John Roberts Quotes
When we go to a restaurant, they don't ask, 'Do you want the asbestos section or the non-asbestos section?' They do ask, 'Do you want smoking or nonsmoking?'
Roberts, John G. Oral argument. Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, 549 U.S. 497, Supreme Court of the United States, 29 Nov. 2006.
The General was not a fan of President Lyndon Johnson. He was asked by a historian of the Lyndon Johnson Library if he would consent to an oral interview about his Vietnam War recollections:
This was the first cigarette company that admitted what by then had been known by the cigarette companies for almost 50 years during which they continued to knowingly kill people and deny that there was any harm that could come from smoking.
In the 1950s evidence was pointing to the relationship between cigarette smoking and cancer, Then scientic studes showed that cigarettes were a causae of lung cancer and ohe forms of cancer. The tobacco industry had their own research that showed that tobacco was also addicting. Rather then give up the profits they were geting from cigaette sales, the tobacco companies hired John Hill and at his suggestion formed a "Tobacco Rsearch Comittee" where the followd Hill's strategy of casting doubt on the accuracy and completeness of the research shing the causal link. Even after the Surgeon General's relase of his 1963 Report explaining the extensive evidence that was then ammassed about the danger of cigarettes. None the less there was little money to publicize the Surgeon General's report, and the tobacco companies spent a fortune hammering the message that the research was not yet sufficient and more study is needed before America puts all the tobacco farmers and cigarette ndustry workers out of jubs when the evidence was "so doubtfull". The efforts to spread the disinformation about cigarettes actually delayed the public education programs, label warnings, media focus for a few decades. Slowly there were so many people dying a year (about 1/2 million) that most Americans finally befan to see throught the deception of the industry. But that delay was resonsible for more deaths and debilitations of Americans than had suffered that fate during all the Wars in American history. They were so successful casting doubt on one of the most proven of scientic medical research, politicians picked up the same techniques do negate many otehr scientifc findings that threatened their vested interests or where the implications of the resarch cere contrary to their ideology. Climaate change denyers used the exact same techniques that the tobacco indudstry used so skillfully with cancer.
John Glover Roberts Jr. is an American lawyer and jurist who serves as the chief justice of the United States.
