Secrets Through the Smoke
Video Trailer Transcript
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President Clinton: Cigarettes and smokeless tobacco are harmful, highly
addictive, and aggressively marketed to our young people. The evidence is overwhelming
and the threat is immediate.
Dr. Koop (Surgeon General 1989): If, for the first time, somebody
brought to the American shores tobacco containing nicotine, and we had a package
insert that told us everything that we know about it, the government would take
steps to ban it today—and if they didn’t, there would be a revolution in the
country.
Dr. Wigand: It is a meticulously engineered, scientifically understood
product that when used as intended kills you.
[Video montage of newspaper headlines and tobacco-related scenes—excerpts
read by various voices]
... Dr. Jeffrey Wigand.
... the executive who told tobacco secrets.
... to present the Breath of Life Award to Dr. Jeffrey Wigand.
... the man called research.
... the highest ranking executive ever to speak out against the tobacco business.
... tobacco industry whistle blower tells the truth about cigarettes.
Female student: The generation is tired of being lied to about tobacco,
tired of replacing the one thousand customers tobacco kills every day, tired
of being a target. Today tobacco becomes our target.
Male adult: What did I lose? I lost a family.
Male adult: I am not going to be like it’s not going to happen to
me. It’s exactly what is going to happen to me.
Male adult: The real thing we were doing here was presenting a voice
from inside the industry.
Female announcer: Tobacco industry insider Jeffery Wigand reveals
what it was like making a decision that could have cost him his life.
Male: He had two death threats.
Female announcer: Was there a bullet found in your mail box?
Dr. Wigand: Most certainly.
[End of video montage]
Dr. Wigand: I am here today to try to help answer some of your questions
dealing with tobacco, smoking and health, how tobacco works, to try to give
you an understanding of what the truth is about how the industry works inside
versus what it says outside.
Voice over: What would you do? What would you do? What would you
do?
Jeffrey Wigand. Jeffery Wigand.
Male student: Dr. Wigand, what are the ingredients in cigarettes and
why don’t more people know about them?
Dr. Wigand: Whether it is a natural cigarette or a chemically-engineered
cigarette, it generates combustion products, tar, black stuff. That black stuff,
whether it is in an engineered cigarette or a natural cigarette still contains
four to eight thousand chemical compounds. Most of those chemical compounds
you cannot legally bury in your garbage pits.
Female student: What? In a cigarette?
Male student: So what is the deal with second-hand smoke? Is it really
dangerous?
Female student: Do tobacco companies do their own research and, if
they do, are the results reliable?
Male student: Do you think this industry intentionally tries to undermine
science that shows tobacco use to be dangerous?
[Interview clip from the 1950s]
Announcer: Have any cancer-causing agents been identified in cigarettes?
Tobacco company representative: No, none whatever, either in cigarettes
or in any products of smoking.
Male Announcer: We have lots more to do—lots more in terms of getting
more youth involved, lots more to do to get more people involved in tobacco
control and activism. We have much more to do to keep the truth out there. Shining
the light on the truth will keep this industry where it belongs.
Dr. Wigand: If we don’t stop tobacco use on a worldwide basis, estimates
are by the year 2010, 10 million people will be dying from tobacco-related diseases,
more so than AIDS, suicides, car accidents, fires—all of them combined together
do not equal the death toll taken by the most preventable form of disease we
have, tobacco use.
Rosie O’Donnell (Entertainer): There is an amazing movie out right
now called The Insider. It is directed by Michael Mann, starring Al Pacino
and Russell Crowe, and it is about the real-life story of a man named Jeffrey
Wigand. It is, in my opinion, the best movie I’ve seen in the last ten years.
It is a socially relevant and poignant film and it changed the course of America.
Female announcer: Dr. Jeffrey Wigand does not like to be called a
hero, but clearly the history books will define him as such and tell his inspiring
story of courage, the story of how one man sacrificed a great deal, paid a high
price to expose corporate deception in the tobacco industry, all in an effort
to protect the public health and try and save lives.
Robert Kennedy (1957): All of you share with us a distressing lack
of knowledge about how to convince people, particularly young people, not only
that cigarettes may kill them, but that they should do something about it.
I am going to be very big with the cigarette companies at the end of this
speech.
[End of video tape.]
Page last reviewed 02/28/2007
Page last modified 02/28/2007
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