Read a Q&A with John Safran! | Puff Piece

John Safran is a writer and filmmaker who always gets in too deep for his own good. His debut book, Murder in Mississippi, won the Ned Kelly Award for best true crime. His follow up, Depends What You Mean by Extremist, found him lost among radicals and was shortlisted for the Australian Book Industry Awards. His wild and hilarious documentaries, such as ‘John Safran vs God’ and ‘Jedis & Juggalos’, have received accolades from the Australian Film Institute and Rose d’Or Festival. His latest book is Puff Piece: How Philip Morris set vaping alight (and burned down the English language).

Today, John Safran is on the blog to answer a few questions about Puff Piece. Read on …

John Safran

Please tell us about your book, Puff Piece!

JS: Philip Morris, the folks that bring you Marlboro, are sneaking a new cigarette into the world, which they’re pretending isn’t a cigarette. This is to weave around European and American governments increasingly forbidding the production of cigarettes. We’re not talking about vaping here. This is tobacco rolled in paper with a filter at one end, that you plant between your lips, inhaling tobacco and nicotine into your lungs. They call it a HeatStick.

Why was it important to you to write this story?

JS: Bafflingly, considering cigarettes remain the number one health crisis in the world – taking out eight million people a year – Philip Morris has pulled off this ruse without anyone, including the media, noticing. This was partially because all eyes were on the vape crisis; partially because smoking sounds like such an old issue. But all that cancer in all those people is as new and relevant as it ever was.

Can you describe your initial reaction to the news that Philip Morris was relaunching as a health enterprise? What made you want to dig deeper?

JS: I was confused. Was it true? Sounded suspicious but maybe it was legit. Then I was confused as to why no one had noticed Philip Morris was up to brand new chicanery. Was I mad, thinking this was an audacious and highly consequential gambit by Philip Morris? Thus I needed to start my snoop.

You say that Philip Morris is upending language itself in its efforts to rebrand and relaunch. How are they doing this and do you think it will actually work?

JS: It has worked! The European Parliament successfully banned the production of menthol cigarettes. And Philip Morris slinked through the ban by changing the word ‘cigarette’ to ‘HeatStick’ and the law wasn’t built to know what to do if Philip Morris reworded their cigarettes. The deadliest agent in a cigarette, tar, is absent from a HeatStick. But that’s only because they’ve changed the word ‘tar’ to ‘nicotine-free dry particulate matter’.

What do you think it would take for health and wellbeing to prevail over the need to keep business alive?

JS: For storytellers to go on crazy adventures, return bloody and bruised, and blabber on about what they found out – so people can decide if they want to buy tempting but dangerous products.

What is the last book you read and loved?

JS: Antkind by Charlie Kaufman

What do you hope readers will discover in Puff Piece?

JS: That we have to be alert to people changing the meaning of words. That the precise words chosen in a situation can be a matter of life and death.

And finally, what’s up next for you?

JS: Penguin Random House are stuck with me for another book!

Thanks John!

—Puff Piece by John Safran (Penguin Books Australia) is out now.

Puff Piece

by John Safran

Wild, hilarious and thought-provoking, Puff Piece is a probing look into Big Tobacco and the vaping industry, and how words can be literally a matter of life and death.

The folks that bring you Marlboro – Philip Morris – are wheezing, slowly dying. Cigarettes are out of favour with everyone, from world governments and investors to, increasingly, smokers. So, what’s their plan?

Prepare to be dazzled. Or, at the very least, befuddled...

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