Peter L. Berger

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This article is part of the Tobacco portal on Sourcewatch funded from 2006 - 2009 by the American Legacy Foundation.

Dr. Peter L. Berger was a professor of Sociology at Rutgers University and later at Boston College. He served as a Tobacco Institute consultant. While at Boston College Berger, quoted in tobacco industry newsletter "The Tobacco Observer," described tobacco control proponents as "fanatical."(E. Whelan 1984) Berger attended Philip Morris executive meetings and participated in the multinational tobacco industry's Social Costs/Social Values Project, created to refute the social costs theory of smoking and to help reverse declining social acceptability of smoking. He was a contributing author to the industry-financed book Smoking and Society, edited by another tobacco industry consultant, Robert Tollison.

Biography

Peter L. Berger is an academic social philosopher and sociologist who served as a consultant to the tobacco industry starting with the industry's original 1979 Social Costs/Social Values (SC/SV) Project.[1] According to a 1980 International Committee on Smoking Issues/Social Acceptability Working Party (ICOSI/SAWP) progress report, Berger’s primary assignment was "to demonstrate clearly that anti-smoking activists have a special agenda which serves their own purposes, but not necessarily the majority of nonsmokers."[2]

Berger assisted the industry by developing non-health based arguments in defense of tobacco. He specifically developed the argument that the anti-smoking movement is a class struggle of the richer, more educated groups against the poorer and less-educated groups, that public health advocates are elitists who are driven by quasi-religious, messianic urges and seek to punish non-believers (smokers) through the application of taxes and fines.[3]

Berger contributed a chapter to Robert Tollison’s industry-commissioned book, Smoking and Society, in which he (Berger) did disclose his affiliation with the industry. In his chapter, titled "A Sociological View of the Antismoking Phenomenon," Berger described the anti-smoking movement as a "health cult" in which doctors were the "priests" and hospitals the "sanctuaries."[Tollison, R D (editor), 1986. Smoking and Society: Lexington Books.] By 1988, Berger was listed as a participant in the tobacco industry’s ETS (Environmental Tobacco Smoke) Consultant Project.[4]

As of September 2005 Peter Berger was a professor of sociology and theology at the College of Arts and Sciences and School of Theology at Boston University in Boston, Massachusetts. A description of his professional accomplishments (listed under the staff description section of Boston University’s web site) lists the institutions where Berger has taught, the books he has written and the awards he has received, but contains no mention Berger’s past affiliations with the tobacco industry, nor any of the work he has done on their behalf.[5]

Contact

Peter L. Berger
c/o Boston University
School of Theology
745 Commonwealth Avenue
Boston, Massachusetts 02215

Phone
The School of Theology's main phone number is 617-353-3050.

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