test 4 2025-12-01

Nick Naylor is a Big Tobacco spokesman using “research” from an institution of which he is vice-president, a tobacco lobby called the “Academy of Tobacco Studies”. It claims there is no link between tobacco and lung disease. Naylor and his friends, firearm lobbyist Bobby Jay Bliss and alcohol lobbyist Polly Bailey, meet for lunch every week and jokingly call themselves the “Merchants of Death” or “The MOD Squad”. As anti-tobacco campaigns mount and numbers of young smokers decline, Naylor’s boss, B.R., sends Naylor to Los Angeles to bargain for cigarette product placement in upcoming movies. Naylor takes along his young son, Joey, in hopes of bonding with him. The next day, Naylor is sent to meet with Lorne Lutch, the cancer-stricken man who once played the Marlboro Man in cigarette ads and is now campaigning against cigarettes. As his son watches, Naylor successfully convinces Lutch to take a suitcase of money for his silence by playing on Lutch’s principles and need to provide for his family.

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