by Suvesh Arumugam
accepted as fact and tobacco culture was still in its heyday. Wiegand’s revelations did more that show that cigarettes were bad for us, but they showed that the tobacco companies had knowingly buried research showing the addictive nature of nicotine over the past 30 years (which the US Surgeon General in 1988 had described as being “as hard to quit as heroine or crack cocaine”), had bullied or intimidated major news and scientific communities to suppress information, and had further spent even more money trying to get more people addicted to nicotine by using chemical enhancers like ammonia to increase the effects of the drug. It was no easy task for Wiegand to blow the whistle, due to various contractual obligations in one of the most famous non-disclosure agreements. His contract was so prescriptive it even prohibited him from disclosing that he had a nondisclosure agreement. While a heated court case ensued between journalists, Wiegand and the big tobacco companies, Wiegand himself was harassed, threatened and shunned from the scientific community that gave him his livelihood, eventually becoming a high school teacher on a much smaller income. Wiegand exposed a level of corruption and conspiracy that went to the very heart of the some of the biggest economic entities on the planet. And it was a game changer. Studies estimate that while the smoking population in 1996 was close to 35% of young adults and 25% of older ones, those figures could be lower than 12% now (based mostly on US studies). The revelations paved the way for antismoking laws, clear health warnings on products and (probably most importantly) advertising and product placement bans for cigarettes. You might say that it’s not a fair comparison because the government were the good guys and big tobacco was the evil corporation. Fair enough, but thinking about Snowden’s circumstances makes one realise how much scarier the picture is for him. Not only is he facing a mammoth organisation with a huge amount of
“Jeffrey Wiegand doesn’t mean much to you, it won’t be surprising...”
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As White as Snowden
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veryone loves a good conspiracy! From 9/11, to JFK, to whether Stanley Kubrick helped NASA fake the moon landings - the best ones are probably the ones we can’t ever answer, because knowing the truth kinda ruins the conspiracy part. We’ll never really know who Jack the Ripper was, so there’s always room for new theories. It can be easy to forget the doubt, the shock and the sheer gravity of a major conspiracy that unfolds in your time. The controversy around WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden has generated a lot of conversation, almost to the point where a Snowden leak is like a meme of itself. Your friend who tells on the group at the office is the Snowden of the team. When you send a racy email to your best bud, he jokes that the NSA are watching. It’s all become very every day, normal, and boring. It’s hard to remember what life was like before there was Edward Snowden, and how it has changed since. Sometimes it takes a cheesy Hollywood rendition of the truth to really bring home how much change things have changed and what the cost of the change is to the individuals who drive it. To really understand Snowden’s story (and how it could end), it might help to look at one of the biggest whistle-blowers of our time, and how that story played out in full. If the name Jeffrey Wiegand doesn’t mean much to you, it won’t be surprising. But the effects of Wiegand’s actions are still around us today, almost 20 years after his whistleblowing struggle. Wiegand was a leading research scientist for big tobacco, who eventually left the company and tried to bring to light evidence that cigarettes companies were lying to the public about health and addiction issues. Now, let’s be honest, prior to 1996, lots of people suspected that cigarettes could be bad for you. In fact, many anti-tobacco movements made claims regarding the addictive nature of nicotine and possible links to cancer. But this had never been