“Buck Duke will not be forgotten, a debt he owes in part to other forgotten men, ones not so adept at the American art of transformation by dint of desire.” 1 James Buchanan (Buck) Duke founded Duke University after a career spent revolutionizing the American tobacco industry. He famously created and then dominated the cigarette […]

In the early 1800s, enormous crowds would gather to watch the young Humphry Davy (1778–1829) deliver of one his famous chemical lectures at London’s Royal Institution. From his regular inhalation of questionably large volumes of laughing gas to his enormous exploding volcanoes, this young and self-appointed genius did not disappoint. He scandalized the press by […]

Last November, Massachusetts became the first US state to ban the sale of menthol cigarettes. And in February of this year, the House approved a bill to eliminate the sale of these cigarettes at the federal level. Governor Andrew M. Cuomo has launched a campaign to enforce menthol bans in New York State under the […]