Joe Eszterhas Quotes
Don't smoke. Don't kill yourselves. Don't maim yourselves. Tell your friends. Please don't smoke.
Eszterhas, Joe. Interview. CNN Sunday Morning, CNN, 25 Aug. 2002.
TV commercial made just before his death—and broadcast after his death—from lung cancer caused by smoking.
In Japan it was illegal to manufacture and sell cigarettes except for the government which maintains the cigarette monopoly and reaps $18 billion annually as a result. This label was all the government could bring itself to use. Japanese health authorities saw it as a type of victory since prior to this there was no warning whatsoever.
This statement might have been expecrted in 1970 by a conservative politiican, but was astounding in 2000 when he wrote it, The quote was not well known in the 2016 Presidential Campaign when he and Donald Trump were elected. At the time of this statement Pence, running for his 2nd term as a Congressman from Indiana. He recieved very substantial campaign contributions from the tobacco industry and their affilated PACS--at least $13,000 which was then a substantial sum for a Congressional election. This statement caused serious analysits and students of politics to choose between some very unpalitable conclusions about Pence: They were: 1) He was so ignorant and naive that he did not know that Cigarette Smoking was close to the major cause of premature death in the United States, 2) He knew about it but was willing to support and abet the killing of hundreds of thousands of Americans in order to get some additional campaign moncy. 3) He was a sociopath who did not concern himelf with the liefe/death consequences of his actions. 3) most people eliminate as his statements have always shown just the opposite throughout his career. He has always been deeply concerned about morality and is a ddeply religious man. Most of his strong suporters either overlook the incident or are unaware that it happened. Others speculate between 1) and 2), Pence himself does not dicuss it and has not yet shared his thinking or motivation at the time. Some see Pences statement as an example of how successful the Tobacco Industry's Deliberate Campain of deception was, that they were able to get a well-meaning member of Congress to spread their lies. See Quotation 644133.
The World Health Organization, a component of the United Nations, advocated national restrictive legislation to control and eliminate smoking. The smoking addict, hooked on nicotine was caught between public health efforts to regulate and eliminate tobacco and the efforts to treat the addicts and respect the individual’s right to freedom of choice.
József A. Eszterhás is a Hungarian-American writer. He wrote the screenplays for the films Flashdance, Jagged Edge, Basic Instinct and Showgirls. He has also written several books, including American Rhapsody, Crossbearer: A Memoir of Faith and an autobiography entitled Hollywood Animal.
