Overview

The classic US struggle between the public interest and corporate interests is perhaps nowhere better illustrated than in the decades-long struggle between the tobacco industry and advocates for public health. The failure of the """"global settlement"""" legislation is now viewed by many public health experts as a historic missed opportunity, and in this text Pertschuk describes the forces brought to bear. A lifelong public health leader and tabacco control advocate, Pertschuk provides insight into the movement and its opposition. Questions that reveal themselves here can be applied to public advocacy as a whole. How can movement leaders gauge and best employ popular support? Who has legitimacy to speak on behalf of a particular public cause? How is it possible for those whose cause is a moral one to strike political compromise?

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Nobody has a broader or clearer understanding of the worldwide antitobacco movement than Michael Pertschuk. His inside analysis of how its brightest hour suddenly turned into its darkest moment is an urgent object lesson, teaching that even those firmly on the side of the angels can be consumed by righteousness and self-importance. In this case, the good guys let themselves be blinded to the hard realities of the political process always lurking in the shadows. The U.S. public health community's failure to seriously blunt the perils of smoking--the nationis most destructive drug--when it had the tobacco industry reeling is a national tragedy that needed to be chronicled.<br>--Richard Kluger, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Ashes to Ashes

Certainly the best-written piece of nonfiction in its genre I have ever read. Pertschuk has a gift for taking what could be just another 'Washington insider' story and transforming it into the true overarching moral/political/human drama it actually is--and all of it infused with a sense of tremendous social consequences for each one of us, which it also is. --Brock Evans, Executive Director, The Endangered Species Coalition Nobody has a broader or clearer understanding of the worldwide antitobacco movement than Michael Pertschuk. His inside analysis of how its brightest hour suddenly turned into its darkest moment is an urgent object lesson, teaching that even those firmly on the side of the angels can be consumed by righteousness and self-importance. In this case, the good guys let themselves be blinded to the hard realities of the political process always lurking in the shadows. The U.S. public health community's failure to seriously blunt the perils of smoking--the nationis most destructive drug--when it had the tobacco industry reeling is a national tragedy that needed to be chronicled. --Richard Kluger, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Ashes to Ashes

Nobody has a broader or clearer understanding of the worldwide antitobacco movement than Michael Pertschuk. His inside analysis of how its brightest hour suddenly turned into its darkest moment is an urgent object lesson, teaching that even those firmly on the side of the angels can be consumed by righteousness and self-importance. In this case, the good guys let themselves be blinded to the hard realities of the political process always lurking in the shadows. The U.S. public health community's failure to seriously blunt the perils of smoking--the nationA-s most destructive drug--when it had the tobacco industry reeling is a national tragedy that needed to be chronicled. --Richard Kluger, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Ashes to Ashes

Certainly the best-written piece of nonfiction in its genre I have ever read. Pertschuk has a gift for taking what could be just another 'Washington insider' story and transforming it into the true overarching moral/political/human drama it actually is--and all of it infused with a sense of tremendous social consequences for each one of us, which it also is. <br>--Brock Evans, Executive Director, The Endangered Species Coalition

Author Information

Michael Pertschuk has had a long and distinguished career in public health advocacy: as consumer counsel and ultimately chief counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, from 1965 to 1976; as chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, from 1977 to 1984; and as co-founder and co-director of the Advocacy Institute. His previous books include Revolt against Regulation, Giant Killers, and, with Wendy Schaetzel, The People Rising.

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