this was donna shimp's first stroke of good fortune. the second and third were the enthusiastic and surprisingly so responses she received from two medical doctors to whom she wrote soliciting their support as experts on her behalf. dr. luther terry was no ordinary doctor. he had been the surgeon general who overawe the publication of the famous 1964 report on smoking and health and he agreed to provide an affidavit affirming that tobacco smoke in the workplace could be a health hazard to a significant number of workers. dr. jesse steinfeld served as nixon's surgeon general, before he was canned, in his opinion, for denouncing the tobacco industry too forcefully. he submitted testimony on shimp's behalf. the judge presiding over the case was moved by this celebrity testimony but he was also moved by the argument this shimp herself had made to bell's corporate brows, that if the switchboard equipment was precious enough to merit a smoke-free environment then so too were the bodies of employees themselves. the company should have at least

bell had a common law duty to provide employees a safe and healthy work environment, which for donna shimp, meant an environment free of tobacco smoke. in wresting the right to a smoke-free environment from her employee, donna was at the vanguard that i read about in my book. cigarettes were a testament to federal regulation upon behalf of tobacco, specifically on behalf of organized tobacco producers. so activists did more than try to create tolerable conditions to work, congregate, dine, and exist in public. they asserted an alternative way of thinking about the value of citizenship and the obligations of government. the idea of non-smokers'rights, that an individual by virtue of not partaking in a habit can dictate where that habit is expressed, this idea cut against the producer-centered politics that undergird smokers'supremacy and shared spaces. donna soon realized she was part of a young but emboldened new social movement, the non-smokers'rights movement. these were a very particular kind of anit-tobacco activist. their goal is not to get people to quit smoking but to get people to

after her courtroom victory, not much changed for anybody but -- anybody not named donna shimp. her ruling applied only to her , and only over the next few years when non-smoking employees brought suit against their employers, courts repeatedly failed to rule in their favor. it appeared as though a right to a smoke-free work environment was an illusory quest. where donna's case failed as precedent, donna herself was determined to change the way people work. beginning in 1978 with the tireless persistence, she began an after-hours career as a workplace consultant. in the 1970's, the field of management consulting was not yet a prestigious launching pad for the young and the educated. donna jumped right in. she called her business environmental associates incorporated. it was dedicated to improving the indoor work environment, and her firm aimed to create demand for the services that only it could provide. that is, in trying to convince a business to take seriously the issue of workplace smoking and thereby to hire the firm, donna shimp pointed to the legal liabilities created by

although non-smokers rights activists like donna shimp asserted they had a right to comfort and shared space, the lore of the cigarette was irresistible. it is now thought of as a private vice and private failing, unnecessarily stigmatizing overtones when you consider people who smoke tend to be poorer and less educated than those who do not. activists today continue to find the social cost of disease framing irresistible, especially for the obesity epidemic and the opioid epidemic, two industrially produced diseases that disproportionately affect people with lower incomes. a healthier society may in fact be cheaper in the long run, but the business case will not produce justice for those who suffer from the diseases of modern life. finally, it is not possible to talk about tobacco today without talking about vaping. with ultra's 35% stake in juul, when we talk about vaping, we are after all talking about the tobacco industry. the tobacco companies hired their own lobbyists and statehouses to thwart legislation, using what are known as preemptive laws. the tobacco industry worked to re