The Cigarette Papers

Stanton A Glantz, John Slade, Lisa A Bero, Peter Hanauer, Deborah E Barnes University of California Press, £24, pp 539 ISBN 0 520 20572 3 Many years ago I came into possession of 50 pages of minutes of meetings retrieved from a rubbish bin at Sydney's Rothmans headquarters by a friendly cleaner. They dated from the early 1970s and contained some priceless passages that named various sports writers who would need to be “fostered” to ensure that they mentioned Rothmans brand names in their writings. Most significantly, they detailed an exchange that unequivocally stated that Rothmans sponsorship of sport was an open attempt to circumvent Australia's direct ban on televised tobacco advertising. Anyone with half a brain already knew this, but the tobacco industry's public position has always been that it …