Politics - "Unlucky Strike: Private Health and the Science, Law and Politics of Smoking" - Book TV

Politics - "Unlucky Strike: Private Health and the Science, Law and Politics of Smoking" - Book TV:





 C-SPAN Book TV: John Staddon, Unlucky Strike: Private Health and the Science, Law and Politics of Smoking 



JOHN STADDON is James B. Duke Professor of Psychology, and Professor of Biology and Neurobiology, Emeritus, at Duke University. He is a Faculty Affiliate at the John Locke Foundation and Honorary Visiting Professor at the University of York (UK). He has published more than 200 research papers and six books.



Smoking has been controversial ever since tobacco came to Europe in the sixteenth century. Fifty years ago, almost everyone smoked. Fifty years before that, smokers were in the doghouse – cigarettes were illegal in several U.S. states early in the twentieth century. Smoking has always been a ready source of revenue. It has also been a source of health problems, real and imagined. The mixture of pleasure, money and health risk means that smoking is rarely treated fairly by politicians, health professionals or the public. Now, tough anti-smoking laws are almost universal. The misinformation about, and unreasoning hostility directed at, smoking and smokers – and the sight of smokers, usually poor, puffing desperately outside in winter weather – is one reason for this book.



NOTE: Duke University in Durham, North Carolina provides an example of Tobacco Industry involvement in scientific research via funding.