Tobacco industry satire fails to ignite
Authors: Gavin Yamey
Journal: BMJ (2006)

How does a self respecting tobacco industry lobbyist sleep soundly at night, given that the product he is peddling kills one in two of its users? And how should he respond when his preadolescent son asks him, “Daddy, what do you actually do for a living?”

Nick Naylor (played by Aaron Eckhart), handsome, Armani-clad, fast-talking spokesman for the euphemistically named Academy of Tobacco Studies (a front for Big Tobacco), already has enough on his plate without having to deal with these tricky moral questions keeping him up at night.

For a start, anti-smoking activists are threatening to kidnap him. On top of that, the Birkenstock sandal-wearing senator from Vermont, who goes by the rather rococo name Ortolan Finistirre (William H Macy), has introduced legislation requiring the skull and crossbones to be prominently displayed on every cigarette pack. Worst of all, tobacco sales are plummeting, much to the dismay of Nick's boss BR (J K Simmons), who, in an angry outburst to his employees, reminds them: “We don't sell Tic Tacs. We sell cigarettes. And they're cool, available, and addictive. The job is almost done for us!”

Luckily for Nick, and for Big Tobacco, he is a master of spin (“Michael Jordan plays basketball, Charles Manson kills people, I talk,” Nick says). In an early scene in Jason Reitman's satirical film, Thank You for Smoking, based on Christopher Buckley's 1994 novel of the same name, we see our “hero” use his rhetorical skills to turn an initially hostile TV chat show audience into putty in his hands.

Nick is debating the health effects of tobacco with Senator Finistirre's incompetent aide, Ron Goode (Todd Louiso), who has brought along a hugely effective “prop”—a sick-looking boy with cancer called Robin (Eric Haberman), who is bald from chemotherapy.

“How on earth would Big Tobacco profit off of the loss of this young man?” asks Nick, in a masterly display of twisted logic. “I hate to think in such callous terms, but if anything, we'd be losing a customer... it's in our best interest to keep Robin alive and smoking.” Nick steals victory in the debate, reducing the audience to tears when he announces that the Academy of Tobacco Studies will spend an impressive $50m on an anti-teen smoking campaign.​campaign.



Figure 1

“It's in our best interest to keep Robin alive and smoking”



We see another display of slick Nick's way with words when he agrees to talk about being a tobacco lobbyist at his son's careers day at school. “My mommy says that cigarettes kill,” says a young girl angrily. Nick responds, smiling sweetly, “Is your mommy a doctor? No? Well she doesn't exactly sound like a credible expert to me.”

The film's satire is at its funniest during Nick's regular meetings, in an upscale Washington DC pub, with his fellow lobbyists from the alcohol and firearms industries. They call themselves “the MOD squad” (the Merchants of Death) and they take perverse pleasure in battling each other over whose products are the deadliest and therefore who has the toughest job. Again Nick steals victory. Cigarettes, he says, kill 1200 people a day, compared with a mere 270 from alcohol and 30 from guns. “Thirty a day,” says Nick sarcastically, “that's less than passenger car mortalities.”

How, then, does Nick reconcile being a father with being a merchant of death? That's easy, he tells an investigative reporter who is writing a profile on him—his job pays the mortgage.

This “Yuppie Nuremberg defence,” as the reporter calls it, allows Nick the moral flexibility not to worry when his boss asks him to pay off the former Marlboro Man, who is trying to sue Big Tobacco for causing his lung cancer. Nor does Nick have any qualms about cutting a deal with Hollywood agent Jeff Megall (Rob Lowe) to get cigarettes featured in the latest Hollywood blockbuster.

Thank You for Smoking has plenty of laughs, and it looks dazzling. But the film sometimes feels limp, perhaps because the antics of Big Tobacco portrayed in the movie pale in comparison to real life. Product placement in a blockbuster? Been there, done that.

There is also something troubling about the film's moral ambiguity. While it certainly mocks the tobacco industry's greedy tactics, it also portrays public health advocates as self interested, badly dressed, dithering idiots who will do anything possible to play up the harms of tobacco. Public health advocates may not always wear the best suits, but it is a major failing of the movie to suggest that their activities are morally equivalent to those of tobacco lobbyists.

The final scene shows us where Reitman's heart really lies. At a congressional testimony, Nick makes a passionate speech about personal freedom and the duty of parents, not politicians, to guide their children. Ultimately, then, the film champions libertarianism—the dubious notion that big government should never interfere with an individual's personal freedom (such as their right to carry a firearm or their choice of whether to smoke). That argument might have some validity were it not for the ugly fact that Big Tobacco has done everything in its power to distort the truth about cigarettes, restricting children's choices by deliberately going out to get them addicted to their deadly product.

Like smoking a cigarette, watching Thank You for Smoking gives you a brief moment of pleasure but leaves you with a slightly bitter taste in your mouth.