Stanton Glantz

Stanton Arnold Glantz (born 1946) is an American professor, author, and tobacco control activist.

Glantz is a faculty member at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) School of Medicine, where he is a Professor of Medicine (retired) in the Division of Cardiology, the American Legacy Foundation Distinguished Professor of Tobacco Control, and former director of the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education.

Glantz's research focused on the health effects of tobacco smoking.

Described as the "Ralph Nader of the anti-tobacco movement," Glantz is an activist for nonsmokers' rights and an advocate of public health policies to reduce smoking.

He is the author of four books, including The Cigarette Papers and Primer of Biostatistics.

Glantz is also a member of the UCSF Cardiovascular Research Institute and Institute for Health Policy Studies, and co-leader of the UCSF Comprehensive Cancer Center Tobacco Program.

in aerospace engineering from the University of Cincinnati in 1969, an M.Sc.

in applied mechanics from Stanford University in 1970, and in 1973, a Ph.D. from Stanford in applied mechanics (concentrating on the mechanics of the human heart) and engineering-economic systems (EES is a Stanford department created in the late 1960s, integrating computers and engineering in "methods of systems and economic analysis to engineering problems involving policy and decision making, both in government and industry").

Concurrently with his studies, he worked at NASA's Manned Spacecraft Center, first as a student trainee, then as an aerospace engineer.

In 1973, Glantz carried out postdoctoral research on the mathematical modeling of heart tissue at Stanford, and then at the UCSF, where he has worked since 1977.

He served for 10 years as an Associate Editor of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology and is a member of the California State Scientific Review Panel on Toxic Air Contaminants of the California Air Resources Board.

He is married to Marsha, a home-care nurse; and is the father of journalist Aaron Glantz and daughter Frieda Glantz.

Glantz has been a leading researcher and activist in the nonsmokers' rights movement since 1978, when he helped lead an unsuccessful state initiative campaign to enact a nonsmokers' rights law by popular vote.

In 1983, he helped successfully defend the San Francisco Workplace Smoking Ordinance against a tobacco industry-supported attempt to repeal it by referendum.

The San Francisco victory represented the first electoral defeat of such a tobacco industry sponsored referendum, and is now viewed as a major turning point in the battle for nonsmokers' rights.

He is one of the founders of Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights.

In total, he is the author of 4 books and over 400 scientific papers, including the first major review (published in Circulation) which identified secondhand smoke as a cause of heart disease and the landmark 1995 Journal of the American Medical Association summary of the Brown & Williamson documents, which showed that the tobacco industry knew nicotine was addictive and that smoking caused cancer 30 years ago.

This publication was followed up with his book, The Cigarette Papers, which has played a key role in the ongoing litigation surrounding the tobacco industry.

His book Tobacco Wars: Inside the California Battles chronicles the last quarter century of activism against the tobacco industry in California.

Working with the UCSF Library, Glantz helped in making over 90 million pages of previously secret tobacco industry documents available via the internet on the UCSF Truth Tobacco Industry Documents, formerly known as the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library.

He was elected to the Institute of Medicine in 2005.

In 2005, he was elected to the prestigious Institute of Medicine.

Known for being blunt and abrasive, Glantz embraces his public image and controversial positions on smoking, on occasion wearing a "Here Comes Trouble" T-shirt.

Glantz conducts research on a wide range of issues including the effects of secondhand smoke on the heart by studying reductions in heart attacks observed when smoke-free policies are enacted, and how the tobacco industry fights tobacco control programs.

His research on the effects of secondhand smoke on blood and blood vessels concludes that, in terms of heart disease, the effects of secondhand smoke are nearly as large as those of smoking.

One such study demonstrated a large and rapid reduction in the number of people admitted to the hospital with heart attacks in Helena, Montana, after that community made all workplaces and public places smokefree.

Glantz is author or coauthor of numerous publications related to secondhand smoke and tobacco control, as well as many papers on cardiovascular function and biostatistics.

He published the first study linking e-cigarettes to heart attacks in people.

He has written several books, including the widely used Primer of Biostatistics (which has been translated into Japanese, French, Russian, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish), and Primer of Applied Regression and Analysis of Variance.

In February 2013, a paper co-authored by Glantz was published in the journal Tobacco Control.

Entitled "‘To quarterback behind the scenes, third-party efforts’: the tobacco industry and the Tea Party", the paper detailed how the Tea Party political movement was funded and organized by organizations which were created by tobacco companies.

In March 2014 Glantz released a study concluding that "e-cigarette use is aggravating rather than ameliorating the tobacco epidemic among youths."

In 2017, Glantz was sued by a former postdoctoral researcher for alleged sexual harassment and retaliation.

While UCSF internally found that Glantz had "more likely than not" engaged in harassment and had violated the faculty code of conduct, Glantz and UCSF publicly denied the allegations and settled the lawsuit for $150,000.

In 2018, a second former employee sued Glantz for harassment; Glantz and UCSF denied these allegations as well.

Glantz was the first of two children born in Cleveland, Ohio to Louis Glantz, an insurance salesman, and Frieda, a real estate broker.

As a youth, Glantz took a great interest in the Soviet Union's Sputnik 1 satellite.

He was a member of the Boy Scouts of America, where he achieved the top rank of Eagle Scout, and earned a Bronze Palm for further achievements.

Glantz obtained a B.Sc.

Thomas J. Glynn, a researcher at the American Cancer Society, responded that "The data in this study do not allow many of the broad conclusions that it draws" In 2018, the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine reviewed all the available evidence on e-cigarettes and youth and concluded that “there is substantial evidence that e-cigarette use increases risk of ever using combustible cigarettes among youth and young adults."