Thank You for Smoking

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1994

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Chapter 9

Chapters 10-19

Chapter 20-Epilogue

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Themes

The Manipulation of the Truth for Corporate Gain

The novel notes that English King James I detested the use of tobacco for many of the same reasons that non-smokers express today. This took place almost 400 years before the health consequences of heavy tobacco use came to light. The king, however, suppressed his criticism when tobacco tax money started rolling in. In this, Buckley implies, James began a trend that the 20th-century tobacco industry would perfect—and for the same reason. Money is also the primary motivator for the tobacco industry as portrayed in the narrative.

The tobacco industry could see regulations and restrictions coming for decades. As the Captain notes, Reader’s Digest printed an article about the dangers of smoking in 1952. Forty years later, when Nick stands up to address Clean Lungs 2000, all the research and logic are against him. The organization he represents, the Academy of Tobacco Studies, with its army of “researchers,” investigators, benefactors, and spin doctors, has a single goal: mitigating the growing public awareness of the deadly consequences of tobacco use. As a confounded journalist tells Nick, by 1994, 60,000 studies demonstrated the multiple health consequences of tobacco. Because the facts are virtually all stacked against him, Nick’s primary tool is the manipulation of the truth.

Nick applies a full catalogue of manipulative techniques to accomplish this goal. He casts aspersions on health care workers, researchers, and government employees who criticize smoking, implying that they have financial motivations for doing so. He deflects criticism by pointing out the hypocrisies—real or perceived—of others, as when he notes the dangers of cholesterol. Nick’s spontaneous boast that the industry is launching a $5 million campaign to curb youth smoking is intended to shine a positive light on the industry; in reality, the campaign is engineered to ensure that youth smoking does not decline at all. Nick’s trip to Hollywood centers on his successful effort to get positive movie exposure for tobacco use. The tobacco industry, according to the deal he brokers, guarantees millions of dollars to A-list actors in exchange for quotas set on how often they light up and how many puffs they take. When all else fails, the tobacco industry resorts to silencing its critics outright. On the Captain’s orders, Nick goes to Lorne’s home with a $500,000 bribe to convince Lorne to stop talking about smoking’s role in his terminal illness. It later emerges that BR has a team of assassins who kill the most vocal anti-smoking advocates.

The financial figure Buckley uses for the income from tobacco in the United States in 1994 is $48 billion. This gives the industry a huge financial incentive to manipulate the truth about the harm caused by their products for as long as possible—to the point that, in Buckley’s depiction, figures like BR will not only stand by as tobacco kills people but also murder people directly.

Personal Reckoning With Unethical Behavior

The single question, expressed in a variety of different ways, that Nick faces is why someone so bright, creative, and optimistic would work so hard to obfuscate important truths by working for an unethical organization like the Academy. The first example of this occurs in the Prologue, when the relative of a lung cancer victim asks Nick, “How can you sleep at night?” (5). Lorne, the terminally ill former face of tobacco advertising, asks, “[Y]ou look like a nice enough fellow. What are you doing working for these assholes?” (180).

Nick typically brushes aside such questions by saying he is simply trying to pay his mortgage. Buckley, however, reveals the personal consequences Nick must endure because of his job. Strangers call him names and condemn him publicly. Senators and civil servants castigate him before journalists for major media outlets. When BR informs him that the death threat he received on live TV necessitates a crew of bodyguards, Nick tells him that he keeps a file of such threats. Because he constantly expresses the duplicitous propaganda of the tobacco industry, Nick realizes he cannot trust his innocence to the justice system: No one will believe him when he finds himself facing legal charges, however untrue.

Ultimately, Nick realizes he cannot financially defend himself in court and that his best course of action is pleading guilty and throwing himself at the court’s mercy. Whether Nick’s pragmatic assessment of the situation sparks a moral reassessment is more ambiguous. In his final appearance on Larry King Live, he apologizes to listeners for the deception he engaged in while working for the Academy. He confesses that his two and a half years in prison, in his view, were recompense for misleading the public for six years: “I came to the conclusion that I deserved to be put away for all the horrible things I did when I worked for the tobacco industry” (270). However, Nick has shown himself to be adept at saying what he needs to in order to produce his desired outcome, and the structure of the final chapter—a transcript of an interview—does not provide any insight into Nick’s thoughts. It is ultimately unclear whether Nick truly feels remorse for his actions or whether he has simply calculated that involvement with the tobacco industry is no longer worth the risks.

Nick is not the only person who suffers consequences for his actions on behalf of the tobacco industry. Lorne and the Captain both fall victim to the substance they promoted. BR, a ruthless careerist who does not smoke himself, dies at the hands of those he paid to assassinate dying smokers. Jeannette, his villainous partner, mysteriously disappears, perhaps fearing that Team B intends to target her as well. Buckley portrays the servants of the immoral industry as suffering whether they confront their own unethical behavior or not.

Sources of Influential Power

Thank You for Smoking is in part a fable about people who possess the power to impact the lives of an entire society. Buckley describes the collisions of several different worlds, each possessing and striving to extend its own unique power structure.

The key player in the narrative is the tobacco industry. Tobacco’s power comes from money, which the industry wields in both open and secretive ways. The industry employs effective lobbyists like Nick, who boasts about the Academy’s $5 million campaign to prevent underage smoking. The industry also pays influential people, like the former prime minister of Britain, to speak kindly of tobacco. Though tobacco’s advertising venues shrink due to legal restrictions, the industry finds effective new ways to advertise—children too young to read know who “Joe Camel” is and what he represents—and to place cigarettes in motion pictures. The industry also uses money quietly to underwrite supposed grassroots organizations interested in “smoker’s rights.” The author portrays the industry as possessing its own faux research division intended to offer counter scientific input, much as the real tobacco industry did.

Power also comes from celebrity status. Thus, the tobacco industry cultivates its relationship with notable movie stars, movers and shakers like Jeff, and public figures like Lady Bent. Buckley portrays celebrities as quasi-royal figures whose endorsements result in increased tobacco sales. The media is another power source the tobacco seeks to engage. Though Nick seems not to believe the adage “there is no such thing as bad publicity,” he accepts invitations to appear on Nightline, Oprah, and Larry King Live, understanding that a credible showing boosts tobacco sales and stock prices. Meeting with Heather Holloway, he shares enough discreet information to make her believe she has an exclusive story while in fact spreading disinformation. After his kidnapping, Nick willingly allows Katie Couric to interview him in the hospital, where he shamelessly condemns nicotine patches as being deadly.

The main power source countering the tobacco industry is the federal government. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institutes of Health, and Department of Health and Human Services offer compelling evidence that tobacco use is harmful. Though legal tobacco regulations were slow at first, by 1994, most elected representatives were solidly in favor of restricting sales, indoor use, and advertising. Buckley distills this opposition into the somewhat laughable figure of Senator Finisterre—a scion of an old (and often scandal-plagued) political family whom Nick steamrolls during the Nightline interview. In the face of money and cultural capital, Buckley suggests, the government is nearly powerless.

Likewise, Buckley does not depict a competent and capable FBI or local police force. While sworn officers can investigate and arrest, the author portrays them as troublesome and prone to mistakes. Even the deputy who arrests Nick at the Captain’s funeral is tricked into releasing him to a civilian masquerading as an FBI agent. Private security fares little better: Buckley portrays Nick’s bodyguards and Carlton, the Academy’s security chief, as ineffectual at best. Under their care, Nick is kidnapped and nearly murdered. The most competent investigator is the quiet ex-federal agent Gomez O’Neal, who rescues Nick and gives him the intel he needs to avenge himself. Quiet, unassuming, and disaffected, Gomez is one of the true but overlooked sources of power because he understands how the system actually works.