Title: Addiction Incorporated

Opens: December 14, 2011 at New York’s Film Forum

Why do people smoke, despite evidence that smoking causes a myriad of fatal diseases, particularly involving the heart and lungs, as well as leaving the smoker with stained and rotting teeth, smelly breath, stained fingernails, general body odor, and an inability to puff up inside some states’ offices, restaurants, airlines and the like? People may start because of peer pressure, though according to the star in Charles Evans Jr.’s documentary exposé of the tobacco industry, peer pressure is discounted. He blames advertising, though he does not mention how Joe Camel has been a leading seductive force causing kids from age twelve to light up.

This robust picture, made entertaining with some cool animation of rats that push buttons to take nicotine hits, is not an objective, unbiased look at the industry but one fueled by a deadly antipathy to what the tobacco industry is doing. In fact one wonders how the big seven tobacco CEOs could possibly make a case for their product given its deadly effects.

“Addiction Incorporated” opens on a PhD scientist, Victor De Noble, who became the first person in his extended family to enter college despite pressure to become like his father and his neighbors who are the town’s plumbers and auto repair specialists. Since he is dyslectic, his counselors thought he was not good college material, but he rose above their inadequately researched proclamations to become a charismatic fighter against the very industry that gave him lucrative employment.

During the 1980s the Philip Morris people felt pressure to invent a cigarette that would be relatively safe, i.e. it would decrease the danger of heart failure, though its addictive properties would not be affected. DeNoble tested nicotine on rats—which began pushing the nicotine lever some 90 times a day—coming up with proof that nicotine was addictive. What a surprise! Amazingly, when a House of Reps Health and Environment committee under Congressman Henry A. Waxman questioned the top seven leaders of the industry, each one affirmed under oath that cigarettes were not addictive. DeNoble’s position was terminated, leading him to redouble his efforts to educate the public. Then again all seven CEOs left the industry soon after the hearings.

If you wonder why the increased war on cigarettes—the pictures of black lungs, rotting teeth, emphysema (a painful and slow death)—credit Victor DeNoble. Thanks to his efforts lawsuits taken in each of the fifty states against the industry on the grounds that the taxpayers are funding the sickness caused by the butts, they have succeeded in winning considerable sums of money. Several of these lawyers are given air time by the doc.

As a former high-school teacher I was particularly interested in the way Victor DeNoble has taken his campaign to the kids throughout the country, showing them graphically how cigarettes affect the brain. The faces of the young people indicate that DeNoble is capable of affixing their attention, though I still wonder whether young people, who think they are immortal, might think it’s therefore extra-cool to challenge death in the same way they might rev up their cars and bikes to over 100 miles per hour.

Unrated 102 minutes. (c) 2011 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online

Overall – B