Firebrand: A Tobacco Lawyer's Journey

by Joshua Knelman

Overview

"You'll inhale this tell-all book about the tobacco industry and never look at a No Smoking sign the same way again!"
--Margaret Atwood, via Twitter

Mad Men meets Bad Blood in this addictive, behind-the-scenes globe-trotting narrative of moral ambiguity, law, public policy, and big tobacco.

"Given everything the lawyer knew up to that point about smoking, as far as he could tell, cigarettes shouldn't even have been available as a mass market product..."

It's the start of the new millennium and a young lawyer is recruited to work for an unnamed multinational company. It isn't until his second interview that the product the company produces is revealed to him: cigarettes. Possibly the most controversial consumer product in human history: seductive, addictive, and deadly--yet completely legal. Over the next decade, he travels the world as he works as legal counsel to help successfully market cigarettes in dozens of countries.

Firebrand ventures into the heart of the tobacco industry and the icy paradoxes of capitalism, each chapter a counterintuitive lesson on how cigarette companies--the target of increasingly intense anti-smoking campaigns and government regulations, including the 1964 Surgeon General's Report and 200-billion-dollar debt of the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement--continue to pivot and thrive in the 21st century, inhaling profits from their one billion smokers worldwide.

As Mad Men did for the alcohol-fueled, oversexed, corrupt world of New York advertising, Firebrand does for the even more despised world of big tobacco, in an addictive, behind-the-scenes piece of storytelling. The lawyer's work takes him from manufacturing factories to hocking "sticks" at UK corner store counters; from tacky resorts in Spain and pirate city-states to luxury hotels and Grand Prix events across European and Asian cities. A contemporary tale of our ambiguous times, told with character-based drive and dry humour, Firebrand is a grand tour of the compelling paradoxes of globalization and corporate culture, shrink-wrapped in an engrossing narrative of a morally dubious yet completely legal enterprise.

"This is storytelling at its best. Wry observation, compelling narrative, fascinating characters, page-turning writing, and an age-old question driving it all..."
--Joel Bakan, author of The New Corporation: How 'Good' Corporations are Bad for Democracy

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780735243835
Publisher:	Penguin Canada
Publication date:	01/16/2024
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.61(w) x 8.67(h) x 0.77(d)

About the Author

JOSHUA KNELMAN is an award-winning author, a founding member of The Walrus magazine, and the recipient of multiple National Magazine Awards. His writing has appeared in The Walrus, Toronto Life, National Post, and The Globe and Mail. His debut true crime bestseller, Hot Art, earned the Crime Writers of Canada Best Non-Fiction Book Award and the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction. He lives in Toronto.

Read an Excerpt

The lawyer started his job in the tobacco industry in the late summer of 2001, just three years after the Master Settlement Agreement was signed in the US, and as waves from the surgeon general’s report continued to roll outward — changing social attitudes and laws in almost every nation on Earth — they gathered in strength and were finally crashing on the shores of Spain, France, Italy, Greece, and the United Kingdom.

The lawyer’s new job was to help the company navigate those fast-moving legal waters, making sure its marketing and ad campaigns were complying in full with the new laws and restrictions descending on the UK marketplace — all while selling as many cigarettes as possible.

It was an exciting time to be joining the industry. No other consumer product was quite like cigarettes. The fact that cigarettes were still 100 percent legal while at the same time proven to be deadly had created a kind of paradox which swirled mysteriously at the centre of this special product’s popularity.

As far as the lawyer could tell, given everything he knew about smoking, cigarettes shouldn’t even have been available as a mass market product. Capitalism, it seemed, hadn’t been designed to contain this particular consumer anomaly.

It had been decades since Richard Doll, and then the surgeon general, had found cigarettes to be poisonous. Yet here he was, a young lawyer, joining a corporate multinational company which manufactured and sold this product around the globe. Even more absurd, he was a smoker. He was sailing full speed into the tobacco paradox, not sure what to expect.

Table of Contents

Author's Note xi

Interviews 1

The Surgeon General's Warning 13

Northern Irish Factory 30

Playing with Fire 45

Drive Team 60

Vows Are Made 77

Fake Spain 94

Pirate Town 111

Beaches of Ash 118

Losing at Grand Prix 125

Winning in Kazakhstan 138

Switzerland Confidential 163

The Bigger Fish 181

American Spirits 197

Don't Hold Your Breath 220

Hiding in the Open 239

Acknowledgments 253

Editorial Reviews

"You'll inhale this tell-all book about the tobacco industry and never look at a No Smoking sign the same way again!"
--Margaret Atwood, via Twitter

"This is storytelling at its best. Wry observation, compelling narrative, fascinating characters, page-turning writing, and an age-old question driving it all: how is it that those who profit from harm get away with it, even when everyone knows what they are up to? Illusion is the answer, says Joshua Knelman--the craft of its practitioners, and the ready acceptance of its targets. That is Firebrand's story about big tobacco. It is as thrilling for its revelations as it is sobering for its conclusions."
--Joel Bakan, author of The New Corporation: How 'Good' Corporations are Bad for Democracy

"Firebrand is a beautifully written, riveting tale of one man's journey into the world of gilded evil that has seduced billions, enticing them into the embrace of the deadliest product ever invented. Joshua Knelman is a gifted storyteller, guiding us through the moral forensics of this goliath of death and pleasure as it takes over the soul of one of those who entered its portals."
--Martyn Burke, Peabody Award-winning film director of Under Fire: Journalists in Combat

"Yes, this is about the slick maneuvering of international cigarette companies. But it's also about how corporations navigate legislation, and how policy is never as clear-cut as it looks--especially through the eyes of a lawyer. Firebrand is addictive."
--Jeff Rubin, former Chief Economist at CIBC World Markets, and author of The Expendables

"One of the year's most remarkable books, [Firebrand] brilliantly untangles what Knelman calls 'the tobacco paradox' -- how the tobacco trade thrives as much, if not more, than it ever has -- and its many ironies."
--Toronto Star

"Ever wondered why the most dangerous consumer product ever invented--the cigarette--is still legally available for sale? Joshua Knelman takes us deep inside the global tobacco industry to reveal a story of corporate greed, international intrigue, and the complicity of public policy in the face of big money. Firebrand offers a compelling case study in our addiction to capitalism, in a book that will make your heart race and your blood boil."
--Andrew Westoll, RBC Taylor Prize-winning author of The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary

"The most fun book on the tobacco business since Christopher Buckley's Thank You for Smoking, with the added virtue of being grounded in real experience."
--Washington Examiner

"How has the tobacco industry 'managed to survive decades of intense and sustained assault by the medical and scientific establishment, and from governments around the world'? In this entertaining and occasionally enraging investigation, journalist Knelman (Hot Art) seeks to answer that question . . . Packed with colorful insider details and nuanced analysis, this is a stimulating tell-all."
--Publishers Weekly

"Knelman lights up every deeply-reported and finely-observed chapter of Firebrand with wit and insight. A rollicking and riveting insider's tour of an insidious global industry."
--Rachel Giese, author of Boys: What it Means to Become a Man

"As addictive as the subject matter, Knelman's storytelling breathes intrigue, high-drama, and humour on to every page, while guiding us through the nebulous business of a killer industry. One helluva good read."
--Garvia Bailey, broadcaster and co-founder, Media Girlfriends

"WARNING: Firebrand is a thriller told from deep inside global capitalism's secret chambers, where few of us ever get to tread. The story will make your palms sweat and your heart race, a staggering achievement."
--Richard Poplak, author of Paydirt: What the Search for Gold has Cost the World

"Firebrand is a brilliant insider's look at the shadowy jurisdictions and sly legal loopholes that have helped a global pariah like the tobacco industry not only survive but thrive. A captivating narrative told at a thriller's pace, it's a master class in how the international corporate world really works--a triumph in business storytelling."
--Marci McDonald, award-winning journalist and author of The Armageddon Factor

"Informative and addictive, Firebrand is an insider's view of the high stakes billion dollar international business of big tobacco that reads like a great conversation at a bar. From the backstreets of London to a dubious bar in Kazakhstan, to a Formula 1 racetrack and the storerooms of modern Spanish pirates, Joshua Knelman takes you on an epic journey to the contradictory heart of one of humanity's most pleasurable and deadly inventions."
--Jason Logan, multi-award-winning Creative Director and author of Make Ink: A Forager's Guide To Natural Inkmaking

"[T]he pleasure of Knelman's fast-paced Firebrand: A Tobacco Lawyer's Journey comes in a variety of ways. For starters, you know who the bad guys are right from the get-go (the tobacco giants). The central figure is a young Canadian lawyer who stays unnamed from beginning to end as he goes about the bad guys' business of keeping the lethal but legal product ever available to the addicted masses. His tale, as told by Knelman, has something of the style of a John Grisham thriller."
--Literary Review of Canada

From the Publisher

09/05/2022

How has the tobacco industry “managed to survive decades of intense and sustained assault by the medical and scientific establishment, and from governments around the world”? In this entertaining and occasionally enraging investigation, journalist Knelman (Hot Art) seeks to answer that question through the story of a lawyer who spent a decade representing an unnamed multinational tobacco firm. The anonymous lawyer was recruited from an entertainment law office to work on the company’s “international brand protection,” sports sponsorships, and U.K. compliance issues. His experiences shed light on the industry’s sleek yet seedy corporate culture (after a tour of the company’s factory in Ireland, the lawyer, who had a fiancée, was advised to get an “Irish girlfriend” if he was going to make regular visits to the country); the challenge of meeting different health, safety, and advertising regulations around the world; the competition from Chinese counterfeiters; and the moral compromises necessary to work in an industry that was responsible for countless deaths. Throughout, Knelman fills in the gaps in the lawyer’s firsthand testimony with concise histories of tobacco cultivation and changing attitudes toward cigarettes since the 1964 U.S. surgeon general’s report linking tobacco consumption to cancer and other illnesses, as well as his own experiences as a longtime smoker. Packed with colorful insider details and nuanced analysis, this is a stimulating tell-all. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly