These documents provide a shocking inside account of the activities of one tobacco company, Brown & Williamson, and its multinational parent, British American Tobacco, over more than thirty years.

This report considers the biological and behavioral mechanisms that may underlie the pathogenicity of tobacco smoke. Many Surgeon General's reports have considered research findings on mechanisms in assessing the biological plausibility of associations observed in epidemiologic studies. Mechanisms of disease are important because they may provide plausibility, which is one of the guideline criteria for assessing evidence on causation. This report specifically reviews the evidence on the potential mechanisms by which smoking causes diseases and considers whether a mechanism is likely to be operative in the production of human disease by tobacco smoke. This evidence is relevant to understanding how smoking causes disease, to identifying those who may be particularly susceptible, and to assessing the potential risks of tobacco products.

The cigarette is the deadliest artifact in the history of human civilization. It is also one of the most beguiling, thanks to more than a century of manipulation at the hands of tobacco industry chemists. In Golden Holocaust, Robert N. Proctor draws on reams of formerly-secret industry documents to explore how the cigarette came to be the most widely-used drug on the planet, with six trillion sticks sold per year. He paints a harrowing picture of tobacco manufacturers conspiring to block the recognition of tobacco-cancer hazards, even as they ensnare legions of scientists and politicians in a web of denial. Proctor tells heretofore untold stories of fraud and subterfuge, and he makes the strongest case to date for a simple yet ambitious remedy: a ban on the manufacture and sale of cigarettes.

Tobacco use by adolescents and young adults poses serious concerns. Nearly all adults who have ever smoked daily first tried a cigarette before 26 years of age. Current cigarette use among adults is highest among persons aged 21 to 25 years. The parts of the brain most responsible for cognitive and psychosocial maturity continue to develop and change through young adulthood, and adolescent brains are uniquely vulnerable to the effects of nicotine. At the request of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Public Health Implications of Raising the Minimum Age of Legal Access to Tobacco Products considers the likely public health impact of raising the minimum age for purchasing tobacco products. The report reviews the existing literature on tobacco use patterns, developmental biology and psychology, health effects of tobacco use, and the current landscape regarding youth access laws, including minimum age laws and their enforcement. Based on this literature, the report makes conclusions about the likely effect of raising the minimum age to 19, 21, and 25 years on tobacco use initiation. The report also quantifies the accompanying public health outcomes based on findings from two tobacco use simulation models. According to the report, raising the minimum age of legal access to tobacco products, particularly to ages 21 and 25, will lead to substantial reductions in tobacco use, improve the health of Americans across the lifespan, and save lives. Public Health Implications of Raising the Minimum Age of Legal Access to Tobacco Products will be a valuable reference for federal policy makers and state and local health departments and legislators.

The invention of mass marketing led to cigarettes being emblazoned in advertising and film, deeply tied to modern notions of glamour and sex appeal. It is hard to find a photo of Humphrey Bogart or Lauren Bacall without a cigarette. No product has been so heavily promoted or has become so deeply entrenched in American consciousness. And no product has received such sustained scientific scrutiny. The development of new medical knowledge demonstrating the dire harms of smoking ultimately shaped the evolution of evidence-based medicine. In response, the tobacco industry engineered a campaign of scientific disinformation seeking to delay, disrupt, and suppress these studies. Using a massive archive of previously secret documents, historian Allan Brandt shows how the industry pioneered these campaigns, particularly using special interest lobbying and largesse to elude regulation. But even as the cultural dominance of the cigarette has waned and consumption has fallen dramatically in the U.S., Big Tobacco remains securely positioned to expand into new global markets. The implications for the future are vast: 100 million people died of smoking-related diseases in the 20th century; in the next 100 years, we expect 1 billion deaths worldwide.

A witty, personal and entertaining reflection on the history and meaning of paper during the (passing) era of its universal importance.

Cigarettes is a novel about the rich and powerful, tracing their complicated relationships from the 1930s to the 1960s, from New York City to Upper New York State. Though nothing is as simple as it might appear to be, we could describe this as a story about Allen, who is married to Maud but having an affair with Elizabeth, who lives with Maud. Or say it is a story about fraud in the art world, horse racing, and sexual intrigues. Or, as one critic did, compare it to a Jane Austen creation, or to an Aldous Huxley novel—and be right and wrong on both counts. What one can emphatically say is that Cigarettes is a brilliant display of Harry Mathews's ingenuity and deadly playfulness.

We live in an age when the cigarette industry is under almost constant attack. Few weeks pass without yet another report on the hazards of smoking, or news of another anti-cigarette lawsuit, or more restrictions on cigarette sales, advertising, or use. It's somewhat surprising, then, that very little attention has been given to the fact that America has traveled down this road before. Until now, that is. As Cassandra Tate reports in this fascinating work of historical scholarship, between 1890 and 1930, fifteen states enacted laws to ban the sale, manufacture, possession, and/or use of cigarettes--and no fewer than twenty-two other states considered such legislation. In presenting the history of America's first conflicts with Big Tobacco, Tate draws on a wide range of newspapers, magazines, trade publications, rare pamphlets, and many other manuscripts culled from archives across the country. Her thorough and meticulously researched volume is also attractively illustrated with numerous photographs, posters, and cartoons from this bygone era. Readers will find in Cigarette Wars an engagingly written and well-told tale of the first anti-cigarette movement, dating from the Victorian Age to the Great Depression, when cigarettes were both legally restricted and socially stigmatized in America. Progressive reformers and religious fundamentalists came together to curb smoking, but their efforts collapsed during World War I, when millions of soldiers took up the habit and cigarettes began to be associated with freedom, modernity, and sophistication. Importantly, Tate also illustrates how supporters of the early anti-cigarette movement articulated virtually every issue that is still being debated about smoking today; theirs was not a failure of determination, she argues in these pages, but of timing. A compelling narrative about several clashing American traditions--old vs. young, rural vs. urban, and the late nineteenth vs. early twentieth centuries--this work will appeal to all who are interested in America's love-hate relationship with what Henry Ford once called "the little white slaver."

Millions of Americans use e-cigarettes. Despite their popularity, little is known about their health effects. Some suggest that e-cigarettes likely confer lower risk compared to combustible tobacco cigarettes, because they do not expose users to toxicants produced through combustion. Proponents of e-cigarette use also tout the potential benefits of e-cigarettes as devices that could help combustible tobacco cigarette smokers to quit and thereby reduce tobacco-related health risks. Others are concerned about the exposure to potentially toxic substances contained in e-cigarette emissions, especially in individuals who have never used tobacco products such as youth and young adults. Given their relatively recent introduction, there has been little time for a scientific body of evidence to develop on the health effects of e-cigarettes. Public Health Consequences of E-Cigarettes reviews and critically assesses the state of the emerging evidence about e-cigarettes and health. This report makes recommendations for the improvement of this research and highlights gaps that are a priority for future research.