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Victor DeNoble grew up in a blue collar community in the midst of cigarettes and beer. Struggling through school, most of his summers were split between summer fun and summer school, while he looked forward to becoming a plumber like his father. But his father recognized Victor’s potential and sent him to a nearby college. There, during his freshman year, he discovered what had held him back all these years. He was dyslexic. Corrected his dyslexia turned both his grades and his life around.

The new motion picture ADDICTION INCORPORATED is part of a unique group of documentaries in that it’s essentially a small budget prequel to a big studio prestige docudrama of several years ago : Michael Mann’s THE INSIDER. The multi-Oscar nominated flick told the true tale of whistle-blower Jeffrey Wigand ( he’s involved in this new film, too ) who revealed to network news producers ( CBS’s ” 60 Minutes ” to be exact ) that tobacco companies were using special additives to cigarettes to make them more addictive ( the film referred to ‘ spiking ‘ ). After viewing the Al Pacino/ Russell Crowe work, you may have wondered how ‘ big tobacco ‘ happened upon this formula. Well wonder no more! Film maker Charles Evans, Jr. has given us all the facts, figures, numbers, and testimonies anchored by one man’s desire to deliver the facts.

By a strict definition, most American adults are hooked on drugs. Even coffee drinkers who deny that caffeine causes cravings will acknowledge that nicotine is addictive; yet that’s only a recent realization.

The surprisingly stylish documentary “Addiction Incorporated” traces the backlash against tobacco to a laboratory in Virginia in the 1980s. It wasn’t an ordinary research facility — it was a top-secret lab funded by tobacco giant Philip Morris, which wanted to develop a nicotine alternative to keep its customers hooked without killing them.

Addiction Incorporated, despite its dull and archaic-tasting title, is an engaging documentary about the world-changing science suppressed by the smoking industry and the people’s struggle to uncover the truth about what the arrogant, intimidating, obscenely rich tobacco bigwigs knew and withheld about the addictiveness of cigarettes.

The movie’s effectiveness begins with presentation. It starts with a story – that of Victor DeNoble. He narrates his childhood (poor family, poor grades, dyslexia!) and how he became a sharp scientist employed by Philip Morris.

I don’t make a habit of focusing on documentaries because either they make their case and need no further defense, or deceitfully cloud the issue to appeal to fools who can’t think for themselves. During the introduction of Victor DeNoble, who would turn out to provide evidence of nicotine addiction in cigarettes, he admits that he only went to college to “meet smart women.” Straight talk is persuasive.

I don’t smoke, but I don’t buy into the theory of secondhand smoke being deadly. Nor do I think that punitive payback necessarily improves public health.

If you liked The Insider and The Informant, complete the trifecta with an equally dramatic documentary about another real-life whistleblower. Victor DeNoble, who looks like Dennis Farina, was hired by Philip Morris to alter the nicotine in their cigarettes to make it cause fewer heart attacks… oh, and while you’re at it, could you make it more addictive? Experimenting on lab rats he achieved both aims and was about to publish a paper and address a convention about it in 1983 when the company’s lawyers pulled the plug and had him fired. A confidentiality agreement he signed kept DeNoble quiet for over a decade.

With a name that not even the PR team at Smokefree America could dream up, Victor DeNoble emerges as the hero of Charles Evans Jr.’s mostly muscular documentary on the 1990s campaign to expose Big Tobacco. DeNoble, a psychologist, was hired by Philip Morris in 1980 to study the effects of nicotine; four years later, he and his colleague Paul Mele were fired for their findings and, thus, unwanted evidence that the substance was highly addictive.

You’ll never believe this: Tobacco companies put stuff in cigarettes to make them addictive.

Oh, wait. Maybe you will believe that, since every newspaper and TV news program in the country reported it 20 years ago. “Addiction Incorporated,” however, acts like it’s a scoop. And that’s only the biggest way in which this unnecessary documentary goes wrong.