If EVERYONE KNEW then the industry wouldn’t have fought the 1964 Surgeon General’s report so hard, wouldn’t have fought pack warning labels, wouldn’t have bought fake science, wouldn’t have put out “scientists disagree”, wouldn’t have spent millions. Because if EVERYONE KNEW all that would have been a complete waste of time and money.

The fact, A.W., is that everyone didn’t know.

That’s why the industry did spend all that time and money. “Keep doubt alive”. “Doubt is our product”. If EVERYONE KNEW this wouldn’t have worked. Since everyone didn’t know, it did. Not forever, but for a few decades, 20 million deaths, and a couple trillion dollars (in today’s dollars).

That’s the fact.

If you want the fact, that’s what happened.

If you just want to blame the customer for what the product did to him, please do keep pretending EVERYONE KNEW.

Ditto with addiction. In this context addiction means “gee, i really like doing this.” Well, duh, which is why people do something they know is bad for them.

Can we stop coddling the plaintiff’s bar and tell the truth? This is just a confluence of greedy trial lawyers and nanny state liberalism. And I am sick to death of this manufactured outrage.

And I say that as someone who doesn’t smoke, who doesn’t profit from smoking in any tangential way (unless you count the fact i work for a health care company). But the fact is smokers put a gun to their own heads for years, and i am sick and tired of people pretending otherwise.