Cigarettes: Anatomy of an Industry from Seed to Smoke [Hardcover]

Tara Parker-Pope (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 2001

An entertaining and revealing exploration of the biggest business success story of the century, by a Wall Street Journal reporter.

"I'll tell you why I like the cigarette business. It costs a penny to make. Sell it for a dollar. It's addictive. And there's fantastic brand loyalty."-Warren Buffett, investor

Cigarettes are the most conspicuous consumer product on the planet and arguably the biggest business success story of the twentieth century. Here in one accessible book is the seed-to-smoke story of this $48 billion industry. With a keen eye for both the revealing anecdote and the larger story, Wall Street Journal reporter Tara Parker-Pope presents the clearest picture yet of this most fascinating and controversial product. She shows how tobacco leaves are picked, processed, and packaged; describes the surprising origins of some of the biggest brands; explains why tobacco is the Holy Grail of cash crops; examines Philip Morris, R. J. Reynolds, and other Big Tobacco companies in detail; reveals the vital roles the federal government, the military, and the entertainment industry have played in cigarettes' success; and puts the ongoing arguments over cigarettes and public health in historic context. Cigarettes is a fast-paced business story sure to surprise and entertain.

Facts about the cigarette industry:

* The world's tobacco companies produce 5.5 trillion cigarettes per year--nearly 100 cigarettes for every man, woman, and child on earth.
* Even with the recent tobacco settlement in the U.S., cigarette makers enjoy profit margins of as much as 40 percent.
* In Western Europe, more than 70 percent of the retail price of a pack of cigarettes goes to the federal government; in the U.S., less than 30 percent.
* Greece (139 packs per capita) and Japan (133 packs) are the heaviest-smoking countries in the world; the U.S. ranks 11th (92 packs).

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

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.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

This book has great possibilities, as it draws together the history of tobacco with the story of modern marketing efforts to get people hooked on smoking, the emergence of health issues, and the legal battle over the massive costs of tobacco-related death and disability. Unfortunately, journalist Parker-Pope (Wall Street Journal) attempts all this in 200 pages of breezy prose filled with extraordinarily simplified analysis. Her historical treatment is at best sketchy and sometimes highly suspect. At one point, she comes very close to implying that tobacco was a significant cause of the Revolutionary War. She relies almost exclusively on "tobacco historians" rather than searching more broadly for perspectives on the emergence of tobacco within the larger agricultural economy and society. Cigarettes does have some useful points, including a nice summary of the evolution of the health issue during the 20th century, but the book generally proves to be disjointed and disorganized. Although it never attempts to match Richard Kluger's massive Ashes to Ashes (LJ 6/15/96. o.p.), we still await a brief alternative. Not recommended.ACharles K. Piehl, Minnesota State Univ., Mankato
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: New Pr; 1 edition (February 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 156584503X
• ISBN-13: 978-1565845039
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,011,572 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Tara Parker-Pope, who writes the "Well" blog for The New York Times, is one of the newspaper's most popular and most e-mailed journalists. She appears regularly on radio and television, including Today, Good Morning America, and CNN. Parker-Pope lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Does Everything Well, July 19, 2001

By 

Allen Smalling "Constant Reader," (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Cigarettes: Anatomy of an Industry from Seed to Smoke (Hardcover)

This is a wonderful little book that excels on many levels. First of all, it's a history of tobacco from the time Europeans discovered it to the present. The story is told efficiently and well, but with an eye to the ironies of history (today, for example, states derive significant tax revenue from sales of tobacco products--so how badly do they want to stamp out smoking?).

Second, "Cigarettes" takes us through the route tobacco must follow to become a cigarette: its growing, auctioning, curing, blending, manufacturing, marketing and final sale. People might be surprised to learn that banning TV advertising, then billboard advertising, and then imposing multibillion-dollar legal judgments on the big tobacco companies, hasn't hurt them that much. Author Parker-Pope explains why.

The author is more or less non-judgmental about smoking. You won't be made to feel like a dog if you happen to smoke; she once smoked and understands what it's like to be "hooked." What you will find in "Cigarettes" is that it's compulsively readable, informative, fun, up-to-date, and global in its reach.

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Our Nation's Schizophrenic Moral Dilemma, March 5, 2001

By 

David Thomson "Second Rate Eric Hoffer Imitator" (Houston, TX USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Cigarettes: Anatomy of an Industry from Seed to Smoke (Hardcover)

Americans live in a nation that outlaws certain drugs as too dangerous for public consumption. Nonetheless, a proven killer such as tobacco is readily available for any citizen over the age of eighteen. Tara Parker-Pope admirably deals with this maddening, if not hypocritical set of circumstances. The Wall Street reporter delves into the history of tobacco consumption from the early days of American history. Cotton was not the first crop requiring cheap labor in the colonies. No, it turns out that tobacco has that dubious honor. She therefore contends that the tobacco industry substantially underpinned the evil institution of slavery. Tobacco was even used to encourage Africans to betray their own to the slave traders. The author adds that tobacco played a significant role in America's revolt against the British crown. Abstract issues of personal freedom were at least partly interpreted by many colonists as a desire to lessen Great Britain's control of the tobacco markets.

Tobacco advertising has always emphasized the supposed sophistication and elite status of the user. Parker-Pope recounts an incident in the early part of the last century when an insightful public relations expert urged the Lucky Strike company to sponsor a Green Ball in New York for the purpose of enticing socialite women to be more receptive to the green color of its cigarette pack. Later members of the medical community were co-opted to allay the health concerns of an increasingly wary public. Deceitfulness has long been the standard practice of the tobacco industry. Status seeking and easily swayed youngsters are seduced by role models in the entertainment field to pass along this horror from one generation to the next. Also, the international corporate promoters of these death causing products are expanding their marketing operations to all corners of the globe. Apparently we have lost the ability to be ashamed and allow the exploitation of the less educated in the Third World communities. Missionary zeal was once perceived in a more positive manner. Now it has more sinister connotations.

Parker-Pope observes that the consumers are actually paying for the so-called tobacco court room financial settlements. These tobacco addicts merely go deeper into their wallets to make up the difference. She also agrees with my own cynical conclusion that the efforts of anti-smoking crusaders have been eviscerated by the massive financial payoffs. I suspect that the officials of the states agreeing to the settlements are guilty of shaking hands with the devil; the money is coming into their respective governmental coffers---and deep in their guts they hesitate to risk killing the goose laying the golden eggs. The tobacco industry has tacitly bribed our national leaders to pretend that staunch opposition still persists even when the evidence suggest otherwise. Outlawing cigarettes will probably cause more trouble than good. Prohibition inadvertently results in subsidizing organized crime. This, however, does not preclude other realistic actions that should be considered.

The author's work definitely deserves to be read by all concerned citizens. There are no easy answers to this national dilemma, but Ms. Parker-Pope assists us in further clarifying the issues. We owe her our gratitude.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The illusion will go on..., January 13, 2005

By 

M. Michail "Michael Pillos" (Limassol, Cyprus) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Cigarettes: Anatomy of an Industry from Seed to Smoke (Hardcover)

"For 500 years, smokers and tobacco makers have risked torture and even death at the hands of tobacco's enemies, so it's unlikely that a bunch of lawyers and politicians and the looming threat of deadly disease will fell either the industry or the habit. When the smoke clears from the Tobacco Wars, the last man (or woman) standing may well be a smoker with a cigarette in his (or her) hands." "Parker-Pope deserves credit, because in a discussion as saturated with malice and falsehood as the cigarette debate, expressing even a banal truth requires courage."Do I need to say more?