Curran Steck

Interview with David Kuneman, a smokers rights advocate

10/13/2014
32 min 42 sec

First off, state your full name and any job titles you have or have had that deal with
tobacco and smoking rights.

I'm not compensated, I'm just a volunteer, and this is a volunteer organization. My name is
David Warren Kuneman. I'm the director of research for the Citizens Freedom Alliance. As a
volunteer. I'm retired from being a research chemist.

What is your personal story? How did you become involved in supporting smokers
rights?

Well, it all started back when I began noticing, as I've always been in touch with medical
literature because I worked in the pharmaceutical industry as a research chemist and I began
to notice articles appearing in the literature that society hasn't gotten any healthier despite all
the people that have quit smoking and of course, being a smoker, I was very interested in that.
How was it going to improve my life significantly if it can't do it for society as a whole? If we're
not really getting any benefit in terms of societal improvement of health, why have a war on
smoking? Why should CVS stop selling tobacco products? We are seeing a slight improvement
in lung cancer numbers but everything else that has been blamed on tobacco smoking is a lot
more prevalent today than it was back in the 1970s, even though there has been a decline in
smoking since then. So I don't think Cvs is really going to end up with healthier customers
because of this move to stop selling cigarettes.

Did your parents smoke?

Yes, my parents smoked, but it was really when I started burning the midnight oil in college
when I really started smoking. The cigarettes at night helped keep me awake and the study
group I was in with other chem majors smoked. We used to go down to Sullivans Bar, get a
pitcher of beer, and study together and I imagine you're doing the same thing aren't ya? I want
to Canon University in Urich, Pennsylvania. Everyone smoked except me, and a cigarette and a
beer is actually pretty good. Everyone was smoking. My girlfriend was smoking, my friends
were smoking, my pastor was smoking, my professors were smoking, and my parents were
smoking. You know, so I just started smoking when I would be studying with the gang and you
know maybe late at night and you know it just got more frequently how often I smoked from
there.

Smoking used to be an acceptable practice that many people did, what do you think was
the point in time when people began to see it as a negative and why do you think this
happened?

Well it was associated with lung cancer and that was lets say the late 1940s a couple of
research papers came out on it. They did a British doctor study on it and found out that doctors
who smoked were 5x more likely to develop lung cancer than doctors who did not smoke. That
was a very very well controlled study, because it was a study of medical professionals and
made sure they filled out the surveys correctly and the study was controlled for profession. We
weren't comparing smoking coal-miners to non-smoking catholic nuns or anything like that. All
the other possible causes of lung cancer were pretty much equally distributed among the
smoking and non-smoking doctors. It wasn't until the late 1960s that the government decided
that they should declare war on smoking and they banned cigarette advertisements on
television and then it gradually got more and more aggressive against smoking since that time.
It all made sense, there was also a first surgeon general's report on active smokers that was
released in 1964 that associated smoking with lung cancer and heart disease among men but
just lung cancer among women. I think eventually as more and more of the white collar people
in this country quit smoking, they started feeling that everyone should quit smoking and our
whole approach to medicine nowadays is try to prevent people from doing things that could
hurt themselves and have a consequence cost to society in terms of medical cost. When you can
demonstrate after 50 years of war on smoking that this hasn't done anything, then enough is
enough and personal freedom becomes more important.

Do you think it's fair that they started this war on smoking but still don't seem to have
any problem with alcohol use?

The tragic thing about alcohol is that it kills all ages, mostly through accidents and acts of
violence and we actually tried prohibition with alcohol and we all know what happened just by
looking at history. During prohibition, rates of alcohol use actually increased a little bit and I
thought we learned our lesson on trying to control peoples use of alcohol as far as consumption
is concerned and it's actually very very good comparison to the war that we have against
smoking now. Especially in that in places with extremely high excise taxes on cigarettes there is
actually a lot of illegal cigarette selling and things of that nature that are becoming prevalent
just like we had during prohibition. It links to issues of organized crime, but it doesn't really do
anything useful.

As far as electronic cigarettes, do you think it should fall under the same category of
normal cigarettes?

I do believe that the liquid ingredients in them should at least be regulated by the FDA to make
sure that they are all non-toxic, but most electronic cigarettes right now are using the same
ingredients that the pharmaceutical industry are using when they make nicotine inhalers to
assist in quitting cigarette smoking. As long as all the ingredients that are present in electronic
cigarettes are on the FDA's general recognized as safe list that should be as far as the
government should interfere with the use of those products.

Is this move more of an advertising move and less about actually becoming healthier?

That is definitely a very hypocritical position to be in. if they eliminated cigarettes they should
eliminate alcohol, candy, junk food. They also sell a lot of other things that don't have to do with
health such as toys, electronics, if they want to become a pure health company then thats fine. I
wouldn't expect my local hospital to be selling cigarettes. And if they want to become totally a
pure consumer health company and not have any other business besides that, then they need
to eliminate about 90% of the items in their stores, not just cigarettes.

Do you believe that other stores will feel pressure to end tobacco sales now?

I doubt it. I pay a lot of attention in the business world, and there doesn't seem to be any move
by Walgreens customers to becoming CVS customers, so I don't think CVS is going to make up
for the lost business of not selling cigarettes by attracting more customers with prescriptions
or anything like that. Rest assured, you know the Walgreens executives are watching this very
closely and if they felt that a lot of their customers were leaving and going to CVS then they
should do what they have to do in order to win those customers back, Walgreens would have to
stop selling tobacco products too, and that hasn't happened.

Do you believe that CVSs choice will make a difference in people trying to quit?

No, there are too many places, like gas stations. All they're going to do is make it a little less
convenient. It might even backfire. People who do happen to purchase cigarettes at pharmacies
are very rare and likely to start taking their prescriptions to pharmacies that still sell cigarettes.
We also have the experience when Target stopped selling cigarettes about several years ago.
There was never any hoopla, Target never tried to make a public announcement about ceasing
to sell cigarettes, but it didn't make any difference in the disbursement of customers between
target and Wal-Mart, which does still sell cigarettes.

Do you agree with the increasing trend of banning smoking in public places?

No, because most of the very very large comprehensive studies comparing people exposed to
tobacco smoke and those not exposed have found no difference. It's only very small studies that
show that. There was a very huge study done by the American Cancer Society and the results
were published by the then Vice President of the American Cancer Society with over a million
people in it, where half of the participants were exposed to smoke and half were not exposed
and have found no difference. The times when they interview those who are sick and have been
exposed to secondhand smoke is when they do see a difference between smoking and
nonsmoking exposure. I would say that we seem to be having fewer. If you were to graph the
size of the study with the results of the study the graph would intercept zero risk with an
infinite size of study. And again, considering all the smoking bans we have, they still claim
53,000 people die to exposure to secondhand smoke every year. Why hasn't that number come
down since 1988 when that claim was first made and there were no smoking bans anywhere?
Again we have another public health policy gaining popularity that is not resulting in anyones
health improvement. I consider the whole war on smoking to be a complete failure in terms of
its original goal, which was to make us a healthier society.

Since we haven't really seen results from the war on smoking, why do you think people
are still trying to keep it going and ban it in more places?

I think it is just the fashionable thing. The leaders of the campuses and the civic leaders of
jurisdictions just feel that it is more popular to do that. Another thing that has happened and
we have some evidence of this is that all these non-profit groups that are for banning smoking
are making huge donations to the campaign funds of politicians who will vote for smoking
bans. I know that on many college campuses, they give away free nicotine patches to help
people quit, and I would like to know who is paying for all these patches that they are handing
out to college students. And obviously this money goes back to these pharmaceutical
companies that support these anti-smoking groups in the first place. So there is a financial
reason to try to do this. These people are being selfish; it puts a lot of bars and restaurants out
of business. I even have a study from the American National Restaurant Association saying so
that they have found that their members in jurisdictions with smoking bans lose revenue.

Do you believe people who choose to smoke actually want to quit? Or do you believe they
are annoyed by society telling them they should quit?

I think what it is is that when they go to their physicians they don't want to get in an argument
with their physicians so they just say they want to quit. That's where the stats come from. That
so many smokers want to quit. The fact that a lot of these electronic cigarettes don't actually
deliver measurable nicotine to the blood system of users, yet they seem to be perfectly happy
when they switch from real to electronic suggests that nicotine addiction isn't the primary
driver of people wanting to smoke. Its more of people wanting something in their mouth that
they can suck on, rather than a chemical addiction. All studies that have been done by nicotine
patch manufacturers have found that these products are ineffective in helping smokers quit.

Many people today see smoking as a nasty habit that should be banned, but have no
reason to think this except for what they have heard through the media. What would you
say to these types of people to try to change their views?

First of all, I can remember. Since Im in my 60s, I can remember back when no one really cared
if someone was smoking next to them on a plane or at a bingo party at a church or even at a
hospital. And I don't think the smell of cigarettes have changed so much that nobody can stand
being around them anymore. But I would say instead of pushing for smoking bans. I would ask
your individual bar or restaurant owner to ban smoking but have places for people who smoke
to have a place to patronize too. I do not like to smoke around people who it obviously bothers,
but then I try to avoid situations where I do that. I would just rather go where I'm welcome and
let people who don't like smoking go where they're welcome.

Do you have any personal stories about when you weren't allowed to smoke at a place
and it bothered you?

Not really, because I don't really go to a lot of places that I can't smoke. Now obviously I was
hospitalized a couple years ago. But it didn't really bother me that much that I couldn't smoke
when I was in the hospital. I was in there for 3 days for some tests and things like that. But
most of the time now, in the St. Louis county establishments are allowed to be exempt from the
smoking ban. If a bar does not serve enough food, it can ask for an exemption to allow smoking.
And I tend to go to places that have an exemption. And some of the things I have noticed among
my friends who are smokers is that we now tend to just hang out at each others homes and not
go out as much as we used too. I can say that I don't like the idea of bans. For example why can't
there be an airline for smokers? Or a taxicab for smokers? I think society is trying to turn us
into health slaves. I think Obama care is actually a step toward that. We are forced to have
health insurance now. We are forced to stop smoking in places.

CVS seems to think that they will get customers to switch from other stores to them for
going healthy, do you think this will happen or is this just an assumption?

I think it's an assumption that won't come true. Let's remember that Wal-Mart is one of the
largest retailers of cigarettes in the United States and they still have a pharmacy and are
thinking about putting in an urgent care clinic and selling cigarettes has not hurt Wal-Mart at
all.

Due to CVS's lack of interest in ending sales of other unhealthy items, it seems to be
simply an advertising campaign would you agree?

I saw the CVS commercial where CVS announces that they stopped selling cigarettes, and they
are changing their name to CVS health and they want to put clinics in all of their pharmacies
and want to be devoted to health. But the shorter version of the same commercial leaves the
fact that they stopped selling cigarettes out of the announcement. CVS might actually be
starting to notice that this is not at all been good publicity for them either.