The Half-Truth Initiative

How an anti-smoking group lost its way

Marc Gunther
The Great Vape Debate
13 min readNov 14, 2022

--

The most famous anti-smoking campaign in history was branded, simply, as @truth. It was launched in 2000 by the American Legacy Foundation, a nonprofit organization funded with $1.5 billion from the proceeds of a class-action suit against Big Tobacco companies. Legacy and its advertising agency, Crispin Porter & Bogusky, produced hard-hitting TV…

--

--

Marc Gunther
The Great Vape Debate

Reporting on psychedelics, tobacco, philanthropy, animal welfare, etc. Ex-Fortune. Words in The Guardian, NYTimes, WPost, Vox. Baseball fan. Runner.