Some sad news to start the year. The writer and activist Michael J. McFadden passed away just before Christmas aged 75. His 2004 book Dissecting Antismokers' Brains was ahead of its time in critiquing the tactics, arguments and evidence of the prohibitionist tobacco control lobby. He usefully divided anti-smokers into nine categories: the innocents, the neurotics, the truly affected, the bereaved, the ex-smokers, the controllers, the idealists, the moralists and the greedy.
Michael went on to write another book about the coming prohibition of tobacco (TobakkoNacht – The Antismoking Endgame), but could mostly be found in forums and "below the line" in a Sisyphean struggle against online misinformation. He was kind enough to read an early draft of my book Velvet Glove, Iron Fist and provided many helpful comments, particularly with regards to the situation in his native USA. He continued pinging me occasional e-mails with encouraging words for the rest of his life.
His background surprised some people:
Michael J. McFadden grew up in Brooklyn in the ’60s, studied Peace Studies and Peace Research at Manhattan College (BA) and the U of PA’s Wharton Graduate School, and then moved to being an activist/trainer in a nonviolence commune, canvassing door-to-door for an anti-nuke group, organizing bicycle activism, and eventually writing two books aimed at fighting the antismoking movement.
So how does a hippie peace/bicycle activist become a pro-smoking activist and writer?
The answer is that I’m NOT a “pro-smoking” anything: I’m a pro-freedom, pro-science, anti-overpowering-government-control, anti-manipulation-through-dishonest-propaganda activist and writer.
He'll be missed.
