Encouraging student activism: tobacco

A while back, I wrote about how to use extra credit to motivate students to use their power as consumers to influence those aspects of the economy that are directly harmful to people and/or the world. I believe that this is an essential “closing of the loop” in our teaching: students need to not only learn about the damage that some of our economic activities are doing, but to take action.

I started with an extra credit project in which students send letters or emails to tobacco corporations. I realize that tobacco corporations probably do not care that most people think they are evil—they have an addicted, and very sizable, minority of citizens as customers. But I refuse to totally give in to cynicism on this point. The best effects of this project may be on the students, even if the effect on the market is negligible.

I would like to post a link to updated instructions for such an assignment. Since my original posting, there have been some changes in tobacco corporations. Specifically, the big four will soon be the big three. But the biggest change is that I have added a positive activity. As most of you probably know, CVS Health has decided to stop marketing tobacco products—a decision that will cost them about two billion dollars a year in lost revenue. I would like my students to send them emails thanking them for this decision.

Here is a link to my website, on which I have posted a PDF of the instructions I posted for my students. You may alter it for your students, if you wish to do this activity.

Tobacco Corporations Killing Us for Profit in Yet Another Way

For many decades tobacco corporations wanted to suppress the fact that tobacco use is addictive. Scientists have known about nicotine addiction for a long time. However, when Congress subpoenaed the executives of the major tobacco companies to testify in 1994, all of the executives raised their hands and swore that they did not believe that nicotine was addictive. About that same time, an employee of one of the tobacco companies copied some of the internal research documents and released them to the Journal of the American Medical Association. These documents proved that the tobacco companies knew, from their own secret research, that nicotine was addictive. The corporate researchers even referred to cigarettes as NDDs—nicotine delivery devices. Not only did they know they were selling an addictive product, but addiction was their product. (The Russell Crowe movie The Insider tells this story.)

The tobacco corporations not only knew that addiction was their product, but they knew that most smokers start smoking when they are young. They accordingly focused some very successful advertising campaigns on young consumers. “Joe Camel” was a particularly successful image that made young people think smoking was cool.

In the late 1990s the federal government and state governments sued the tobacco corporations for the health care expenses due to lung cancer and other smoking-related diseases. Tobacco corporations had been making the profits from, and taxpayers footing the bill for, smoking-addiction-induced cancer. Despite their best efforts and attempted appeals, the tobacco corporations had to pay these expenses, and in addition had to stop marketing their products to young people.

A similar thing is happening with the corporate attempts to discredit global warming science. One of the early leaders of these attempts was the same man who fought to discredit the link between smoking and cancer: Frederick Seitz. One of the groups that fight to discredit global warming, the Heartland Institute, still denies the health dangers of smoking. They used to have this on their home page, but now keep it hidden on a web page that is not easy to find.

The truth gets even more indirect and mysterious. I describe now a report I heard on All Things Considered yesterday. Today, nearly everyone has heard that stress causes numerous health problems, including heart attacks. The scientific research behind the stress-heart disease connection is excellent. But the earliest major researcher who studied the physiology of stress—Hans Selye—got most of his funding from tobacco corporations. The reason is actually quite simple. Numerous things cause heart attacks. Stress is one of them. Smoking is another. Others include poor nutrition and genetic factors. All of these factors interact with one another. And what the tobacco companies wanted to claim, although Selye never actually said this himself (as far as I can tell), was that stress, not smoking, caused heart attacks. What Selye did not say, the tobacco companies were eager to say. Their advertisements openly proclaimed that you should smoke to relieve stress. Tobacco corporations wanted to blame stress and avert criticism of smoking.

And Selye went right along with this. Mark Petticrew, Director of Public Health for the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and his colleagues examined thousands of documents that were made public as a result of the “tobacco settlement” of the late 1990s. They found that tobacco corporations vetted the content and wording of Selye’s papers (see hyperlink above). Says Petticrew, “tobacco industry lawyers actually influenced the content of his writings, they suggested to him things that he should comment on.”

Hanse Selye was certainly a famous scientist, author of thousands of papers and 39 books. But was Selye a liar? It does not appear so. But tobacco companies paid for his research and used his results to lie to the American public. Blood is on their hands, and Selye was their, apparently willing, tool.

You see, some scientists will say whatever you pay them to say. Far fewer scientists will do this than lawyers and politicians, but there are some. Corporate interests, such as the coal and oil industries, have found these few and use them over and over and over.

Consumer Pressure

Please see below, or visit the website for the Oklahoma Science Teachers Association, for information about the upcoming Second Annual Oklahoma Evolution Road Trip!

Like most college instructors, I wish to give my students an experience that will make a real difference in their lives. Sometimes it is as simple as getting them to take a close look at the world around them, which they may never have done before. Once they have done it, the first step has been taken and they might continue the habit. Well, maybe half of them will.

But I think it is important for us to also participate in some form of activism. While I admire the work of Bill McKibben and 350.org,  I have all kinds of excuses why I do not personally undertake such activities. But it occurred to me that there might be something else I could do, which I have a specific ability to do, and which not everyone else has.

I teach classes. And I want my students to become activists on some issues. And students want extra credit. And voilà, the perfect fit: have the students write letters.

I have to choose the issues carefully, so that they are related to my field (biology) and are not partisan. But there are plenty of such issues. I decided to start with something that is pretty straightforward: tobacco.  Nobody takes the position that “tobacco is a blessing to the world.” Well, I think, anyway. I realized that I could get students to write letters to tobacco corporations, expressing their disapproval (or horror, if they prefer) at what the tobacco corporations are doing, and their refusal to purchase products or invest in the corporations responsible for them.

This is not as easy as it might sound. A student might have no idea what to write, and almost certainly not how or to whom. So I did this work for them. I drafted a model letter (but I will require students to use some of their own words and insert their own feelings and experiences). I tracked down the contacts to which they could send physical letters or emails. This is not always easy. Some corporations very effectively insulate themselves from the public. Some of the tobacco corporation websites cannot be entered by anyone under 21 years of age, which covers most of my students. If nothing else, there may be media representative emails to which the students can write. The media reps do not want to be bombarded by activist emails, but, tough beans. If they get a lot of emails, maybe they will report this fact to management that is above them. If they don’t want emails, they shouldn’t put their email addresses on the website. I also encouraged students to direct their comments to the CEO, whose name I provided, for each of four major tobacco corporations. (This is down from seven in 1994 when the “seven dwarves” presented perjured testimony to Henry Waxman’s committee in the House.) I also provided the brand names marketed by each company.

This may seem to be a futile exercise. But if this idea spreads beyond my classroom, and if it is maintained over the years, it might make a difference. These comments may never be read—certainly not by the CEO—but they may be counted.

Once a student has written these letters, it will never be as difficult again to write an activist letter.

I had to think carefully about possible legal difficulties, and specifically mention them in the document I posted for my students. And I posted a PDF file rather than an alterable Word file. And I made this an extra credit activity rather than a requirement, for now.

And I hope you, my readers, may join in. And if you have students, get them involved also. You may access the PDF file at my website; the specific URL is here.

Let’s get our students over the activation energy that is preventing them from becoming participants in our economy and society, based on the things they are learning in our classes.