Smoke and Mirrors: A History of Denial

Torrie Rosenzweig directs this straightforward documentary on the history of the cigarette and the tobacco lobby's attempts at obfuscating the growing health risks. The film charts tobacco farming in American history from its early colonial origins, which virtually bankrolled the American Revolution, through to the 1880s when industrial revolution allowed companies to mass produce cigarettes. During WWI, tobacco companies exported boat loads of the stuff for free to U.S. troops fighting in the trenches -- thereby addicting an entire male generation. As lung cancer rates went skyward, researchers soon began making scientific connections between that illness and the popularity of cigarettes, in spite of the tobacco company's campaign to confuse the public and to derail anti-smoking legislation. In 1994, this façade irrevocably cracked when boxes of top-secret corporate documents were leaked to a Congressional committee.