Velvet Glove Iron Fist A History of AntiSmoking edition by Christopher Snowdon Professional Technical eBooks
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Spain, 1493 - Europe's first smoker imprisioned by the Inquisition
England, 1604 - Massive tax rise on tobacco in a bid to discourage smoking
Canada, 1676 - Smoking is banned in the street
United States, 1899 - Anti-smoking campaigners call for the eradication of tobacco
Germany, 1944 - Smoking banned on public transport to protect workers from secondhand smoke
In this revealing and meticulously researched account of an untold story, Christopher Snowdon traces the fortunes of those who have tried to stamp out tobacco through the ages. Velvet Glove, Iron Fist takes the reader on a journey from 15th century Cuba to 21st century California, via Revolutionary France, Victorian Britain, Prohibition Era America and Nazi Germany.
Along the way, the author finds uncanny parallels between today's anti-smoking activists and those of the past. Today, as the same tactics begin to be used against those who enjoy alcohol, chocolate, fast food, gambling and perfume, Velvet Glove, Iron Fist provides a timely reminder that once politicians start regulating private behaviour, they find it very hard to quit.
"In this solidly researched, interesting and only occasionally strident book, Christopher Snowdon, an independent researcher, documents the cigarette's journey from patriotic necessity to pariah status. There had always been those who found smoking "loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs," as James I put it in 1604. Some despots, in Hindustan and Persia, went further, slitting smokers' lips or pouring molten lead down their throats. American prohibitionists claimed that smoking led to moral decay; Nazis that it was a decadent Jewish habit. But few non-bigots thought that their personal distaste warranted limiting the freedom of others."
--The Economist, June 11 2009
"In his fascinating history of anti-smoking, Velvet Glove, Iron Fist, Christopher Snowdon... shows how the campaign against passive smoking took off in the 1970s, long before the first studies that claimed to show its ill-effects. An early campaigner's statement that `we were just waiting for science to tell us what we already knew' accurately reveals the subordinate role of science in the anti-tobacco cause.
Snowdon quotes a recent editorial in the New Scientist, which suggests that the anti-smoking campaign may have reached some sort of limit. Commenting on the promotion of the concept of `third-hand smoke' - the notion that toxic residues in the form of particulates can be transmitted from a victim of passive smoking to a third party (and hence justifying bans on smoking in the home as well as in the workplace) - campaigners were accused of `distorting the facts to make their case'. The editorial concluded that `using bad science can never be justified, even in the pursuit of a noble cause'. Yet, as Snowdon observes, the `real message' that emerges from his study is that `government health agencies could no longer be trusted to provide accurate medical advice and were now wilfully misleading the public in an effort to manipulate behaviour'. This is the real damage done to public health by its embrace of the cynical moralism of the anti-smoking crusaders."
-- Dr Michael Fitzpatrick, Spiked Review of Books, October 30 2009
"Velvet Glove, Iron Fist is a fast-paced critique of the late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century public health focus on lifestyle behaviours. The book centres on smoking, which Snowdon, in common with anti-smoking activists, sees as the blueprint for increased regulation of individual health behaviour for the common good.
... Velvet Fist, Iron Glove is an enjoyable read which surely proves that smoking has not lost its ability to provoke debate and reaction in over four centuries. It remains to be seen whether the pendulum will continue to swing towards prohibition, or whether smokers will enjoy a renaissance"
— Rosemary Elliot, Social History of Medicine (2011)
Velvet Glove Iron Fist A History of AntiSmoking edition by Christopher Snowdon Professional Technical eBooks
Whether you're a smoker or not - this is an absolutely fascinating book to read.Because it shines light on society as a whole - regardless of the subject matter (smoking).
No other publication has provided such a comprehensive history about the anti-smoking movement. And when you begin to connect the dots - it's downright MIND-BLOWING how long this racket has been going on.
And furthermore - it's not really even about the anti-smokers, but the hundreds of billions of dollars that have lined the pockets of certain groups over the years.
After reading this - you realize that while tobacco companies may have some evil in them - the REAL evil people are the ones fighting individual liberty.
In the end it's getting more and more frustrating to just "BE" in the world these days - especially highly developed nations. The more sophisticated a body of people becomes - the more asinine the so-called problems become. Reading this makes you wish you lived in simpler times.
Highly recommended - even if just for the "eye-opening" aspect of the big picture and history.
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Velvet Glove Iron Fist A History of AntiSmoking edition by Christopher Snowdon Professional Technical eBooks Reviews
The history of antismoking began when Columbus brought tobacco from America to Spain - and the Inquisition clapped some of his crew into irons for smoking. Fast forward to that great public health promoter, Adolf Hitler, who tried to make Germany and much the world smoke-free. Fortunately for us, he was defeated by the armies of Churchill and Roosevelt - one a cigar, the other a cigarette smoker.
Tyrannical prohibitionists are at work today. Here, in New York, we have an ex-smoker billionaire mayor forcing poor smokers to huddle in the rain in the doorways. Elsewhere, my daughter just returned from dirt-poor authoritarian Turkmenistan where it is illegal to smoke in the streets. The fine is $50, which is about a month's salary for locals, and police enforcement is harsh. Why? Because their president stopped smoking and did not want to see other smokers from the window of his limo.
Snowdon writes in a engaging, lively, and sophisticated style. He runs through the scientific evidence the addictiveness but also the relative harmlessness of nicotine; the health hazards of tar in cigarettes; the ridiculous claims about `secondary smoke.'
The anti-smoking campaigners started out mild and reasonable. They told us to be compassionate to fellow office workers in enclosed spaces. Emboldened by their success, they drove an ever harder bargain. The velvet glove was off and the iron fist of criminalizing tobacco was out. Their campaigns are very well documented in this book.
As a life-long recreational cigar smoker - as well as a man who literally risked his life for freedom - I read this book from cover to cover. It was like nicotine, which paradoxically both relaxes and sharpens the mind. My only minor criticism of this book is that it was written by a Brit and not edited for the American lingo prior to its publication in this country.
What next? What will happen with the Berlin Wall that had been built around smokers in this country, in much of Europe, and not to forget Cuba and Turkmenistan - what will cause that wall to fall?
I feel grateful to the author for his engaging history and wish every thinking person owned a copy. Perhaps that will help to begin cracking the wall.
Christopher Snowdon describes in detail how tobacco smoking has always been controversial, with historical periods of popularity alternating with various prohibitionist stages (including one by the Nazi regime), becoming by the mid XX century a widespread socially accepted habit. However, epidemiological studies, ranging from those conducted by Nazi medics in the 1930’s to the famous Doll and Hill study of British medics in the 1950’s, gradually revealed a statistical correlation between cigarette smoking and lung cancer. This lead to a gradual shift in public awareness of the risks of tobacco smoking, giving rise in the period between the late 1970's and the early 2000's to a massive anti-smoking movement whose epicentre was located in the USA and other English speaking countries (Canada, Australia, NZ and the UK) but has slowly extended worldwide.
Today tobacco smoking is viewed everywhere as a major health hazard of global epidemic proportions allegedly the major cause of "preventable" death (400 thousand every year only in the USA). As we are told over and over by the medical profession and by all mass media, smoking "causes cancer" and endangers the health of non-smokers through “second hand smoke" (or Environmental Tobacco Smoke ETS). This has justified intense lobbying and advocacy efforts by Public Health agencies to legislate increasingly restrictive smoking bans, aiming in the end at the total eradication of smoking by deliberately labelling it as an anti-social and repulsive habit (the so-called “de-normalisation" of smoking).
How did this major historical change in perceptions and attitudes towards smoking happened? Christopher Snowdon takes a cold rational approach to understand this process. As opposed to previous attempts to ban and prohibit smoking (which he describes in detail), the current anti-smoking movement claims to be supported by hard medical science and has succeeded in recruiting the bulk of the medical profession. Snowdon undertakes a careful detailed and critical look at all the sides and issues involved (i) the medical evidence against smoking and ETS, (ii) the role of the Tobacco Industry (the so-called "Big Tobacco"), (iii) how the anti-smoking activist movement of the 1980's morphed into the global self-preserving "Tobacco Control" bureaucracy, (iv) the vested interests linking Tobacco Control and the Pharmaceutical Industry ("Big Pharma”); and last but not least (v) how the Tobacco Industry and the USA government reached a legal framework (the Master Settlement Agreement) in which the industry payed hefty sums to (allegedly) fund public anti-smoking advocacy and received in exchange protection from the avalanche of law suits by ex-smokers.
Snowdon examines and explains these processes in detail, quoting and citing authoritative sources from all sides. In particular, he shows by a painstakingly detailed review of the available medical literature how Tobacco Control has systematically ignored scientific evidence contrary to its anti-smoking advocacy and/or has conducted its own fraudulent and biassed research. Snowdon shows how epidemiological research (even that commissioned by Tobacco Control) has failed to prove a statistically significant correlation between ETS exposure and lung cancer. Snowdon also comments on how the ill conceived concept of “smoking related diseases” was concocted in order to justify grossly exaggerated mortality statistics (the 400 thousand “preventable” deaths). Yet, since Tobacco Control exerts a total (and unscrutinised) monopoly of the peer review process of all smoking related research in medical journals, this bureaucracy has succeeded in imposing its anti-smoking advocacy (ETS damage evidence and the cooked up 400 thousand “smoke related deaths”) as if it was hard scientific evidence that justifies trampling civil liberties to implement massive outdoor smoking bans (in California and NY). Snowdon shows how these bans, as well as the “de-normalisation” of smoking, have no scientific basis and have nothing to do with any legitimate health concern they are simply ideological moralising policies by medics advocating social eugenics. In fact, while the medics behind this social engineering effort claim to be “saving lives” by targeting smoking but not smokers, the policies they espouse have ended up stirring up popular hatred and institutional discrimination against smokers, specially underprivileged and low income ones.
Tobacco Control ideologues have forced a totalitarian “quit or die” approach to smoking and tobacco, thus obstructing any research on the design of less harmful cigarettes, or on reducing health hazards by inducing smokers to shift from cigarettes into safer nicotine delivery options (for example, smokeless tobacco, electronic cigarettes, cigars, pipes, water pipes). The official policy of the WHO stating that “no level of exposure to tobacco smoke is safe" is a clear example of this totalitarian approach. Evidently, this statement is false no physical substance in nature can be infinitely toxic (as toxicologists say “the poison is in the dosis”). This type of ideological statements make it crystal clear that most of the medics (who follow the guidelines from Tobacco Control and the WHO) are no longer relating to tobacco as rational scientists, but as moralisers “fighting vice” and in many cases as medieval sorcerers dealing with an “all evil” essence.
Snowdon, places the present day anti-smoking climate in the framework of the prohibitionist and moralising attitude towards all potentially hazardous substances (alcohol, marijuana, hard drugs, and even sugar and fat). He suggests that the current Public Health attitude to tobacco may be the first “test case” of a new type of prohibitionist strategy based on the following ingredients contentious substances are kept legal, but scare mongering media campaigns are either launched or tolerated that grossly exaggerate (or even spread lies and disinformation) on the real risks and health hazards. Given the exaggerated worry and fear that often go far beyond the real hazards of the substances, public support and justification is easily found for implementing an excessive and heavy handed regulation on its usage, all of which puts tremendous pressure on all users (now stigmatised as “addicts” regardless of the dosage) to either quit or take medication (hence immediate profit for Big Pharma). Snowdon concludes by arguing that Public Health prohibitionists should simply and honestly state the case for the potential social benefit of such policies, without resorting to a “scientific medic” argument (which they mostly lack) or to scare mongering attitudes. Evidently, this will not happen, but Snowdon reminds us that the current tyranny of these prohibitionists is a historical process and no tyranny is perpetual as the social cost of sustaining a global “war” against all usage and dosage of hazardous substances becomes more and more onerous to society, the authoritarian eugenist ideology of the current prohibitionists will become more and more discredited, in the end as utterly discredited as those old medical texts that regarded homosexuality as a mental disease and masturbation as causing blindness.
Whether you're a smoker or not - this is an absolutely fascinating book to read.
Because it shines light on society as a whole - regardless of the subject matter (smoking).
No other publication has provided such a comprehensive history about the anti-smoking movement. And when you begin to connect the dots - it's downright MIND-BLOWING how long this racket has been going on.
And furthermore - it's not really even about the anti-smokers, but the hundreds of billions of dollars that have lined the pockets of certain groups over the years.
After reading this - you realize that while tobacco companies may have some evil in them - the REAL evil people are the ones fighting individual liberty.
In the end it's getting more and more frustrating to just "BE" in the world these days - especially highly developed nations. The more sophisticated a body of people becomes - the more asinine the so-called problems become. Reading this makes you wish you lived in simpler times.
Highly recommended - even if just for the "eye-opening" aspect of the big picture and history.
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