Surgeon General declared no safe secondhand smoke level, yet tobacco firms still denied harm

Evidence

In a press conference on the release of an updated report on the dangers of secondhand smoke, Surgeon General Richard Carmona announced, “[T]he debate is over: The science is clear” (O’Neil, 2006). There is no safe level of toxicity. Neither separate sections for nonsmokers nor ventilation systems are effective. Nevertheless, R. J. Reynolds continued to challenge the empirical evidence: “It seems unlikely that secondhand smoke presents any significant harm to otherwise healthy nonsmoking adults” (O’Neil, 2006). — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1675

Categorization

• SHARE: For anyone tracking denial persistence: even after the Surgeon General’s 2006 declaration, RJ Reynolds kept disputing.