ABSTRACT
Tobacco was on the defensive. A Philip Morris internal memo written in 1989 articulated the need, given the issues it was facing, to talk in a variety of voices if what we want to say is to be heard, understood and acted upon. At times, we will speak as Philip Morris; sometimes we will need to speak as independent scientists, scientific groups and businessmen; and, finally, we will need to speak as the smoker. This chapter investigates this panoply of voices and what they say, under the guise of different forms of agnotology. It presents a series of vignettes and examples of the many voices of the tobacco corporation, all of them geared to making an unnecessary product more appealing and better able to sell. The chapter ends by considering the ways in which the many voices might be silenced, through a process called “turning the policy network inside-out”, as has happened to a certain extent in the UK.
