Future Generations: What Will Our Grandchildren Think of the Cigarette Era?
Future generations will look back at the cigarette era the way we look at leaded gasoline, asbestos insulation, and radium water—a public health catastrophe that was tolerated far too long because the industry that profited from it was too powerful to stop.
Our grandchildren will ask: 'You knew cigarettes killed people—and you let companies sell them at every gas station?' The question will be unanswerable in any satisfying way—because the answer involves the complex interplay of industry power, political inertia, addiction, and culture. **Future generations will judge us for the cigarette era. The judgment will be harsh. It will also be deserved. The only mitigation will be that we eventually—slowly, incompletely, against enormous resistance—did something about it.**
