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For Your Own Good: The Anti-Smoking Crusade and the Tyranny of Public Health [BARGAIN PRICE] (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "Rodrigo de Jerez, who accompanied Christopher Columbus on his first voyage to the New World, stumbled upon a strange practice while exploring Cuba..." (more)
Key Phrases: airline smoking ban, local smoking ordinances, cigarette tax hike, Philip Morris, New York Times, Joe Camel (more...)
4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)

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The tobacco controversy is usually portrayed as a battle between selfless defenders of public health and greedy merchants of death. In For Your Own Good, award-winning journalist Jacob Sullum argues that such a view conceals the true nature of the crusade for a smoke-free society. As Sullum demonstrates, this struggle is not about the behavior of corporations; it's about the behavior of individuals. It is an attempt by one group of people to impose their tastes and preferences on another.

For Your Own Good shows that long before Philip Morris or R. J. Reynolds existed, tobacco's opponents condemned smoking as disgusting, immoral, addictive, unhealthy, and inconsiderate. In recent decades, they have used scientific evidence that smoking is hazardous to enlist the state in their crusade, arguing that the government has an obligation to discourage behavior that might lead to disease or injury. Given this country's tradition of limited government, however, Americans tend to be skeptical of this argument. Sullum justifies their misgivings, noting that achieving a "smoke-free society" in a nation where tens of millions choose to smoke is necessarily an exercise in tyranny. It therefore comes as no surprise that tobacco's opponents resort to censorship, punitive taxes, violations of property rights, and other coercive tactics. Sullum argues that such uses of state power are illegitimate and dangerous, threatening the freedom of anyone who dares to trade longevity for pleasure.

In response to this charge, tobacco's opponents have offered various rationales designed to overcome suspicions of paternalism. They have portrayed tobacco advertising as an insidious force that seduces people into acting against their interests. They have said that smoking imposes costs on society that need to be recouped through special taxes. They have claimed that secondhand smoke poses a grave threat to bystanders, so smoking should be confined to the home. They have accused the tobacco companies of hiding the truth about the hazards and addictiveness of smoking, preventing their customers from making informed decisions. They have described nicotine addiction as a compulsive and possibly contagious illness, fitting nicely with the public health mission to control disease. Often these arguments are combined with appeals to protect children, as when former FDA commissioner David A. Kessler called smoking "a pediatric disease."

Sullum refutes each of these claims and shows that the anti-smoking crusade in fact rests on two complementary beliefs: that the government should stamp out the use of hazardous drugs and that it should deter activities that impair "the public health." He argues that the dangerous implications of these ideas extend far beyond tobacco. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 352 pages
  • ISBN-10: 0684827360
  • ASIN: B000H2NDR8
  • Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6 x 1.3 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,537,146 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Jacob Sullum
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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Rodrigo de Jerez, who accompanied Christopher Columbus on his first voyage to the New World, stumbled upon a strange practice while exploring Cuba. Read the first page
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airline smoking ban, local smoking ordinances, cigarette tax hike, monster tax, underage smoking, safer cigarette, nicotine yields, respiratory health effects, discouraging smoking, capita cigarette consumption, tobacco lawsuits, public health establishment, cigarette commercials, cigarette companies, cigarette taxes, smoking restrictions, cigarette ads, tobacco policy, nonsmoking women, secondhand smoke, state lawsuits, tobacco advertising, involuntary smoking, environmental tobacco smoke, cigarette makers
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Philip Morris, New York Times, Joe Camel, United States, American Cancer Society, Supreme Court, North Carolina, World War, Everett Koop, Los Angeles, John Banzhaf, Tobacco Institute, American Medical Association, National Cancer Institute, New Jersey, Rose Cipollone, Liggett Group, Lucy Page Gaston, President Clinton, Cosmetic Act, David Kessler, Day One, Virginia Slims, Ahron Leichtman, American Council
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25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars An Important Book, November 20, 2002
This review is from: For Your Own Good: The Anti-Smoking Crusade and the Tyranny of Public Health (Hardcover)
The author of this book doesn't smoke but I do and I thank him. I have lived in both Great Britain and the USA, and am finding anti-smoking activism an increasing bore in both areas, although much more so in 'the land of the free.' Sullum points out that much anti-smoking policy is based on 'second-hand-smoke' fears and that these fears are demonstrably hysterical. The fear of getting lung cancer from sharing a bar with smokers is like fearing cirrhosis from smelling a drunkard's breath. But now US policy makers wish to ban smoking everywhere, private clubs, outdoors...they'll be imprisoning people for enjoying a cigarette soon if they have their way. As if individuals and people like restaurant owners couldn't decide without the government's boot on their necks where they wish to allow smoking and where they don't. I've smoked for four decades, and can't think when anyone's smoking ever bothered me, or when I was ever asked to put out my cigarette, until the last few years, once the alarmists started holding sway. Britain did not always treat well those subject to its empirical power. America had its witch trials, its commie hunts, its slavery. Germany's citizens went along with the vilification, degradation, and attempted murder of all its Jews. It's human nature, apparently, for societies to vilify and harass, such persons and practices as they choose, when they choose, without good reason: as reasons are lacking, societies simply make them up, and most docile citizens just go along with the hate-streams provided. Sullum points out that tobacco, and cigarettes particularly, have been banned before, for reasons that proved hysterical or alarmist, and that tolerance of smoking returns in time. Smoking is an exquisite pleasure. Enjoyment of it should be moderated, or even avoided by individuals, as they choose. Such moderate views are rarely heard in these days of anti-smoking Taliban. Sullum is fair-minded and objective. He's written a wonderful book, of import to smokers, and to all who despise ignorance, intolerance, alarmism, hysteria, and the hate-filled members of our societies, who are now using these age-old weapons, to humiliate and ostracize tobacco users. Read this book. Smoke pridefully, and resist the temptation to blow your smoke, in the face of the Taliban types. Unlike them, most smokers are civilized, and this is the source of our pride.
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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A Logical Indictment of the "All or None" Political Approach, August 12, 2005
This review is from: For Your Own Good: The Anti-Smoking Crusade and the Tyranny of Public Health (Hardcover)
Jacob Sullum's book, "For Your Own Good: The Anti-Smoking Crusade and the Tyranny of Public Health" is maybe the best book for anyone interested in the issue of smoking. Sullum, a non-smoker, has taken a logical, meticulously researched look at the smoking issue and come to the heart of the essential problem; the "all or none" approach of the anti-tobacco movement.

Rather than approaching his book as a confirmation for smokers who wish to smoke, Sullum examines all of the essential issues of tobacco use including the health effects of secondhand smoke, the danger of smoking itself, and the comparable danger of both activities in relation to other activities. Sullum gives the specifics of these issues and points out the problems with the broad-brush generalities that anti-smoking crusaders have given to the public. For example, one has a difficult time reconciling statements like "Smoking takes ten years off your life" against "Quitting smoking for ten years will return your lungs to a healthy state". Sullum addresses discrepancies like this and brings the issues into perspective.

Sullum takes a cool and reasoned approach to this book and editorializes only at points that demand it. Sullum wants the reader to know they've come to the right place if they want 'just the facts' and the inevitable logical conclusions that can be drawn from them. In purpose, "For Your Own Good" doesn't vilify the anti-smoking movement, despite its title. Sullum points out early in the book that he found the vast majority of anti-smoking proponents he interviewed to be reaonable and well-worth talking too. It also doesn't give smokers a free-pass to smoke eighty cigarettes a day without any fear of ill health effects. The tobacco industry takes its lumps where warranted, but is equally defended against the wholesale extortion it has been exposed to. The tobacco industry may have spent billions to get millions to smoke, but it is also now forced to pay billions for a campaign of self-incrimination, and even pays out billions for public programs that benefit non-smokers by an overwhelming majority.

In the end, Sullum's reasoned approach makes for a most effective indictment of the anti-smoking crusade. The anti-smoking movement is "all or none" and wants you to hate smoking and oppress those who choose to smoke as a means to ending smoking forever. The political implications do not matter. If a "smoke free society" means the total loss of freedom for those who smoke and the eventual loss of freedom for all, we're going to live our lives as others tell us to, like it or not. The spread of misinformation isn't important as long as it achieves the ultimate goal.

Think of the most zealous of religious groups being given tens of billions of dollars and complete government support for their view. Any individual not expressing total devotion to any of the religious tenets is an apostate to be condemened in public. This view will be expressed on every radio and television commercial break. Any means necessary will be used to express this view. This is the current power of the anti-smoking movement eight years after this book was published.

Unlike pro-smoking screeds that can pile-up to five hundred pages or more, Sullum covers everything you wanted to know about tobacco but were afraid to ask in 350 pages. Sullum carefully covers his trail and carries the reader on to the next page with the feeling that they've been given the best information available. The history of tobacco and smoking is also covered in brief.

I wish that Sullum would write a follow up or at least an updated edition for this book. In 2005, this book would be an eye-opener for those who have so completely swallowed the bait. I just realized that I'm the first person to review this book in five years. Scary, to say the least.
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34 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Clear, lucid, fair, and meticulously logical., December 3, 2000
By "ebreit42" (New Port Richey, Florida United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: For Your Own Good: The Anti-Smoking Crusade and the Tyranny of Public Health (Hardcover)
Jacob Sullum has written what can only be described as a breath of fresh air in a current of noxious fumes. This book is a fair and balanced account of the anti-smoking movement and has received favorable reviews in such prestigious medical journals as the "Lancet," and the "New England Journal of Medicine."

The critiques of the propaganda used by the public heath movement to scare people: the assertion that advertising causes smoking, for example, are particularly interesting. The demolishment of the assertion that the hazards of smoking were recently discovered (actually, James I published one of the first anti-tobacco pamphlets in 1604) should make anyone considering suing the tobacco industry to recover damages take pause.

This is one book you will not be able to put down. Everything is documented, so checking Sullum's sources is easy. Regardless of your position on smoking, this book's clear detail about tobacco and its enemies will make for enlightening reading.

I must respond to what I think are genuine attempts to commit ad hominem attacks. One reviewer simply noted, without reading the book (it was obvious), that because Sullum in an editor of Reason magazine, his book and everything he says should (essentially) be ignored. Reason magazine is published by the Reason Foundation, which has accepted donations from tobacco companies in the past. Ergo, using the logical fallacy of ad hominem, one should ignore everything Mr. Sullum writes. This kind of reasoning is the last haven of the ignorant.

In the Introduction, Sullum notes that less than 1% of the Reason Foundation's budget has ever been funded by the tobacco industry, and that Philip Morris has bought ad space in Reason Magazine. Yet he also points out that his job is not dependent on Philip Morris, and that Reason has never (and does not) assert control over his writing. Sullum was a critic of the anti-smoking movement long before working at Reason and this book also criticizes the tobacco industry. Hardly the work of someone who is a flack for Philip Morris.

And finally, imagine what the reviewer said is true. Namely, that money makes results. At once the entire foundation of modern science is destroyed. The anti-smoking movement gets funded too, by groups that have a financial stake in getting less people to smoke (like the Federal government, for example). Ergo, anything the anti-smoking movement says is biased because it is in their own self-interest. We must accept this if we committ the ad hominem fallacy. If we are not stupid morons, we should look at the evidence. If Jacob Sullum is a tobacco pawn, then his book wouldn't stand up to critical review. Yet it does, as evidenced by the reviews in leading medical journals that are favorable.

Something I want to point out that Sullum did not have access to when he wrote "For Your Own Good:" The EPA's classification of secondhand smoke as a class A carcinogen was declared void by a federal judge in 1998 due to gross scientific errors, manipulation of statistical results, and methodology designed to yield data preferable to the anti-smoking side only.

That should make one pause when reading the reviews about how Sullum missed the mark on secondhand smoke. Actually, he hit the nail right on the head.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Incredible read!
A must read for anyone who thinks they know what is best for the rest of us or for those who are fed up with that type of mentality!
Published 2 months ago by S. Barton

5.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating history of the anti-smoking movement
A great history of the anti-smoking movement, in a very readable format. An important book for anyone interested in civil liberties and personal space.

Published 4 months ago by scribe

4.0 out of 5 stars Searching for a pebble of truth in a mountain of hype.
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4.0 out of 5 stars A little redundant & unfocused, but sure to light your fire
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1.0 out of 5 stars A continued denial of peer-reviewed, scientific research
Sullum attempts to "demolish" the argument that second-hand smoke is dangerous. Unfortunately, he must have been too lazy to take a ten minute look at medline and the... Read more
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4.0 out of 5 stars If you value liberty, this could be worth your while.
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