thank you again thank you for the book. >> thank you. great being with you. .. >> rubber proctors sat down to talk about his book, the history of the tobacco industry and the dangers associated.

this is part of the booktv college series and is a little under half an hour. >> you're watching booktv on c-span2. we are on location at stanford university in palo alto, california, where we are talking with some stanford professors about their writings. joining us now is professor robert proctor. he is a professor of the hit tree of science at stanford. this is his most recent book. "golden holocost." professor, when were cigarettes invented? >> it depends on how you look at this as essential. cigarette can be thought of as a nicotine delivery device we can think of it as a small cigar in which case they go even further back or you can talk about tobacco wrapped in paper, in

which it begins really in spain in the 17th century with people in seville, spain, and then it doesn't really do much until the middle east runs out of pipe tobacco and they start rolling tobacco and ammunition pieces of paper. so it's mainly a 19th century phenomenon. this includes the rolling of tobacco. where instead of having these girls and women roll cigarettes, that they could roll 200 or 500 per day, suddenly these machines, they could roll 100 of them per day and you have to

dispose of a massive amount of cigarette and such an enormous quantity it becomes attend of a price of massmarketing. >> how many people in the world smoke today? >> it is about a billion and a half people out of 7 billion people. the chinese are the biggest smokers. they smoke about 2.4 trillion cigarettes every year. they smoke over 40% of the world's cigarettes. in the united states we only smoke about 350 billion cigarettes every year. that is down from the peak of 1982, which was 630 billion. >> which percentage of americans

smoke reign. >> is about one in five people, just a little bit below one in five people. including areas that are lower, like california's lower. tobacco, especially cigarettes include inverting the hierarchy from a hundred years ago. >> when did the u.s. cigarette smoking begin. >> it began in the 1960s and 70s. it depends on what age group you are talking about. it wasn't until 1997. also, there are different peaks according to a time in history is talking about. per capita consumption in 1964, total consumption in 1982 in total production in 1997 a lot

of those are exported. >> at what point will cigarettes cause a lot of danger? >> it goes back 100 years and hundreds of years before that they talk about king james i. cancer was identified in the 18th century and visible areas of the mountain the tongue and the throat and it is shown to be causing cancer in 18th century and throat cancer becomes more commonly associated with cigars. and then when he dies of throat cancer, that is what can happen. it was not until the 1940s and 50s and the early strong evidence comes from germany.

hitler hated cigarettes because of the struggle within the nazi party about cigarettes. but they also had some really great science. epidemiology showing that smokers were much more likely to die of cancer, especially lung cancer. then the center of gravity shifts and by the 1950s, you get scientists doing several different types of research to show that it causes mass death. animal experiments showing the tars will cause cancer and topology shows those who die from auto accident and smokers lungs are having precancer tumors. the epidemiology showing that brokers are much more likely to find chemical carcinogens in the smoke. phenols and after lien and even

earlier than not. carbon monoxide. it's like a hydrocarbon that was known to be killing workers these were then found in the 50s. so then you get a scientific consensus about this being part of lung cancer in later heart disease. >> are all of these chemicals contained within nicotine? >> it is mainly the burning. at some some of them are not from the burning. the heavy part to cause cancer. regardless of whether it burned or not. the cadmium, nickel, and many people don't know and the isotopes. the average smoker will get hundreds of chest x-rays per year just on smoking and that is mainly from the pesticide rather

than the fertilizers that are put on tobacco survey will put the fertilizers around the plant and those contained uranium and that will contain polonium. so those very same poison to kill the russian spy in, that is also present in cigarettes. >> what we have to say about the marshall plan? >> it is an effort to rebuild europe. what most people don't know is that for every $2 in food that was sent over to europe, there was 1 dollar for tobacco. so i can basically be seen as an effort by the american tobacco companies to get the europeans to go on, virginia and, very inhalable tobacco. what is interesting about that it is actually a better of pat robertson who actually proposed

that to the council that was planning and how these plan funds would be spent. this has been included by the southern senators in order to promote the sale of european tobacco. >> you have some ads in hearing your book. do you inhale? >> well, what most people don't realize is that prior to cigarettes, especially turkish tobacco, it was not inhaled almost none of it was inhaled prior to 1900.

there were a few cases known of cancer and that is because it was generally not inhaled and we have 100,000 cancer deaths every year. in the lung cancer epidemic is almost very hard to resolve due to the making of cigarettes being inhaled that is why they keep this precisely within this level. it is not inherently dangerous, but it's dangerous by design. >> is it more dangerous because of the filter?

>> if anything, the filters make them slightly more dangerous and they are probably about the same hazard for a couple of reasons. a lot of it has to do with what the filter does. it actually produces the particles of smoke and sot makeshings smaller and inhaled more deeply into the lungs where they are harder to diagnose and harder to treat. they are little but more dangerous. a lot of them will switch to a filter thinking that offers protection for the filters and i'm in filters. they are if you think that an hourglass filters hand. or speed bumps prevent cars from passing or that you think cotton candy of the diet form of candy

usd fu of error. ily.ration is really in the most one of the main companies that refuse to go along with this scam -- they refuse to go along with this like some of the other companies did and they eventually ran out of business. they refuse to make a product that was fraudulent. >> how did you get into this topic. >> i have three to four grandparents that died. early on, my parents were already aware that it has been a useless product.

so that made a huge impression. then i was involved stephen gould and some others and we looked at the social causes of health and disease. or perhaps die from filthy water for instance, it back in the day. we die from chronic diseases from environmental pollutants from things like tobacco. tobacco causes about a third of all cancers. that was really the gorilla in the room for me as we are looking at various causes of disease. and the cause is responsible for

440,000 in its completely preventable. but we just allow it as though it is chewing gum or something. so i started to write more intensively about this. it is allowed to be sold is responsible for this and we do nothing about it. >> are people smoking in the classroom when he started teaching? >> yes, a professor came to give a seminar and he was sitting there smoking a cigarette nonstop in class. and everyone knew it was bad for you doctors smoked, doctors recommended their patients to smoke. the stanford assistant, her mother was advised in 19 to take

up smoking to ease the babies delivery. even now we have 400,000 babies born every year in the united states to mothers smoked all during their pregnancy. so there is the this sort of miffed that no one smokes anymore. and that is mainly because ed reynold says it is reserved for the poor and the black and stupid. >> when did he say that? >> well, that was in a photo shoot in the 19 '80s reynolds also had this in the san francisco area as well. project projects come. i mean, what does it tell you about an industry that customers that way and realizes most of the consumers actually wish that they didn't use the product.

most wish they didn't smoke. it is also something that is not known and one of the biggest myths that we have is that smoking is a choice when it's not like alcohol, only about 5% or 10% of people are addicted. from a pure libertarian calculus, that is why i called for abolition. even smokers don't like the fact that they smoke. it's quite an unusual smoker who is really about the fact that they smoke and is happy about it. >> the chances of an average smoker getting on cancer are? >> about one in eight people. about half of everyone who smokes will die from their habit. each cigarette takes about seven minutes off your life. and people have myths about smoking. they say oh, i will smoke until i get sick. but the damage has already been

done. if you are driving drunk and make it home, and i can tell you, right? but every cigarette is like a nail in the coffin. so there is a chronic and continuous hazard to the body that can be detected in every tissue of the body. there is no consumer product like it. no other consumer product kills half its users even when used as directed by the manufacturer. there's no other product like this in the modern world. >> what are you hearing from your students as opposed to 10 or 20 years ago reign. >> scope has changed a lot. a lot of universities like stanford, only five or 10% of his event will be smoking cigarettes. there has also been hookah pipes, which include the middle eastern residence.

>> lot don't even know about tobacco. many will say, well, a hookah is not bad and they don't even know that it's tobacco. but there are lots and lots of myths about tobacco. at exactly the point of this book is to really say that you think you know tobacco, but you don't know. people don't know about the radioactivity. people have all kinds of myths and a lot of people think that cancer will be cured in a few years chocolate contains a

bronchodilator and menthol makes the poison go down for the secretion from the anal gland of the siberian beaver which is used as a flavor, from 12 to 50 pounds in american cigarettes. so there is really a witch's brew of ingredients that are added to this, making it anything but tobacco wrapped in paper. we have a name that is no more in "the new york times" as a country. >> have the last 10 or 20 years in and the anti-smoking laws

made a difference? is also denormalized the habit you have the head of the ku klux klan during an interview she says this 80-year-old pioneer, i am 80 years old, and i'm going to take up smoking there is no

part of this culture that has been smoke free. thousands of scientists have been paid to work in the tobacco industry. historians and people in my own discipline. every university has people working quietly in litigation or consulting and i'm calling it virtually undiagnosed for money scholarships. >> professor, how strong is the tobacco lobby today as opposed to previously? >> is a little bit weaker in the united states and it used to be. they still have a 12 billion-dollar advertising budget in the united states. but that is directed all to smokers and those who spend hundreds of millions of dollars

per smoker on marketing promotions. because you have every smoker on a computer list. but the influence in congress -- the tobacco institute used to be the most powerful lobby in washington dc. it was just a stones throw stone's throw and you could stand on the roof of the tobacco industry and had the white house. that has been disbanded by law. so they no longer allowed to lobby in the same way with the same energy that they use to you. there were 10 senators that appeared in tobacco ads in the 20s and 30s and that has disappeared. but they still have enormous political pull. a lot is globally rather than nationally. they were able to attack and try to attack the packaging law in australia. the use trade as an instrument to try to punish many renegade

countries. so they still have a tremendous part of profits that are so high. when he put $10,000 in the phillip morris stock in 1958 comments with about $50 million today. so these are just still some of the most powerful companies in the world. philip morris international is 150 billion-dollar company. very powerful, they are basically printing money in the cigarette industry. wrapped in paper, they use this that they get in litigation influencing government and that is why we still smoked 6 trillion cigarettes per year. which by the way, 6 trillion cigarette smoke every year, that's like 350 million miles of cigarettes. that is enough to make a continuous chain of cigarettes

from the earth to the sun and back. with enough left over for several round trips to mars. it's amazing about mars being near orbit. so they have produced this each year, which is faster than the rate that satellites orbit the earth. so a continuous cigarette being smoked at a rate faster than you can get a complex scale of the problem. >> you're watching booktv pommel we have been talking about professor robert proctor of stanford university. professor of history of science and here is his most recent book. genteel. >> next, we sit down with doctor dr. scott atlas of the hoover institution to discuss his book, in excellent health, he argues that the u.s. health care system is much better than the world

health organization and others would have you believe. he also takes a critical look at the patient protection and affordable care act, commonly known as obamacare and another alternative like the single-payer system. this is about half an hour. >> setting the record straight on america's health care. that is the name of the book. the author is doctor scott doubtless, m.d. he is a senior fellow here at the hoover institution on the campus of stanford. doctor, what works about the american health care system when you look at it in the larger sense? >> what really works is what the book is about. and that is the actual medical care, availability and access as well as implementation or introduction of