Stanton Glantz, PhD, is Professor of Medicine and the American Legacy Foundation Distinguished Professor of Tobacco Control at the University of California, San Francisco. He has also been called the #1 enemy of the tobacco industry. On this call CHE talked with Dr. Glantz about his work, the current state of tobacco environmental health science, and the future of tobacco control strategies and use prevention.
Featured Speaker
Dr. Glantz conducts research on a wide range of topics ranging from the health effects of secondhand smoke (with particular emphasis on the cardiovascular system) to the efficacy of different tobacco control policies. He is author or coauthor of numerous publications related to secondhand smoke and tobacco control, as well as many papers on cardiovascular function and biostatistics. He has written several books, including the widely used Primer of Biostatistics. In total, he is the author of 4 books and over 300 scientific papers, including the first major review (published in Circulation) which identified involuntary smoking as a cause of heart disease and the landmark July 19, 1995 issue of JAMA on the Brown and Williamson documents, which showed that the tobacco industry knew nicotine was addictive and that smoking caused cancer 60 years ago. This publication was followed up with his book, The Cigarette Papers, which has played a key role in the ongoing litigation surrounding the tobacco industry. His book Tobacco Wars: Inside the California Battles chronicles the last quarter century of battles against the tobacco industry in California. He also wrote Tobacco: Biology and Politics for high school students and The Uninvited Guest, a story about secondhand smoke, for second graders, and Bad Acts, the behind-the-scenes story of the Department of Justices' massive lawsuit against the tobacco companies under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.
He is running an educational project, SmokeFreeMovies, to end use of movies to promote tobacco. His TobaccoScam campaign helped break the alliance between Big Tobacco and the hospitality industry. Working with the UCSF Library, he has taken the lead in making over 82 million pages of previously secret tobacco industry documents available to the entire world via the UCSF Legacy Tobacco Documents Library. This effort has help create a whole new area of scientific investigation based on tobacco industry documents.
He served for 10 years as an Associate Editor of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology and is a member of the California State Scientific Review Panel on Toxic Air Contaminants. He was elected to the Institute of Medicine in 2005. He has traveled widely and lectured on scientific and policy issues related to clean indoor air, smoking in the movies, and effective tobacco control strategies.
His work has attracted considerable attention from the tobacco industry, which has sued the University of California (unsuccessfully) twice in an effort to stop Glantz' work.
The call was moderated by Steve Heilig, CHE Director of Public Health & Education, and Director of Public Health & Education, San Francisco Medical Society.