Pablo Moretto

Jeffrey Wigand, the man played by Oscar-nominated actor Russell Crowe in the movie “The Insider” based on his fight with the tobacco industry, was the guest speaker for this semester’s Multicultural Lecture Series titled “Does Integrity Matter? – Inside the Tobacco Industry.”

Wigand spoke to an audience of more than 150 faculty and students about his “insider” role in exposing the truth on the tobacco industry’s use of additives and about his continued fight against teenage smoking and tobacco use.

“Thou shall not be a victim. Thou shall not be a perpetrator. Above all, thou shall not be a bystander,” Wigand said, quoting a line inscribed at the Washington D.C. Holocaust Museum. Wigand focused his lecture on how integrity came into play as he made choices involving the tobacco industry, keeping with the College’s theme of integrity this year.

Wigand, who spent four years and three months working for Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation in Louisville, Ky., said he was contacted by the company in May 1988, when he was working in pharmaceuticals. They offered him a job working to create a safer cigarette. The job came with benefits that included full health coverage (one of his daughters was born with spine bifida). Wigand, convinced the company truly wanted safer cigarettes, decided to accept the position in spite of warnings from his medical colleagues.

“I thought I was doing the right thing, leaving the pharmaceutical industry . to make a safer cigarette; I thought that would be possible,” Wigand said in a behind-the-scenes clip on “The Insider” shown before the lecture. “I clearly knew that nicotine was addictive, I clearly knew that smoking killed people, I clearly knew that you could use various techniques to reduce that. Safer is possible, safe is never possible.”

After several months on the job, Wigand managed to develop a cigarette that was “safer in some respects,” but he was reprimanded by his bosses at B&W for recording his research in 14 pages worth of documents, which a lawyer altered to remove mention of “safer cigarettes.” Wigand refused to sign the documents. The project was dropped and Wigand was fired from his job for “poor communication skills” after he fought with the company about its use of a dangerous and banned additive, Wigand said.

“By then, I was having trouble looking in the mirror or at my daughters,” he said.

After being cornered into signing an agreement that he wouldn’t reveal any tobacco-related information so that B&W would honor his contract, Wigand planned to go back to his life in pharmaceuticals until he was asked by “60 Minutes” to review some documents about fire-safe cigarettes. The program revealed that in 1976 the tobacco companies developed a fire-safe cigarette with the same cost and quality as its popular brand, but chose to shelve the fire-safe product, which could have saved an average of 1,200 lives per year through 1994.

After that, he shared information on the tobacco industry’s use of additives, genetically-engineered tobacco and cigarette design with the FDA, “60 Minutes” and elsewhere. Wigand became a key witness in tobacco litigation.

B&W sued him for his public disclosure. On June 20, 1997, the lawsuit was dismissed in a settlement and he was “free to speak his mind,” Wigand said.

Wigand, who spends 182 days a year traveling to middle schools through his Smokefree Kids, Inc. organization to talk with children before they start smoking, said the principal targets of tobacco companies continue to be children and that 3,000 children become addicted daily.

“Tobacco products kill 450,000 Americans (per year) and currently 5.1 million people in the world today. If this continues as it is today . that number will become one Holocaust per year – 10 million people – and people will die that do not need to die because they were hooked when they were a child by deliberate, conscious manipulation,” Wigand said.

Wigand said in spite of progress made against tobacco use in the United States, it is still a worldwide problem. The tobacco industry has begun to target Third World countries.

“What we change here now happens elsewhere,” Wigand said. “I have seen children (in Third World countries) barely out of diapers having their first cigarette.”

“Do I believe I have done the right thing? Yes,” Wigand said. “Would I do it again? Yes.” He said he has regained his integrity.

Brian Schlesinger, a senior electrical engineering major who attended as part of ResLife, said, “A lot of the stuff I already knew about the methods tobacco companies use . but I was surprised by how far they’ve gone after individuals like Wigand.”

“What are you going to do now to help those who can’t help themselves?” Wigand asked the audience. “There is an obligation with knowledge . and I have passed it on to you.”