Industries in denial: From burning cigarettes to a burning planet
The David Suzuki Foundation launched an advertising campaign in 2023 countering misleading fossil fuel industry claims and advertising. (Photo: Point Blank Creative)
Not long ago, smoking was promoted as healthy — even glamourous. Cigarette companies used doctors and movie and TV stars to sell their products. People smoked everywhere — in bars, restaurants, theatres, workplaces, airplanes, buses and taxis, even hospitals and school buildings. It’s hard to imagine anyone ever thought inhaling hot smoke and burned plant particles into your lungs was a good idea, let alone a healthy one. But there was lots of money to be made!
As lung cancer rates started spiking in the 1940s and ’50s, concerns about the link to smoking sparked new research and a push to limit tobacco consumption. But, in an economic system that puts profit above everything, even human health and life, truth is often treated more as an inconvenience than something to be heeded. The tobacco companies paid their own researchers and media supporters to convince people that smoking isn’t harmful and that people have the “right” to smoke.
But we live under a consumer capitalist system, so we’re still subjected to ads — some false or misleading — for harmful products.
As evidence about smoking’s harms became undeniable, governments started implementing restrictions and advertising bans. The backlash was massive, well-funded and coordinated, and included many of the same voices that later downplayed or denied the evidence for global warming as a consequence of burning coal, oil and gas.
Many of us remember the unpleasant experience of trying to enjoy a meal next to a table of smokers. Now, far fewer people smoke. And most have accepted that smoking is bad for the health of smokers and those around them, and that there should be limits on where and when people can partake. We’ve also accepted — to some extent — that advertising a product that can seriously damage health and even kill should be restricted or banned.
But we live under a consumer capitalist system, so we’re still subjected to ads — some false or misleading — for harmful products. Cars, trucks and SUVs and the gas they burn are polluting air, water and land and fuelling a climate crisis that puts our survival at risk. Yet their ads are ubiquitous.
As Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway wrote in Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, tobacco interests and later fossil fuel promoters hired scientists, including Frederick Seitz and Fred Singer, to cast doubt on the mounting evidence of the harms of tobacco and then climate change.
Restricting and discouraging tobacco use and banning advertising was far easier than tackling climate-altering fossil fuel use.
Many of the same media people were also enlisted in both battles. In Canada, Postmedia/National Post columnist Terence Corcoran has long been a vocal critic of tobacco and climate science. His employer made its support for polluting fossil fuels explicit in 2013, when it signed an agreement with the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.
“We will work with CAPP to amplify our energy mandate and to be a part of the solution to keep Canada competitive in the global marketplace,” then-publisher Douglas Kelly said. “The National Post will undertake to leverage all means editorially, technically and creatively to further this critical conversation.”
Restricting and discouraging tobacco use and banning advertising was far easier than tackling climate-altering fossil fuel use. The former was an economic driver, but it wasn’t fuelling the global economy, as are gas, oil and coal. And smoking is entirely unnecessary, whereas fuels have become an essential part of our lives. But fossil fuels are also a far greater danger to all of humanity than tobacco. And there are many safer, cleaner and more cost-effective alternatives.
But fossil fuels are also a far greater danger to all of humanity than tobacco.
In light of new evidence that the world will soon heat beyond levels scientists say can’t be exceeded without serious consequences, United Nations secretary general António Guterres has called for global restrictions on the “godfathers of climate chaos — the fossil-fuel industry.”
“Many governments restrict or prohibit advertising for products that harm human health, like tobacco,” he said in a recent speech. “I urge every country to ban advertising from fossil-fuel companies. And I urge news media and tech companies to stop taking fossil-fuel advertising.”
Calls for fossil fuel ad bans in Canada are growing, with politicians and organizations such as the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment backing them — and the usual suspects using specious arguments against them.
We must stop promoting products that put us all at risk. But more than that, we must reform the systems that encourage this suicidal mindset.
David Suzuki
David Suzuki, Co-Founder of the David Suzuki Foundation, is an award-winning scientist, environmentalist and broadcaster. David is renowned for his radio and television programs that explain the complexities of the natural sciences in a compelling, easily understood way.
Education
As a geneticist. David graduated from Amherst College (Massachusetts) in 1958 with an Honours BA in Biology, followed by a Ph.D. in Zoology from the University of Chicago in 1961. He held a research associateship in the Biology Division of Tennessee’s Oak Ridge National Lab (1961 – 62), was an Assistant Professor in Genetics at the University of Alberta (1962 – 63), and since then has been a faculty member of the University of British Columbia. He is now Professor Emeritus at UBC.
Awards
In 1972, he was awarded the E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowship for the outstanding research scientist in Canada under the age of 35 and held it for three years. He has won numerous academic awards and holds 25 honourary degrees in Canada, the U.S. and Australia. He was elected to the Royal Society of Canada and is a Companion of the Order of Canada. Dr. Suzuki has written 52 books, including 19 for children. His 1976 textbook An Introduction to Genetic Analysis(with A.J.F. Griffiths), remains the most widely used genetics text book in the U.S.and has been translated into Italian, Spanish, Greek, Indonesian, Arabic, French and German.
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