Around-the-clock tobacco talks, multibillion-dollar lawsuits against the major cigarette companies, and legislative wrangling over how much to tax a pack of cigarettes—these are some of the most recent episodes in the war against the tobacco companies. The Cigarette Papers shows what started it all: revelations that tobacco companies had long known the grave dangers of smoking, and did nothing about it.

In May 1994 a box containing 4,000 pages of internal tobacco industry documents arrived at the office of Professor Stanton Glantz at the University of California, San Francisco. The anonymous source of these "cigarette papers" was identified only as "Mr. Butts." These documents provide a shocking inside account of the activities of one tobacco company, Brown & Williamson, over more than thirty years. Quoting extensively from the documents themselves and analyzing what they reveal, The Cigarette Papers shows what the tobacco companies have known and galvanizes us to take action.

Stanton A. Glantz, Ph.D., Lisa A. Bero, Ph.D., Peter Hanauer, LL.B., and Deborah E. Barnes, B.A., are affiliated with the Institute for Health Policy Studies, the Department of Medicine, and the Division of Clinical Pharmacy at the University of California, San Francisco. John Slade, M.D., is with the Department of Medicine at St. Peter's Medical Center and the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

"Makes it clear that Big Tobacco has known for decades that cigarettes are lethal and addictive and has done everything in its power to suppress and deny that knowledge. . . . A shocking collection of secret industry documents."—Jonathan Franzen,The New Yorker

"Does for the tobacco war what the Pentagon Papers did . . . for the Vietnam War. It confirms what every admirer of private enterprise should have surmised: that the tobacco manufacturers always, but always, knew more about their product than their critics did. . . . Talk about a smoking gun—here is a whole arsenal."—John L. Hess, The Nation

"An invaluable reference. . . . Here, one can find detailed explanations of the industry's attempt at creating a 'safer cigarette,' and how lawyers managed the companies' scientific research—all in the language of tobacco insiders. . . . Provides an important public service at a time when Americans are trying to decide just how much control government should exercise over the little white sticks."—Sheryl Stolberg, Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Buy this historic book and just marvel at its revelations."—Simon Chapman, British Medical Journal

"A compendium and interpretation of several thousand pages of internal Brown and Williamson documents, congressional reports, and private papers. . . . The Cigarette Papers should appeal to a wide audience, including physicians, public health workers, scientists, lawyers, policy makers, and the general public."—Mary Ann Pentz, New England Journal of Medicine

Read the entire contents of the book at the UCSF website

Read about the advertising campaign being launched by the author against smoking in movies