting with people from the General Counsel's office, Chris Patti and others, and I remember riding down the elevator thinking, this is the time to walk the plank, this is my little adventure, it's going to hit a wall. That's not at all what I was told. What I was told was, this is what the University of California is for. The university is here to bring the truth to people, to write about things, to do scholarly research, and we'll defend you. And they did, and they did spectacularly well. And I think the lesson for that is that these guys, the tobacco companies, can be beaten, they can be stood up to if you are willing to do it. And the university did a superb job, and I think the contrast between the behaviour of the University of California as a public institution, standing up to the tobacco companies, at a time when our Governor's campaign for President was being run by Philip Morris, Craig Fuller, the Vice-President of Philip Morris was running his governatorial campaign, and he's been destroying the voter mandate for tobacco education programs, when our legislature has been dominated by tobacco interests, when the big networks were caving in to them, when a lot of other publications--newspapers, magazines--would rather not do tobacco stories, to not be bothered, really makes me proud to be affiliated with this institution. Because not only did they do the right thing, but they did it for the right reasons. They did it for the right reasons, they did it because of a commitment to the public interest and to the truth.
I didn't mean to be ranting and raving along. I mean I feel quite strongly.
Q: SO LET'S COMPARE WHAT HAPPENED TO WHAT HAPPENED WITH ABC AND CBS.
Glantz: Well, I think the situations at ABC and CBS were a bit different. I think at ABC, I mean, they were similar and they were different. I mean from my point of view they were both driven by basic greed and cowardice. The situation at ABC was they did what I thought was a superb piece of journalism. They took a fairly complicated issue and explained it in very clear and concise terms to the public. The tobacco industry did then what they do best. They seized on one little word, spiking, which when you talk about reconstituted tobacco, I don't even know what the word spiking means. When you're talking about a manufactured product, it is like saying, this mouse is spiked with plastic. I mean a cigarette is a manufactured product, you know. There is no such thing as a natural cigarette that you go buy from the tobacco company. It's a very carefully engineered product where every aspect of that cigarette is controlled to very high standards, quality control standards. And so when Philip Morris was complaining about the word 'spiking' I mean it's crazy. My initial reaction to the suit against ABC was that it was purely a public relations device. For one thing, under Kentucky law, pardon me, or under Virginia Law they couldn't sue them for 10 billion dollars. There were very severe limitations on the actual exposure that the company had. So it was all just hot air. And ABC's initial response was a very very aggressive and well mounted defence. I was actually contacted by their lawyers to see if I would be willing to serve as an expert, and I just didn't have time. I was buried in the Brown & Williamson documents, and also working with O.S.I.A. at the time, and also I didn't want to sign a non-disclosure agreement. I felt that that was something I just won't do. And, but, it was clear to me from talking to the people I talked to and what they were allowed to tell me, that the lawyers and the technical experts they had brought in were mounting this superb defence. The other thing that was very true from the material that Congressman Waxman had put into the public record was that all the same kinds of things that were going on in the Brown & Williamson, appeared to be going on inside Philip Morris. If anything Philip Morris had more sophisticated work going on than Brown & Williamson did. And my feeling was that Philip Morris would never actually let the case go to trial, because I think that for the kind of materials that one can reasonably expect to see introduced into the public record at the trial, that would have been a legal disaster for Philip Morris, it would have had huge implications in the products liability actions that are pending, and it would have provided a gold mine of material for the Food and Drug Administration. As the case proceeded, Philip Morris was actually dropping a lot of its own complaints, and when ABC management capitulated, basically to grease a merger, was the way it looks to me, I think they did a huge public disservice, and they did a huge disservice to the journalists working for them, who I think, had put together an absolute first rate piece of journalism, and a very important piece of journalism.
Q: WHAT ABOUT CBS? WHAT'S YOUR VIEW ON THAT?
Glantz: The situation at CBS is a bit different, and in some ways, even worse, because there they weren't even sued. Basically it looks to me like there was a big merger or buy-out going on. Key CBS management were standing to make big bonuses if that buy-out went through by a certain date. And they just didn't want to be bothered. And that's part of what the tobacco companies do. If you deal with them, you know they are going to hassle you. And you know they're going to do all kinds of things just to make your life miserable, and they didn't want to be bothered. And so they didn't even wait to be sued. They...here we had the media making up theories under which they can be sued for suppressing or not suppressing information. It was just outrageous. But I think it's very much to the credit of the producers and the other people at 60 Minutes that that piece did get on the air, and the subsequent stories that ran recently with Jeff Wigand, the two part piece, which I thought were very well done, and that, I think showed, that within CBS the journalists were able to ultimately force the corporate interests to let the story run. And that, I think, a lot of people inside the news division at CBS deserve a lot of credit for pulling that off.
One other thing about this, I think in the end though, the bullying tactics of the tobacco industry against the media are beginning to backfire, because after ABC caved in, and after CBS pulled the original story, I started getting calls from major reporters saying, what can you tell us. My editors want to do a tobacco story to show that we're not like ABC. We're not like CBS. I mean here, you're doing the story. And I think in the short run it was very chilling. In the intermediate term, it has actually increased the level of interest in tobacco. What the long run implications are, you know, time will tell.
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