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Journalism of Courage
NEW DELHI, MAY 12: The star of this year’s No-Tobacco Day (May 31) in Delhi will be former Marlboro model Alan Landers, who used to do cigarette commercials for the company in the ’60s and ’70s. But he has since turned critic, after bouts of cancer, and will be in the Capital from June 1 to 4 to campaign against tobacco use.
Landers, whose campaign is being organised by the World Health Organisation and the Indian Medical Association here, began his fight against tobacco, when he found he had lung cancer. He has till date filed over four cases against the tobacco industry.
He says in a note, preparatory to his visit to India, that when he modelled as the Winston Man for the RJ Reynolds Tobacco company, no one ever told him that cigarettes could be harmful to his health. “I knew some people believed them to be unhealthy, but cigarette manufacturers denied it and still deny to this date that their product is harmful,” says Landers, who began smoking at the age of nine.
“Looking back on my career, I amashamed that I helped promote such a lethal and addictive product that kills 50 per cent of its users,” he says.
Landers, who is 57 was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1987. Although 95 per cent of lung cancer victims do not survive five years from diagnosis, he was determined to beat the odds.
He says that doctors first removed a large part of his lung. After spending some years in remission, a tumour formed in the other lung in 1992. One more surgery followed, after which he developed a speech disability, he says. “I am extremely short-winded, because sections of both of my lungs have been removed,” he says. In 1996, he underwent open-heart surgery to get a double bypass.
The former model used to puff up to four cartons a day, while posing for Winston advertisements in the ’60s. Landers has acted in several television shows and movies, including Annie Hall, Stacey. The Web, Hurricane and America’s Most Wanted. He has been appealing to lawmakers in the US to regulate tobacco products and to curbadvertising. He also wants the industry to compensate its customers who fall victims to cancer.
IMA hopes to hold a seminar, a press meeting and several televised appeals and shots for Landers from June 1 to 4. He will leave for Sri Lanka on June 5 for the next lap of the WHO campaign.
