Big Tobacco in the Big Apple
How New York City Became the Heart of the Tobacco Industry
…and Anti Smoking Activism
Commentators
Edward Anselm, MD
Dr. Anselm obtained his medical degree from the University of Health Sciences–The Chicago Medical School in 1982 and completed an internal medicine residency at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City. He has served as Chief Medical Officer at several health plans including Emblem, Fidelis, and Health Republic, and he has long one of the nation’s foremost proponents for greater emphasis on smoking cessation in managed care.
Dr. Anselm teaches at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, where the courses he developed on smoking cessation strategies became part of the required curriculum for all third-year medical students.
Gene Borio
In 1988, Gene Borio, a New York City actor, director, set-builder, waiter, and Macintosh computer salesperson, created TobaccoBBS, a pioneering online news and information bulletin board. Since 1999 he and Michael Tacelosky, co-founder of Smokefree DC, have operated Tobacco.org, a comprehensive tobacco news resource funded by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.
Phil Konigsberg
Phil Konigsberg has been a community advocate for smokefree policies in the borough of Queens in New York City for more than 30 years. He volunteers for NYC Smokefree and is a former member of the Queens Tobacco Control Coalition. He recently founded the Bayside Smokefree Housing Alliance, which is advocating for the transition of apartment buildings within the Bayside and Bay Terrace communities of Queens County to become smokefree properties.
Joe Parker
Joe Parker, a newspaper graphic designer in Kane, Pennsylvania, and a former retail tobacconist, is a historian of the tobacco industry and the tobacco trade press of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with a special interest in small, bygone cigar and cigarette companies.