[Mb-civic] Big Tobacco's toll - Derrick Z. Jackson - The Boston Globe

[William Swiggard]

<>Big Tobacco's toll
By Derrick Z. Jackson, Globe Columnist  |  August 10, 2005

IN 1996, Peter Jennings led off an ABC News special by saying, ''Tonight 
we're going to show you how the tobacco companies continue to prosper 
despite the damage these things do and despite the increased pressure 
the companies are under from lawsuits and proposed government 
regulation. This is a very, very smart industry that has been turning 
adversity into opportunity for the last 30 years."

Last year Jennings anchored another special about Big Tobacco. After a 
public health professor led off by saying, ''Congress, which is 
essentially bought by the tobacco industry, isn't willing to act to save 
literally tens of millions of American lives," Jennings added, ''This is 
also a program about the failure of the country's public health leaders. 
They squandered an opportunity to save millions of lives."

Jennings lost his own life this week from lung cancer from smoking. His 
struggle in some ways mirrors the nation's entanglement with cigarettes. 
Jennings smoked for about 30 years beginning in the 1950s at age 13. He 
quit for 20 years, then resumed smoking after the terrorist attacks of 
9/11. The nation began warning Americans about the dangers of smoking in 
the 1960s. In the four decades since, smoking rates in the United States 
and the public places where smoking is allowed have declined dramatically.

But the industry is alive and well, littering the planet with illness 
and death. Despite the drop in the last half century, 22 percent of US 
high school students smoke. The Centers for Disease Control predicts 
that 6.4 million of US children alive today will die of a 
smoking-related disease. Globally, the World Health Organization 
predicts that deaths due to smoking will grow from a current 5 million 
people a year to 10 million a year by 2020. About 650 million people 
alive today will die from smoking.

Jennings noted that he resumed smoking because ''I was weak." He said he 
would try to resume his duties on ''good days." The good days never 
came. He prematurely relinquished his anchor spot in a nation where 5.5 
million years of potential life and $92 billion of productivity are lost 
every year to smoking and where smoking-related health costs amount to 
$75.5 billion, according to the CDC.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/08/10/big_tobaccos_toll/

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