But this film has Hollywood on the march. The company's ruthless treatment of its former employee was soon exposed in the press, and CBS, its tail between its legs, finally screened its scoop. It was also one of big tobacco's last victories in its long campaign to keep the media at bay. People who leave Mr Mann's film thinking that tobacco companies are still omnipotent organisations that can conceal evidence of the effects of tobacco are as deceived as those CIA geniuses who speculated that Andropov's Russia was pulling ahead of America. Since then, the defeat has become a rout.
Smoking is banned in most public buildings.
The first shots in the tobacco wars were fired by citizen activists. Ahron Leichtman founded Citizens for a Tobacco-free Society because the merest whiff of tobacco smoke gave him a headache. These people became an unstoppable force when they linked up with the medical and legal professions. The public-health profession has been looking for a justification for its existence ever since the communicable diseases that it was established to fight were all but wiped out. Tobacco provided just what it needed.