Smoke in Their Eyes: Lessons in Movement Leadership from the Tobacco Wars

As one who actively fought with many tobacco prevention activists to kill the settlement and "improve" the McCain bill, even I found value in reading the tale from the perspective of Matt Myers.

Mike's book in no way changed my mind about the final outcome (i.e,, I think the settlement deal flopping was a good thing for the movement. And while I feel bad that the McCain bill died, I remain skeptical that the industry would have allowed it to pass even with some liability relief). That said, there are lessons to be learned.

Smoke in Their Eyes did make me wonder about what could have been possible had movement leaders developed strong, trusting relationships with each other, and if they communicated actively, openly, and honestly. The lack of communication between both leadership camps was most telling, in my opinion.

Besides its critical lessons, SMOKE IN THEIR EYES is a wonderful, gripping, story that makes you feel like you are right in the middle of the biggest national anti-tobacco battle in US history.

All advocacy and citizen movements have their "radical" and "moderate" wings. The rejectionists of the anti-tobacco movement refused to support the McCain bill in the end because
it provided the tobacco industry with a (large) annual cap on how much they would have to pay out in law suits each year, assuming they lost such suits. There were those movement leaders
who refused any concession that smelled at all of immunity for an industry whose products kill over 400,000 Americans each year, and castigated the moderates for even sitting down with the
industry to discuss a settlement. The failure of the McCain bill was also a set back to the nascent tobacco control movements in other countries, "because we are not able to stop tobacco aggression without success in the United States," as one Polish activist observed.

The author, former head of the Federal Trade Commission, founder of the Advocacy Institute, and long-time anti-tobacco activist, richly analyzes what went wrong with a primer on "Thirteen
Ways to Lead a Movement Backward," whose obvious inverse is how to lead a movement to victory. A successful movement strategically and knowingly blends vision and pragmatism,
engages in a "good cop-bad cop" approach to negotiations. The failed movement breaks out into factional war. The anti-tobacco movement yet to recover.

The other key lesson, is that all the principals but the rejectionists were willing to reconsider their roles in the debacle, to search deeply into their actions and motives, and to examine how they might have behaved differently. Pertschuk gives his own mea culpa. Even Ralph Nader learned something new. When the next opportunity comes, as it surely will, I would want these reflective persons to be out in front again.

Fortunately, the history is well documented; we are
not dependent on unreliable accounts of it. The key
fact is: the tobacco industry killed the McCain bill
as soon as it started to get tough on tobacco and
good for the public. 3 out of 4 members of the Congress that
killed the bill, had taken money from the tobacco industry.
So it wasn't too hard for the industry to kill a bill it
didn't like.

Pertschuk's rewrite would have us believe that victory
for public health was almost within our grasp. The
key fact is, the industry had a veto at all times,
which it didn't hesitate to use. In this battle
there was no danger at any time of public health
prevailing over industry profits. No historic
opportunity was missed; the opportunity never existed.
Not with this Congress.

On the contrary: if anything was narrowly missed,
it was a federal bailout of Big Tobacco. This
same Congress that killed a bill that was getting
too good for the public, also had the power to give
the tobacco industry a get-out-of-jail-free card:
legal immunity, special rights in court. That
was what the industry wanted, because it would
keep it safe and profitable.

This was no hypothetical danger: various forms of
immunity appeared in the McCain bill at different times.
Indeed it was without immunity in the bill that
the industry turned against the bill and killed it.
So what was missed, if anything, was a legal device
to keep Big Tobacco profitable and powerful into
the next century.

This history forms a pattern: the tobacco industry
has many times, in many states and localities, tried
to enter into closed-door, private negotiations.
The history of such closed-door deals also forms a
pattern: they turn out to protect industry profits
and do little to protect public health. Secret
negotiations with tobacco industry lawyers have
a long, sad, history: they don't tend to produce
results notably in the public interest.

It is sad that Pertschuk has not learned from
this history. It is even sadder that he attempts
to rewrite a recent instance of it. But perhaps
this is not a coincidence. Perhaps it would indeed
be difficult to write "I later realized that
I was mistaken in my approach, and that the
predictions that I differed with at the time,
were proven correct by the plain facts of history."

And perhaps we could apply Santayana here:
those who rewrite the past, surely will not learn
from it, and are then condemned to repeat it.
That would be saddest of all, because the tobacco
industry is still fighting hard to get
special rights in court. And is still a master
of closed-door negotiations. All it needs is
a couple of public health figures to endorse them.