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(More customer reviews)Jacob Sullum's book, "For Your Own Good: The Anti-Smoking Crusade and the Tyranny of Public Health" is maybe the best book for anyone interested in the issue of smoking. Sullum, a non-smoker, has taken a logical, meticulously researched look at the smoking issue and come to the heart of the essential problem; the "all or none" approach of the anti-tobacco movement.
Rather than approaching his book as a confirmation for smokers who wish to smoke, Sullum examines all of the essential issues of tobacco use including the health effects of secondhand smoke, the danger of smoking itself, and the comparable danger of both activities in relation to other activities. Sullum gives the specifics of these issues and points out the problems with the broad-brush generalities that anti-smoking crusaders have given to the public. For example, one has a difficult time reconciling statements like "Smoking takes ten years off your life" against "Quitting smoking for ten years will return your lungs to a healthy state". Sullum addresses discrepancies like this and brings the issues into perspective.
Sullum takes a cool and reasoned approach to this book and editorializes only at points that demand it. Sullum wants the reader to know they've come to the right place if they want 'just the facts' and the inevitable logical conclusions that can be drawn from them. In purpose, "For Your Own Good" doesn't vilify the anti-smoking movement, despite its title. Sullum points out early in the book that he found the vast majority of anti-smoking proponents he interviewed to be reaonable and well-worth talking too. It also doesn't give smokers a free-pass to smoke eighty cigarettes a day without any fear of ill health effects. The tobacco industry takes its lumps where warranted, but is equally defended against the wholesale extortion it has been exposed to. The tobacco industry may have spent billions to get millions to smoke, but it is also now forced to pay billions for a campaign of self-incrimination, and even pays out billions for public programs that benefit non-smokers by an overwhelming majority.
In the end, Sullum's reasoned approach makes for a most effective indictment of the anti-smoking crusade. The anti-smoking movement is "all or none" and wants you to hate smoking and oppress those who choose to smoke as a means to ending smoking forever. The political implications do not matter. If a "smoke free society" means the total loss of freedom for those who smoke and the eventual loss of freedom for all, we're going to live our lives as others tell us to, like it or not. The spread of misinformation isn't important as long as it achieves the ultimate goal.
Think of the most zealous of religious groups being given tens of billions of dollars and complete government support for their view. Any individual not expressing total devotion to any of the religious tenets is an apostate to be condemened in public. This view will be expressed on every radio and television commercial break. Any means necessary will be used to express this view. This is the current power of the anti-smoking movement eight years after this book was published.
Sullum covers everything you wanted to know about tobacco but were afraid to ask in 350 pages. Sullum carefully covers his trail and carries the reader on to the next page with the feeling that they've been given the best information available. The history of tobacco and smoking is also covered in brief.
I wish that Sullum would write a follow up or at least an updated edition for this book. In 2005, this book would be an eye-opener for those who have so completely swallowed the bait. I just realized that I'm the first person to review this book in five years. Scary, to say the least.
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