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WHY HAS BIG TOBACCO LIED FOR 60 YEARS? THE ORIGINS OF THE GREATEST CORPORATE COVER-UP — Transcript

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0:00They knew. That is the sentence that
0:02sits at the center of this entire story.
0:05Not they suspected, not they had
0:08concerns, not they acted in good faith
0:12on the available evidence. They knew.
0:16By 1953,
0:18the largest tobacco companies in the
0:19United States had their own scientists
0:22telling them in internal reports that
0:25were marked confidential and never meant
0:28to see the light of day that cigarettes
0:30caused cancer. They had the evidence.
0:33They had read the studies. They
0:36understood what their product was doing
0:38to the bodies of the people who bought
0:40it.
0:41And then they spent the next six
0:43decades, six decades, building one of
0:46the most sophisticated, expensive, and
0:49deliberately organized campaigns of
0:51deception in the history of industry to
0:54make sure that you never found out. This
0:57is the story of how they did it. Not
1:00just what they did, but how. The
1:03specific men,
1:04the specific meetings, the specific
1:07words they chose.
1:09Because this was not a vague cultural
1:11negligence or a gradual collective
1:14blindness. It was a strategy. It had a
1:17name. It had a budget. And it was
1:20carried out with the full knowledge of
1:22every senior executive at every major
1:25tobacco company in America.
1:28Before we go any further, before we open
1:31the documents that the tobacco companies
1:33spent decades trying to keep sealed,
1:36make sure you are subscribed to the Talk
1:39History Channel.
1:41Leave us a comment and tell us which
1:43other corporate cover-ups you want us to
1:45investigate. Because what you are about
1:48to hear is one of the most documented,
1:51most confirmed, and yet somehow still
1:54most shocking stories in the history of
1:57capitalism.
1:58To understand the lie,
2:00you first have to understand the dream.
2:04The American cigarette was, for the
2:06first half of the 20th century, one of
2:08the most successful products in the
2:10history of commerce.
2:12Not successful in the way we use the
2:14word today.
2:15Not viral, not trending.
2:18Successful in the way that only a few
2:20things in history have ever been.
2:22It was everywhere. It was everyone.
2:25It was as ordinary as bread and as
2:27sophisticated as perfume,
2:30depending on who was selling it to you
2:32and why.
2:34By 1952,
2:36Americans were smoking 450 billion
2:38cigarettes every year.
2:41Not per decade, per year.
2:44The tobacco industry was among the most
2:46powerful economic forces in the country.
2:50Its companies appeared in the most
2:51prestigious investment portfolios.
2:55Its executives moved in the highest
2:56circles of political life.
2:59Senators from tobacco states were among
3:02the most powerful men in Washington.
3:05And the cigarette itself had been
3:07carefully, brilliantly, relentlessly
3:09positioned as something more than a
3:12consumer product. It was a symbol
3:16of freedom, of sophistication,
3:19of the modern world and everything it
3:21promised.
3:22The Marlboro Man did not sell
3:24cigarettes. He sold an identity.
3:27Camel did not advertise nicotine
3:30delivery. It advertised adventure.
3:33Lucky Strike did not promote a habit.
3:36It promoted a lifestyle.
3:38Doctors appeared in advertisements,
3:41not as a warning,
3:42but as an endorsement.
3:44More doctors smoke Camels than any other
3:47cigarette.
3:48That was a real advertisement.
3:51It ran in real
3:53Real people read it and believed it.
3:56And then in the autumn of 1953,
3:59something happened that threatened to
4:01destroy all of it.
4:03A series of scientific papers
4:06published in the world's most respected
4:08medical journals established with a
4:10clarity that had never existed before
4:13that cigarettes caused lung cancer.
4:16Not maybe, not possibly,
4:19not in some disputed, contested,
4:21inconclusive way.
4:23The evidence was mounting toward a
4:25conclusion that the scientific community
4:27was beginning to treat as established
4:30fact.
4:31The tobacco companies read these papers
4:34and they did not dispute the science in
4:35private.
4:37In private, they were terrified.
4:40The question was not whether the science
4:42was correct. The question was what to do
4:45about the fact that it was.
4:48The answer they chose changed the
4:50history of public health and it began
4:53with a meeting at a hotel in New York
4:55City.
4:57December 14th,
4:581953,
5:00the Plaza Hotel, New York City.
5:03The president of the American Tobacco
5:05Company, a man named Paul Hahn, had sent
5:08private invitations to the chief
5:10executives of every major tobacco
5:12company in the United States.
5:15They arrived separately
5:17as executives do when they wish not to
5:19be seen arriving together.
5:22Philip Morris,
5:23R. J. Reynolds,
5:25Brown and Williamson,
5:27Benson and Hedges, Lorillard,
5:30the men who controlled the product that
5:32100 million Americans put in their
5:35mouths
5:36every day.
5:37They had brought with them a guest.
5:40His name was John W. Hill.
5:42He was the founder of Hill and Knowlton,
5:45at that time the most powerful public
5:47relations firm in America.
5:50Hill had managed reputations, shaped
5:53narratives, and controlled public
5:55perception for corporations and
5:57governments for three decades. He was,
6:01in the language of his profession, the
6:03best in the business.
6:05The meeting lasted most of the day.
6:08What was said in that room has since
6:10become, through court proceedings and
6:13document discoveries, a matter of public
6:16record.
6:17And what was decided in that room was
6:19not a denial,
6:21not a cover-up in the crude sense of
6:23simply burying evidence.
6:25What Hill proposed, and what the
6:27executives accepted, was something far
6:30more sophisticated.
6:32They would not deny that the science
6:34existed. They would manufacture a
6:36controversy around it.
6:38Hill understood something about the
6:40human mind that the tobacco companies
6:42had not yet fully grasped. The public
6:45did not need to be convinced that
6:47cigarettes were safe.
6:48The public simply needed to be convinced
6:51that the question was not yet settled,
6:53that the scientists were still debating,
6:56that more research was needed before
6:58anyone could say anything with
6:59certainty.
7:01Doubt, Hill argued, was a product in
7:03itself.
7:05And unlike cigarettes, it was very cheap
7:07to manufacture.
7:09The strategy was described, with almost
7:11breathtaking candor,
7:13in an internal memorandum prepared by
7:16Hill and Knowlton the following year.
7:19The memo stated that their task was,
7:23and this is a direct quote from a
7:24document that the industry fought for
7:27decades to suppress,
7:30"Stop public panic. There is only one
7:32problem,
7:34confidence and how to establish it,
7:36public assurance and how to create it,
7:39and most important, how to free millions
7:42of Americans from the guilty fear that
7:45is going to arise deep in their
7:46biological depths, regardless of any
7:49pooh-poohing logic, every time they
7:51light a cigarette.
7:53Hill and Knowlton internal memorandum,
7:561954.
7:58Read that again.
7:59Not how do we make our product safer?
8:03Not how do we tell the truth about the
8:05risks? How do we free people from the
8:08guilty fear? How do we protect the act
8:11of lighting a cigarette from the
8:13inconvenient intrusion of what the
8:15science actually said?
8:18The plan they designed
8:20had two components that would work in
8:22perfect devastating combination.
8:25The first was called the Frank
8:27Statement.
8:29On January 4th, 1954,
8:32a full-page advertisement ran in 448
8:36newspapers across the United States,
8:39reaching an estimated 43 million
8:42readers.
8:43It was signed by all the major tobacco
8:45companies.
8:47It acknowledged that the public had
8:48questions about health and smoking.
8:51It promised that the industry took those
8:54questions seriously.
8:56It stated, in language that sounded
8:58responsible and measured and deeply
9:00concerned,
9:02"We believe the products we make are not
9:05injurious to health."
9:07It was, in every sentence, a lie.
9:10The executives who signed it had
9:12internal documents on their desks saying
9:15the opposite.
9:16But 43 million people read it and felt
9:19reassured.
9:21The second component was the Tobacco
9:23Industry Research Committee,
9:25the TIRC.
9:27This was presented to the public as an
9:29independent scientific body, funded by
9:32the industry but committed to honest
9:35inquiry.
9:36Its existence allowed tobacco companies
9:39to say
9:40whenever a journalist or a senator asked
9:43awkward questions, "We are actively
9:45funding research to get to the bottom of
9:48this."
9:49In reality, Hill and Knowlton handpicked
9:52the scientific advisory board
9:54specifically for researchers who were
9:57skeptical of the smoking-cancer link.
10:00The research program was deliberately
10:02steered away from the central question,
10:05"Does smoking cause cancer?"
10:07and toward basic science topics that had
10:09no bearing on tobacco's harms, but could
10:12be cited as evidence of good faith.
10:16In the TIRC's first full year of
10:18operation, it spent $948,000
10:22in total.
10:23Less than 10% of that went to actual
10:26scientific research.
10:28The rest went to Hill and Knowlton, to
10:31advertising, and to administration.
10:34The Frank Statement was a masterpiece of
10:37strategic deception.
10:39It gave the impression of transparency
10:42while achieving the opposite.
10:44It harnessed the credibility of science
10:46while systematically subverting it.
10:49And it established a template, a
10:51playbook,
10:52that the industry would use, refine, and
10:55deploy without interruption for the next
10:59four decades.
11:00It was not the end of the cover-up.
11:03It was the beginning of its
11:05industrialization.
11:07January 11th, 1964.
11:10The auditorium of the State Department
11:12building in Washington, D.C.
11:15Surgeon General Luther Terry walked to
11:17the podium and delivered a report that
11:20had been a decade in the making,
11:23reviewed by 10 scientists, drawing on
11:26over 7,000 individual studies, and
11:29reaching a conclusion that had been
11:31carefully, reluctantly, and unavoidably
11:35arrived at.
11:36Smoking was the cause of lung cancer,
11:39not a contributing factor,
11:42not a correlation that required more
11:44study,
11:45a cause.
11:46The scientific debate, to the extent it
11:49had ever been genuine, was over.
11:52Terry scheduled the press conference for
11:54a Saturday, specifically to prevent the
11:56announcement from moving markets before
11:58the week's close.
12:00The New York Times ran it on the front
12:02page. Every major broadcaster
12:05>> [music]
12:05>> carried it.
12:07Americans understood that something
12:09significant had been said.
12:11The tobacco industry's response was
12:13immediate, organized, and entirely
12:16consistent with the strategy it had been
12:19running for the past decade.
12:22Philip Morris issued a public statement
12:24the same day.
12:26Its position,
12:27"We don't accept the idea that there are
12:30harmful agents in tobacco."
12:33Not, "We are reviewing the evidence."
12:36Not, "We are taking this seriously."
12:39Not, "We will be looking at our products
12:42in light of this report." "We do not
12:44accept the idea."
12:46The idea,
12:48as though the Surgeon General of the
12:49United States had merely offered an
12:52opinion.
12:53But what happened next revealed just how
12:56well-designed the strategy truly was.
13:00Because the tobacco companies did not
13:02simply deny,
13:03they did something more effective.
13:06They amplified the appearance of
13:08uncertainty.
13:09The TIRC,
13:11quietly renamed in the months after the
13:14Surgeon General's report, the Council
13:16for Tobacco Research, began funding a
13:19new class of what it called independent
13:22scientists.
13:23These were researchers who could could
13:25counted on to raise questions about the
13:27methodology of cancer studies. Who could
13:30point to gaps in the evidence?
13:32Who could note with perfect technical
13:34accuracy
13:36that while the correlation between
13:37smoking and lung cancer was strong,
13:41the precise biological mechanism was not
13:43yet fully understood.
13:45Every one of these statements was, in
13:48isolation, scientifically defensible.
13:51A correlation is not technically a proof
13:54of causation.
13:56Mechanisms were not fully understood.
13:59More research could always be called
14:01for.
14:02The genius of the strategy was that it
14:04weaponized the inherent uncertainty of
14:07science itself,
14:08using the normal, appropriate hedging of
14:11scientific language to suggest that
14:13nothing was really known at all.
14:16And then, in 1969,
14:18a vice president of marketing at Brown
14:22and Williamson,
14:23a subsidiary of British American
14:25Tobacco,
14:26sat down and wrote an internal
14:29memorandum that described the strategy
14:31with a precision that no one outside the
14:34industry had yet articulated so clearly.
14:38The memo was meant to be confidential.
14:41It would remain confidential for over
14:43two decades. When it finally emerged, it
14:46would be cited in courtrooms and
14:48congressional hearings around the world
14:51as one of the most damning documents in
14:53the history of corporate deception.
14:57It read,
14:58"Doubt is our product, since it is the
15:01best means of competing with the body of
15:03fact
15:04that exists in the mind of the general
15:07public.
15:08It is also the means of establishing a
15:11controversy."
15:13Brown and Williamson internal
15:14memorandum, 1969.
15:17"Doubt is our product." Four words
15:20written by a marketing executive
15:23describing with casual precision the
15:26operating philosophy of an entire
15:28industry.
15:30They were not trying to prove cigarettes
15:32were safe.
15:33They had abandoned that pretense years
15:35ago.
15:36They were manufacturing doubt,
15:39packaging it, distributing it through
15:41op-eds and scientific panels and
15:44carefully funded research programs and
15:47the trained voices of articulate
15:49credentialed men
15:50who could look directly into a camera
15:52and say, with a straight face, that the
15:55science was still inconclusive.
15:58And it worked.
16:00By the end of the 1960s, despite a
16:02Surgeon General's report, despite a
16:05decade of mounting medical evidence,
16:07despite the private knowledge of every
16:09senior executive in the industry,
16:12the American public remained genuinely
16:14uncertain about whether smoking caused
16:17cancer.
16:18Polling data from the tobacco company's
16:21own research showed it.
16:23Smokers did not believe they were going
16:24to die from their cigarettes. They had
16:27been told by voices that sounded
16:29authoritative and balanced and concerned
16:32for their welfare
16:34that no one really knew.
16:36The Tobacco Industry Research Committee
16:39had spent hundreds of millions of
16:40dollars on that uncertainty.
16:43It was the most expensive product they
16:46ever made and it never appeared on any
16:49balance sheet.
16:51But there was something else happening
16:53inside the industry in these years.
16:56Something that, when it finally emerged,
16:58would add a layer of deliberate
17:00engineering to the cover-up that went
17:02beyond even the manipulation of public
17:05perception.
17:06They were not just hiding what the
17:07cigarette did to the body.
17:09They were redesigning it to do it more
17:12effectively.
17:14April 14th, 1994,
17:17a congressional subcommittee hearing
17:19room in Washington, D.C.
17:22Seven men sat in a row at the witness
17:24table.
17:25The chief executives of the seven
17:27largest tobacco companies in America:
17:30Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds, Brown and
17:34Williamson, Lorillard, Liggett, American
17:37Tobacco, United States Tobacco.
17:41Congressman Henry Waxman, who had spent
17:43years fighting to hold the industry
17:45accountable, stood at the front of the
17:47room and asked each of them a single
17:50question.
17:52He asked them to raise their right
17:54hands.
17:55He administered an oath, and then he
17:57asked,
17:59"Do you believe that nicotine is not
18:01addictive?"
18:02One by one, each of the seven men said,
18:05"Yes."
18:06>> [music]
18:06>> They believed nicotine was not
18:08addictive.
18:10They were lying. They knew they were
18:12lying.
18:13The documents that would eventually
18:15emerge from court proceedings and
18:17whistleblowers would prove definitively,
18:20incontrovertibly,
18:22that they were lying at that very
18:24moment.
18:25Because inside the industry, the
18:27addictiveness of nicotine had been an
18:29acknowledged, studied, and deliberately
18:32exploited fact for decades.
18:36A Brown and Williamson executive
18:38had written in a confidential memo in
18:401963,
18:4231 years before those seven men sat at
18:45that table and denied it under oath,
18:49the following words:
18:50"Nicotine is addictive. We are then in
18:53the business of selling nicotine, an
18:56addictive drug."
18:58Brown and Williamson internal
18:59memorandum, 1963.
19:02"Nicotine is addictive. We are in the
19:05business of selling an addictive drug."
19:08Written in 1963,
19:10classified as confidential, filed away,
19:14and then denied under oath in 1994.
19:18But the industry did not merely know
19:20about nicotine's addictiveness. It
19:23studied it. It optimized it.
19:26It used that knowledge to engineer its
19:28product so that each cigarette delivered
19:30nicotine to the brain more effectively,
19:33more rapidly, and with a more powerful
19:36psychological reward than the natural
19:38tobacco leaf would have produced on its
19:41own.
19:42Brown and Williamson had been adding
19:45ammonia to their cigarettes since the
19:471960s.
19:49Ammonia changed the chemical form of
19:51nicotine in the cigarette smoke,
19:54converting it from a form that was
19:56absorbed slowly by the lungs into a form
19:59that reached the brain almost instantly.
20:03The effect on a smoker was measurable
20:06and significant.
20:07The cigarette hit harder.
20:09It satisfied faster.
20:12It made the next cigarette feel more
20:13necessary.
20:15This was not accidental. It was
20:17designed. It was tested. It was refined
20:21over years of proprietary research.
20:24And it was kept out of every public
20:26statement the company ever made about
20:29its products.
20:31The man who would eventually bring this
20:33specific knowledge into the open was a
20:35biochemist named Jeffrey Wigand.
20:39He had been hired by Brown and
20:41Williamson in 1989 as vice president for
20:45research and development. Specifically,
20:47he was told to work on developing a
20:50safer cigarette.
20:52What he found when he got there was a
20:55company that had no real interest in a
20:57safer cigarette.
20:59A company that was fully aware of the
21:02harm its products caused, and that had
21:05built its entire research program around
21:08two objectives, maintaining that harm
21:11and denying its existence.
21:15When Wigand raised concerns,
21:17when he objected to additives he
21:19believed were dangerous, when he asked
21:21questions about the company's research
21:23practices, he was warned and then he was
21:26fired.
21:28He signed a confidentiality agreement.
21:31As fired executives usually do,
21:33he went home. He tried to move on,
21:36but the Mississippi Attorney General's
21:38office was building a case against the
21:40tobacco industry.
21:42They needed someone who had been inside,
21:45someone who had seen the documents,
21:47someone who could testify to what the
21:49companies actually knew and when they
21:52knew it.
21:53They found Jeffrey Wigand.
21:56What followed was one of the most
21:57sustained corporate intimidation
21:59campaigns in American legal history.
22:03Brown and Williamson hired a private
22:05investigation firm to compile a 500-page
22:08dossier on Wigand, which was distributed
22:11to media organizations in what appeared
22:14to be an attempt to discredit him before
22:16he could testify.
22:18He received anonymous death threats. A
22:21bullet was left in his mailbox.
22:24CBS News had arranged to interview
22:26Wigand for the program 60 Minutes. The
22:29interview was conducted. It was
22:32complete. It was ready to air.
22:36And then, at the last moment, CBS's
22:39lawyers told the program's executives
22:41that if they broadcast it, Brown and
22:44Williamson might sue CBS for tortious
22:47interference.
22:49A lawsuit that could derail an imminent
22:51merger between CBS and Westinghouse.
22:56A major American television network
22:58killed a story about tobacco
23:01because the tobacco company threatened
23:03to make the network's acquisition more
23:05difficult.
23:07The interview was broadcast in a
23:09sanitized form that omitted the crucial
23:12details.
23:13The network later reversed course and
23:16aired the full version.
23:18But only after Wigand's testimony had
23:21already leaked through court proceedings
23:23and been published by the Wall Street
23:25Journal.
23:26By then the dam had begun to break. The
23:30dam broke because of paper.
23:33For decades the tobacco companies had
23:35known that their greatest vulnerability
23:38was not the science.
23:39They had learned to manage the science,
23:41but their own documents. The internal
23:44memos, the confidential research
23:47reports, the private correspondence
23:49between executives who spoke to each
23:52other with a frankness they never
23:54permitted themselves in public.
23:57The documents that said things like
23:59doubt is our product and nicotine is
24:01addictive. We are in the business of
24:04selling it.
24:05As early as the 1970s the industry's
24:08lawyers had developed strategies for
24:11managing these documents.
24:13Legal privilege was extended over as
24:15many internal communications as possible
24:18placing them beyond the reach of
24:19discovery in civil litigation.
24:23Research that produced inconvenient
24:25results was shelved, not published.
24:29Scientists who worked for
24:30industry-funded bodies were discouraged
24:32from asking questions about causation.
24:36But the documents existed. And
24:38documents, unlike memories, are
24:41difficult to make disappear entirely.
24:44The first major break came from a
24:46paralegal named Merrell Williams who had
24:49been hired to assist Brown and
24:51Williamson's law firm in reviewing
24:54company documents. Over several years he
24:57made copies. When those copies reached
25:00the Mississippi Attorney General's
25:01office in the early 1990s,
25:04they confirmed something that public
25:06health advocates had long suspected, but
25:09never been able to prove with the
25:12company's own words. The industry had
25:15known from the beginning,
25:17and it had organized systematically and
25:20deliberately to prevent that knowledge
25:22from reaching the people who were dying
25:25from its products.
25:27In 1998,
25:29the attorneys general of 46 states,
25:32having gathered enough evidence to make
25:34their cases unanswerable, reached a
25:37settlement with the four largest tobacco
25:40companies.
25:41The Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement
25:44required the companies to pay a minimum
25:46of $206 billion
25:49over 25 years,
25:52the single largest civil litigation
25:54settlement in American history.
25:57Combined with separate settlements
25:59reached by four individual states,
26:02the total reached $246 billion. It also
26:06It also required something that would
26:08prove in some ways more significant than
26:12the money. It required the tobacco
26:14companies to make their internal
26:16documents public.
26:1814 million pages of internal tobacco
26:21industry documents were eventually made
26:24available through the University of
26:26California, San Francisco's archive.
26:29Researchers, journalists, and lawyers
26:32around the world spent years working
26:34through them.
26:35What they found confirmed, in the
26:38company's own handwriting, on their own
26:41letterhead, in the private language that
26:43executives use when they are not
26:45expecting to be read,
26:47everything that the cover-up had been
26:49designed to conceal.
26:51And yet, and yet the story did not end
26:54in 1998
26:56because the tobacco companies had not
26:59simply built a product. They had built a
27:01method,
27:02and methods outlast the contexts in
27:05which they are created. The same public
27:07relations strategies,
27:09the manufactured scientific controversy,
27:12the front organizations presenting
27:14themselves as independent research
27:16bodies,
27:18the recruited skeptics placed in
27:19credentialed positions, the emphasis on
27:22uncertainty over consensus, have since
27:25been documented in campaigns run by the
27:27fossil fuel industry on climate change,
27:31by pharmaceutical companies on opioid
27:33addiction, by chemical companies on
27:36pesticide toxicity.
27:38The same firms, sometimes literally the
27:41same firms.
27:43Hill and Knowlton's fingerprints appear
27:45in multiple industries across multiple
27:48decades.
27:50The tobacco industry did not merely lie
27:53about its own product. It invented the
27:55modern architecture of corporate
27:57scientific denial.
27:59It showed that a well-resourced industry
28:02working in concert could sustain a false
28:05public controversy around a scientific
28:08consensus for decades.
28:10Long enough to protect its revenues,
28:13long enough to see its executives retire
28:15comfortably, long enough for the legal
28:18and regulatory consequences to arrive so
28:21slowly that they felt, by the time they
28:23came, almost manageable.
28:26Today, tobacco kills approximately 8
28:29million people every year.
28:32Not in a single year during the cover-up
28:35era.
28:36Every year now, when the industry has
28:39ostensibly been reformed and regulated
28:42and held accountable.
28:43Every year, in the places where the
28:45industry moved its focus when the
28:48American and European markets contracted
28:51into Asia, into Africa, into the
28:53developing world, where the regulatory
28:56environment is less robust and the
28:59consumer protections fewer.
29:02Philip Morris International, the global
29:04arm of the company that signed every
29:06document, ran every strategy, funded
29:09every front organization, now runs
29:12advertisements promoting what it calls a
29:15smoke-free future.
29:17It says it is working toward a world
29:19where cigarettes no longer exist.
29:22It continues to sell hundreds of
29:24billions of cigarettes every year while
29:27making those claims.
29:29The industry has changed its shape. The
29:32product has changed, the marketing has
29:35changed, the language has changed. The
29:38logic has not changed.
29:40The tobacco cover-up is often presented
29:43as a story about an industry,
29:45about executives, about the particular
29:48moral failures of particular men in a
29:52particular era of American capitalism.
29:55But that framing
29:57lets us off too easily.
29:59Because the cover-up succeeded for 60
30:02years, not only because of what the
30:04tobacco companies did, but because of
30:06what the rest of us [music] did not do.
30:08Journalists who did not push hard
30:10enough,
30:11regulators who were outspent and
30:14outmaneuvered, politicians who accepted
30:17campaign contributions and voted
30:19accordingly, doctors who smoked in their
30:22own offices, scientists who took
30:25industry funding and told themselves
30:28they were still independent. And
30:30millions of ordinary people who read the
30:33Frank statement in 1954
30:36and felt reassured,
30:38who watched the seven executives raise
30:40their hands in 1994
30:43and wondered if perhaps they were
30:45telling the truth.
30:46Who chose in the way that humans always
30:49choose when the truth is frightening and
30:52the lie is comfortable to believe?
30:56The deepest lesson of the tobacco
30:57cover-up is not that corporations lie.
31:01Corporations lie all the time and some
31:04of them are caught and some of them are
31:07fined and the world moves on.
31:10The deepest lesson is about what it
31:12costs when the lie works, not the legal
31:16costs, not the settlement, not the
31:19billions of dollars. The cost is counted
31:22in bodies.
31:23100 million people died from
31:25tobacco-related diseases in the 20th
31:28century alone. That is the World Health
31:31Organization's estimate.
31:34100 million people across a century in a
31:37slow and preventable epidemic that the
31:40industry that caused it spent 60 years
31:44and hundreds of millions of dollars
31:46trying to make sure no one could prove
31:48it was causing.
31:50The documents are public now. The
31:53settlements have been paid. The
31:56executives are gone. And 8 million
31:59people will die from tobacco this year.
32:03Not because we did not know
32:05because for long enough we were
32:07convinced that we didn't.
32:09Thank you for watching [music]
32:11all the way to the end. If this story
32:13left you with questions
32:15if it made you want to look differently
32:17at the institutions and the narratives
32:19that surround you every day
32:21then subscribe to the Archives Untold
32:24channel. We will be here every week
32:27finding the stories that the official
32:29version prefers to leave in the dark.
32:32Leave us a comment. Tell us which
32:34industry's hidden history you want us to
32:37investigate next.
32:38See you in the next video.

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