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In the last year two people I was close to died of lung cancer. It goes without saying that these two were both cigarette smokers. They had bought their first Lucky Strike or Camel or Chesterfield as teenagers in the 1940s. They had smoked thousands of cartons of dozens of brands, two packs a day, three packs a day, until they died. One tried to quit 20 times. Another had quit, finally, in the hospital because he wasn't allowed to smoke around his oxygen tank. I don't say this to disqualify myself from writing about smoking but rather to qualify. As a survivor I have to ask who is to blame for these two deaths, or for the 350,000 other Americans– friends, uncles, parents– who died of smoking-related diseases last year? The daily newspaper, the medical establishment, even the cigarette packs these smokers opened carried warnings about the lethal dangers of cigarettes. Some 45,000 studies documented the link between smoking and ill health. Weren't these consumers responsible for what they inhaled? Didn't they kill themselves! What then about the tobacco industry?
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