Well, I finally finished reading “Slow Burn” by Don Oakley. Normally, I wouldn’t write a whole post about a book, I’d just update my “What I’m reading” page, but I think this one deserves as bit more.
First off is a warning; this book is a chore. It’s about 600 pages of quite factual stuff that needs quite close attention. If you’re the sort of reader that skims, you probably want to avoid this one.
Second is another warning. The guys style is not the easiest in the world to get along with; he cares deeply about his subject, but the phrasing he uses to put his points across can be irritating. There were several occasions when I nearly threw the damn thing across the room because I was annoyed not by what he said but how he said it.
Taking those two points into account, what do you get? Well, what you get is an examination of the whole arena of smoking and the effect that it has had not only on people’s health but also on the way society functions. Oakley takes issue with practically every piece of anti-smoking reportage that has been produced in the last 40 or so years, starting with the Surgeon General’s 1964 report and continuing up to 1999 when the book was published.
He explains at great length the ways in which statistical probabilities have been manipulated to present the public with scare-mongering facts to encourage them to give up smoking (children have a greater risk of health problems from a glass of milk a day than they do from living in a house where one or both parents smokes). He discusses how many conclusions about smoking and health have been based on only one (narrow) study. He takes issue with the way that many studies into the effects of passive smoking (or environmental tobacco smoke) are based purely on after-the-fact anecdotal evidence provided by friends or relatives of the person supposedly effected.
There is a big hole in his arguments, though, in that at the same time as condemning statistical manipulation and extrapolating from only one study, a lot of his counter-evidence does just that. He accuses various bodies of having bias towards anti-smoking, but displays bias of his own. Having said that, though, there is enough evidence presented here to make you re-consider your anti-smoking stance; if only half of what he says is only half true, it still presents a completely different picture than the anti-smoking brigade, public health policy groups and politicians would have us believe.
The truly thought-provoking part of this book comes, though, when he moves on from discussing the implications for health to discussing the implications for society. We’ve all seen the way that smokers, over the last 20 to 30 years, have slowly been ostracised from society, but the picture presented by Oakley is much worse than I would ever have thought it could be.
Consider this; you’re a woman, or non-white, or Jewish - or perhaps all three - and you apply for a job. The company turns you down because you’re a non-white, Jewish woman. What’s the first thing you do - call your lawyer! Now, replace those groupings with just one - smoker. Don’t bother calling your lawyer, he won’t be in.
Smokers are being regularly discriminated against because they smoke. Not because they smoke in a room where co-workers may be effected, mind. Just that they smoke - or have done in the last 12 months, or whatever arbitrary time limit the prospective employer might like to put on it. Coupled with the fact that (in the States at least) they have to pay more for health care, and many other things, smokers are as victimised as any minority group since the slaves were brought over from Africa - but no-one seems to give a damn.
And that’s why I would encourage you to read this book (if you can find a copy); to make you re-think the social ramifications of anti-smoking policies.
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I feel that I should point out that I am not a smoker. I never have been. I grew up surrounded by smokers and never really saw the attraction, but I don’t have any deep-seated feelings against smoking. I have never been convinced by the arguments against smoking, or passive smoking, and the recent introduction of a blanket ban on smoking in enclosed public spaces here in the UK quite frankly pisses me off. I realise that my opinion is not one that is shared by many people but there you go!
