#83: Selling Cigarettes

The United States is obsessed with policing drugs and those who use them, yet the most deadly, well-studied drug in existence, nicotine, is a regulated product, legal to buy once a consumer is 21 years old. According to the WHO, tobacco, when used properly, will kill half of all people who don't stop using it. And because cigarettes are so obviously dangerous yet still widely distributed and glamorized, they hold a clue to our human condition. The story of cigarettes is the story of media. I...