"Warning: The subject of this exploration will constrict your blood vessels, choke your windpipe and dispatch you to an early grave, 5 million of you a year. The most lucrative crop the Americas have ever seen, it kept the British at bay, kept the enslaved entrapped, kept Hollywood sexy. Until it didn’t anymore"
Translation: "If you smoke you are almost as bad as Hitler and are suicidal, prevented what America really needed, which is Monarchy and British-style Socialist dystopia (despite the misgivings of all your ancestors who died so we could be a free republic), made Evil people rich and promote slavery, and would just as soon sell your fellow man into bondage than give up your vile-reprehensible weed of death. But at least Hollywood learned its lesson, unlike you vile troglodytes who defiantly suck your noxious fumes as your fellow man pays the price for your arrogance."
Real meaning: To keep from being ostracised By the Washington (com)post's cadre of Marxists, revisionists and outright fascists, he ha dto open up his article about how bad tobacco is and how shitty we are as human beings, or the article never would have made it to print and he would be labeled an UNPERSON and eliminated from history, as a syphilitic, sexual deviant who was sent into "re-education" for his own good.
Given what he was up against, I say good job. Far from what many of us would call truthful or gutsy reporting, on the sliding scale of weaselhood, It's a good article.