Gary Bettman’s Big Tobacco Playbook

A big problem is brewing on Gary Bettman’s watch: how to deal with an apparent spike in brain trauma among hockey players. The owners hired him in February of 1993 with an agenda that included two goals: one, promote “the product” of hockey to a wider audience, and two, effect a change in the game’s violent image.

 Under his stewardship the NHL has gone from a $400 million business to a $3.3 billion one. Bettman has met the first goal … in part because he hasn’t met the second. Failing to meet that second goal has had consequences. The product he sells, being a permissively violent one, is losing many of its players to central nervous system-related injuries that seem to be direct results of that violence.

 Stripped down to the elements, Bettman is selling a product which presents a significant health risk to those who actually ‘create’ the product, the players. In the 1950s the tobacco industry had a similar problem: faced with rising concerns over the carcinogenic danger of its product to consumers, the industry hired renowned PR firm Hill & Knowlton (H+K) to defend its image in the minds of the public. The tactics pioneered by H+K to defend big tobacco allowed them to make huge sums of money for as long as possible. It doesn’t matter if the product is dangerous to the public or dangerous to those who make it, the tactics remain the same and are so successful that they have been adopted by several industries.
Examples include:
 Aspirin consumers and Reye’s Syndrome
 Makers of Vinyl chloride (PVC) and angiosarcoma of the liver
Makers of chromium 6 and lung cancer
Makers of beta-Naphthylamine and bladder cancer
Makers of benzene and leukemia
Aspartame consumers and cancer
Cell phone users and brain tumors (I’m not saying that aspartame or cell phones cause cancer;

I’m only saying that both the artificial sweetener industry and the cell phone industry are right now employing the big tobacco game plan. The carcinogenic issues are in dispute; the tactics they use to keep it that way are not.) Epidemiologist David Michaels calls it the manufacture of uncertainty. Epidemiologist Devra Davis says the point is to prolong this uncertainty so as to enrich the industry for as long as possible, or until the reality can no longer be denied. So what are some of the plays from the big tobacco playbook and how does it appear that Gary Bettman is using them?