This document contains oral and written testimony of witnesses who appeared before the Senate committee considering legislation aimed at reducing tobacco addiction among minors. Opening statements were made by Senators Bryan, Ford, Gorton, Kasten, and Sanford. Witnesses included the following: the chief of police, Waunakee, Wisconsin; a representative of the Tennessee Grocers Association; the president of Bozell, Inc.; the president of the American Psychological Association; a representative of the Coalition on Smoking or Health; the program director of the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan; the executive director of the Maine Grocers Association; a professor from Florida State University; the director of the Public Citizen Litigation Group; a professor of law from the New York University School of Law; a representative of the Outdoor Advertising Association of America; an elementary school principal; the president and general counsel of the Legal Studies Division, Washington Legal Foundation; the president of the Fraternal Order of Police; the Hon. Mike Synar, U.S. Representative from Oklahoma; a police sergeant from the Woodridge, Illinois, Police Department; a tobacco wholesaler; and a senior consultant to the Tobacco Institute. (CML)

Traditionally, the way to test a product's reliability was to build it--and then try to break it. As systems and technologies improved, TAAF (Test, Analyze and Fix) methodologies were developed and adopted. In today's global economy, with its short, technologically-intense product life cycles, TAAF cannot suffice. Reliability can no longer be a step or a series of steps in product development; it is something that needs to be acknowledged up front and built into the product from its very conception. Reliability, in other words, must be 'designed in.' Product developers now have many tools--software and hardware--at their disposal for building reliability in from the get go. From the organizational point of view, what better way to design in reliability than to make designers themselves responsible for the reliability of their designs? As "Mike Silverman" explains in "How Reliable is Your Product?," this is why the role of the reliability engineer is changing to one of mentor. Product developers are now responsible for going out and finding the best testing tools and then training the designers on their use, so that designers factor and build in reliability at every stage of product design. Mike has focused on reliability throughout his 25-year career, and has observed the position of reliability in the organization evolve. In this book, he condenses his expertise and experience into a volume of immense practical worth to the engineering and engineering management communities including designers, manufacturing engineers and reliability/quality engineers. Among other things, Mike discusses how reliability fits, or should fit, within the product design cycle. He provides a high-level overview of reliability techniques available to engineers today. He lucidly discusses the design of experiments and the role of failure management. With case studies and narratives from personal experience, Mike discusses optimal ways to utilize different reliability techniques. He highlights common errors of judgment, missteps and sub-optimal decisions that are often made within organizations on the path to total reliability. With"How Reliable is Your Product?" "Mike Silverman" has delivered what few have done before--a comprehensive yet succinct overview of the field of reliability engineering and testing. Engineers and engineering managers will find much in this book of immediate, practical value.

Includes: background on nicotine pharmacology; corporate relationship between British-American Tobacco Co. and Brown and Williamson Tobacco Co.; FDA letters to tobacco manufacturers; bibliography of industry-funded research; marketing of cigarettes and smokeless tobacco in the U.S.; citizen petitions and submitted comments; statements by David A. Kessler, M.D., Commissioner of Food and Drugs, on nicotine-containing cigarettes and on the control and manipulation of nicotine in cigarettes; and remarks by David A. Kessler, M.D., The Samuel Rubin Program, The Columbia University School of Law, March 8, 1995.

"Doubt is our product," a cigarette executive once observed, "since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the minds of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy." In this eye-opening expose, David Michaels reveals how the tobacco industry's duplicitous tactics spawned a multimillion dollar industry that is dismantling public health safeguards. Product defense consultants, he argues, have increasingly skewed the scientific literature, manufactured and magnified scientific uncertainty, and influenced policy decisions to the advantage of polluters and the manufacturers of dangerous products. To keep the public confused about the hazards posed by global warming, second-hand smoke, asbestos, lead, plastics, and many other toxic materials, industry executives have hired unscrupulous scientists and lobbyists to dispute scientific evidence about health risks. In doing so, they have not only delayed action on specific hazards, but they have constructed barriers to make it harder for lawmakers, government agencies, and courts to respond to future threats. The Orwellian strategy of dismissing research conducted by the scientific community as "junk science" and elevating science conducted by product defense specialists to "sound science" status also creates confusion about the very nature of scientific inquiry and undermines the public's confidence in science's ability to address public health and environmental concerns Such reckless practices have long existed, but Michaels argues that the Bush administration deepened the dysfunction by virtually handing over regulatory agencies to the very corporate powers whose products and behavior they are charged with overseeing. In Doubt Is Their Product Michaels proves, beyond a doubt, that our regulatory system has been broken. He offers concrete, workable suggestions for how it can be restored by taking the politics out of science and ensuring that concern for public safety, rather than private profits, guides our regulatory policy. Named one of the best Sci-Tech books of 2008 by Library Journal!