In 1994, seven CEOs from the nation’s largest tobacco companies declared under oath before a Congressional hearing on Capitol Hill that “nicotine is not addictive.” Their testimony was a brazenly defiant refusal to acknowledge the legitimacy of several decades of research that proved cigarettes and nicotine were health hazards. Now imagine that in a parallel universe it had been seven CEOs from the nation’s largest footwear companies all making the following declaration before that same Congressional Subcommittee on Health and the Environment: “Over-supported running shoes do not cause foot or leg injuries.” Even though a number of published footwear studies already indicated that this was the actual case, the running shoe CEOs were in lock step agreement that it was not.
