Tobacco Industry Defector Visits Cleveland County

Source from:  shelbystar.com Cherish Wilson September 18, 2007 09/20/2007

Dr. Jeffrey Wigand tells how he helped reveal industry secrets Dr. Jeffrey Wigand tells his story as a tobacco industry defector with a fair amount of detachment - until he gets to the part when his daughters received death threats. It's then that Wigand and his audience at Cleveland Community College became more grave. And the depth of what Wigand walked away from and into became apparent. Wigand said he went to the tobacco industry with the idea of making cigarettes safer. A corporate headhunter made the option attractive. "It more than doubled my salary. And every perk you could think of," Wigand said. But the more Wigand learned, the more he saw, and the more he landed on his bosses' radar. After a meeting of researchers, the minutes were 13 pages long and said what the tobacco companies didn't want the general public to know. Cigarettes were addictive. They caused cancer. "The lawyers took 13 pages and cut it down to two and half pages of vanilla," Wigand said. When his direct boss got promoted, Wigand was, in so many words, fired. After walking away, he was approached by television networks for help in the latest trend - exposing tobacco companies. "As long as I didn't talk about my company, it was fine," Wigand said. When Wigand did go public with what he knew, the whirlwind was in full swing. "They tried to shut the story down, people had sued for millions and billions of dollars," Wigand explained. "Then 39 state attorney generals called 'Big Tobacco' to testify. After that, the story was out." As for the tobacco industry's hold in the American way of life, Wigand said the 400-year history and the billions of dollars had insulated it beyond regulation. The evidence of that, Wigand contends, can be found on any cigarette pack. "Pick one up and tell me what's in a cigarette," Wigand said. "You can't." Enditem