Speaker 1: Welcome and thank you for visiting the Informatorium 56 Podcast Studio.

This location is dedicated to general education and information and features this podcast.

I am Greg Bell and my partner Julia Korony is here with me.

How is it going today, Julia?

Speaker 2: It’s going well.

I am here and I am ready to learn.

Speaker 1: Okay, so last time you led off the show with the shocking revelation of your criminal background, which began in hopes of suborning your fledgling tobacco habit.

Speaker 2: Criminal? How is that criminal?

Speaker 1: I think you said you stole a cigarette, right? You stole a cigarette?

Speaker 2: Let’s call it I bummed it without them knowing.

Speaker 1: AKA stole.

So what do you got? Go.

Speaker 2: I don’t have any more stories.

I don’t smoke.

I don’t have any more…

Speaker 1: No bank heist? Never steal anything from the Louvre?

Speaker 2: Shh.

You’re not supposed to know about that.

Speaker 1: Fort Knox? Something like that? No? No.

Okay.

All right, well I guess we’ll just jump into the show then.

So let’s hit the rundown for today’s discussion.

So last time we covered the history of tobacco and why people used it and left off with Buck Duke and his tobacco empire turning into a cigarette empire.

And I said before it really got going, there was actually a scientific, cultural, legal, and everyday pushback against smoking in the United States.

After we look at that, we will look into the second large part of the story, which is the lead-up to what was essentially a smoking epidemic in the US brought on by two huge factors.

The first, World War I, which pushed cigarettes on soldiers.

The second was advertising, which tried to basically give everyone else a role model who smoked.

And while we go through this, it might be fun to think about why and how you learn to do things.

Maybe imagine it as a scale, like something looks healthy and cool on one side and it’s good for you, and then something looks dangerous or bad for you on the other.

And importantly, how those two balancing factors rely on who it is you were choosing to emulate or not.

Because I think that will give us the real answer as to why people smoke.

And we will take some time at the end to look at some reinforcement for that idea from the world of psychology and finally how the same principles led to the inevitable reduction in smoking.

So let’s jump into the show.

So last time we reviewed the events up to the early 1900s that laid the foundation of how we got to so many smokers in the US by 1965.

What’s amazing though is it isn’t like the rise just keeps going without contention.

Instead, there is actually a huge anti-tobacco sentiment and then anti-cigarette sentiment in the United States that takes hold before cigarettes come to dominate tobacco usage and become almost ubiquitous.

So before we get to the actual peak of cigarette usage, let’s see how it very easily could have never happened in the first place.

Speaker 2: That’s interesting.

Speaker 1: Yeah, I didn’t really know about this as I alluded to last time.

I was totally unaware that there was this kind of like organized pushback.

And it actually comes on several fronts including science and medicine, government intervention by way of laws, and also social taboo and ostracization.

So let’s start out with the science.

In particular, a few doctors who quite frankly I just think are the most interesting, but that are actually telling people tobacco was no good.

I mean this is the amazing part, right? Like people know it’s bad all the way back then.

You think modern medicine, hey, we realized it was bad and then everyone just quit.

But that’s not what actually happens.

And remember, we’re not talking about the 1960s Surgeon General report saying cigarettes are bad or the 1980s Surgeon General reports claiming secondhand smoke is dangerous.

We are, however, going to talk about a Surgeon General.

It’s not Reagan’s Surgeon General, it’s George Washington’s Surgeon General.

And that man is Benjamin Rush.

Speaker 2: So we’re going all the way back to the 1770s.

Speaker 1: Uh, yeah, actually the book he makes comes out at the end of that.

It’s really close to 1800, which is what we’re going to talk about here.

But yeah, obviously his involvement in the government goes back before that.

He’s actually a doctor and he signed the Declaration of Independence and served as Surgeon General under George Washington.

Now, he’s known as the father of modern psychiatry, so medicine in particular was not exactly his field.

And to be fair as far as the psychiatry goes, this is…

Speaker 2: 1770s psychiatry.

Speaker 1: Yeah, let’s call it pre-psychiatry.

And he believed that mental diseases were caused by irritation of the blood vessels in the brain.

His treatment methods included bleeding, purging, hot and cold baths, and mercury.

So, you know, he’s not exactly C.

Everett Koop.

But he did write an essay on how harmful tobacco was.

And I am not sure how correct his methodologies are and his opinions are, but I mean honestly a lot of it just seems like observations.

But he’s a doctor and he does indeed issue this essay and does in fact state how bad tobacco is for your health in 1798.

Speaker 2: That’s, that’s impressive.

Speaker 1: Yeah, it’s all the way back then and this guy’s a doctor and he’s putting this out there and telling people, so it’s documented that he did it.

And you know, maybe this guy can’t be called the beginning of modern medicine per se, but you know who can be? Horatio C.

Wood.

Speaker 2: That is what I was going to say.

Speaker 1: Yeah, Horatio C.

Wood is actually an interesting character.

He actually writes a treatise on therapeutics in 1874 and you know, this is just really good reading.

I mean you sit down by the fire and you just learn some like real heavy stuff.

But I’ll give you a flavor of that in a minute.

So Wood was a surgeon in the Civil War.

He went to the University of Pennsylvania for medicine and was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and obviously wrote a treatise on therapeutics.

Now, this was apparently widely used, this book actually for some time after he publishes it, is based on pharmacology and therapeutics and it’s used as a text for teaching these subjects.

And in this book, he seemingly explains everything known about tobacco at the time.

So you’re going through it, it’s kind of like an encyclopedia, right? You get to your topic, he starts out, boom, tells you everything about it.

Um, except this is about medicine and therapeutics.

There is a section on tobacco.

In the book, he explains everything from pupil reaction, pulse increases to what actually happens if you just put nicotine in the blood.

And he also knows that nicotine is the active ingredient, so you know, we’re past that point where everybody knows what’s going on as far as the ingredients go.

Now, there’s a couple of particularly interesting passages.

So to start this section, he actually starts out with the following statement: “Tobacco in its various forms is so familiar an article of everyday life that I shall not enter upon any description of it.

Upon those persons who are not habituated to its use, tobacco acts as a very powerful depressant, producing horrible nausea and vomiting with giddiness and a feeling of intense wretchedness and weakness.” So right off the bat, he’s just saying everybody knows what this is.

So he doesn’t even have to explain what it is, even though it’s medical jargon, he’s just like everybody knows what, what this is.

Speaker 2: Right, it’s in full use by a lot of people.

Speaker 1: He goes on later to his review of the therapeutic effects of tobacco and says after many years, it “has almost passed out of sight as a therapeutic agent, as it was only used successfully for two things.” So only two things you could use this for.

Speaker 2: Okay.

Speaker 1: The first is spasmodic asthma, which he says smoking a couple cigars will actually work for.

And I think this is just like, you know, bronchial spasms and maybe like if you have asthma, but just, you know, your chest tightness when you’re trying to breathe.

I’m not obviously not a doctor, but I think that’s what he’s talking about.

And he says this only works if the patient is not accustomed to tobacco.

But even this is unnecessary because there are other remedies that don’t make you sick.

I mean I really don’t think this makes any sense that you’d be smoking tobacco for these things, but fact of the matter is he’s saying it’s not a good way to do it anyway, so…

Speaker 2: Right.

So don’t do it.

Speaker 1: Right.

And the second way, the second thing it’s used for is to alleviate pain, which he says there is no internal use that works.

So putting it inside of you is not the thing, but he’s talking about using it as an ointment for certain things.

However, this can kill you, so don’t do that either.

So basically look, there was two uses for it and neither one of them’s any good.

So we’re down to zero.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: Now, amazingly jumping ahead, there is a German scientist who had even linked smoking to lung cancer in 1939.

Now, obviously German science in 1939 had some notable drawbacks to it and people weren’t super big on it, so you know, the world can be forgiven for not taking him very seriously.

But the fact of the matter is this guy did this research and actually pegged that in 1939.

So to put it mildly, the science of the day was aware of the negative effects of tobacco usage and participated in the anti-cigarette movement and social stigma.

So let’s look more at this and some of the social groups that push back on cigarettes and their varied criticisms of the cigarette.

Speaker 2: There was actually a social stigma in many quarters against smoking and this of course can be traced back all the way to the Spanish who discovered it in the New World.

At that time, smoke itself was linked to the devil in religious doctrine.

This made smoking evil.

In the Americas in 1632, Massachusetts had a ban on public smoking.

Now, let’s look at who was condemning cigarettes at the turn of the 20th century.

According to Stanford, in the early 1900s before World War I, there were many popular anti-tobacco movements led by progressive religious groups such as the National Women’s Christian Temperance Union and Young Men’s Christian Association.

Speaker 1: Yes, and put a peg in that Young Men’s Christian Association, the YMCA, because we’re going to get a slightly different story here in a little bit.

Speaker 2: Well, at that time, they were advocating for policies banning tobacco sales.

So we actually have evangelical Christians, health advocates, and some scientists all fighting for the same cause.

Speaker 1: Yeah, which might be the last time in history that that happened, right? I mean I’m sure there’s something I’m not thinking about, but this is kind of amazing, like they were all on the same team saying this is not good.

Speaker 2: One group that catches on is created by a woman named Lucy Gaston.

Now, Lucy was previously a member of the temperance movement and her new group mimics their methodologies and concerns.

She forms the Anti-Cigarette League and actually builds it up to 300,000 members by 1901.

There was a notion that cigarettes lead men away from their families and religious obligations, just like alcohol was criticized by the temperance movement.

This was a real concern.

If you see Ken Burns’ documentary on prohibition, you can really empathize with the plight of the women living in that time period.

They are so reliant on men who in turn are just throwing money away on vices and destroying their bodies, minds, families, and forgetting their responsibilities.

Speaker 1: Right, yeah, I remember when we watched that, that was actually pretty interesting.

When you watch Ken Burns’ documentary, it’s well, first of all, it’s really good, obviously.

Speaker 2: It’s Ken Burns.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

And then second, it is really, you really empathize with them because you see how they’re just trapped by society in this time period.

And you know, there’s nothing they can really do.

They’re relying on their husbands to take care of them, you know, bring home the food, bring home the money.

They are stuck taking care of, in most cases, kids at home.

They can’t just rise up and, you know, go about their day and do what they want to do.

And then you see how the men, particularly with the alcohol and now obviously with the cigarettes, they’re just wasting their money on straight-up vice and pleasure.

And there’s not really anything they can do about it.

And that was one of the things that really struck me, really just feel bad about how that must have just been an awful situation.

Speaker 2: Right.

Well, these women are, like you said, they’re stuck at home and they have no social power.

They can’t vote, you know, they can’t go out and work, they can’t support their family.

All they can do is try to keep their husband from smoking and drinking and taking care of their children.

So all they can do is to join these groups and hope to make a change to appeal to, you know, the government to change these laws.

Speaker 1: Yeah, at the time what they, there’s this term they, they say it’s enslaving.

They actually call it this little white slaver and it’s kind of just the nomenclature of the time.

Now it’s an unfortunate term to be using, but at the time that’s what they called it because it really epitomized how much this was controlling people’s lives.

Speaker 2: Ironically, there’s also a social stigma that cigarettes are effeminate.

So people questioned a man’s masculinity if he smoked.

Speaker 1: Which is really weird, right? Because women are actually treated more harshly for smoking in public and they rarely did so.

Speaker 2: Right.

For example, John Kellogg of Kellogg cereal fame…

Speaker 1: Of course.

Speaker 2: …said cigarettes unsexed women and ruined their morals.

Although to be fair, he was against all vices.

Speaker 1: Right, yeah, I mean that’s, he was actually part of a particular religious group back then and stuff.

But just the prominence of the character coming out and saying things like that, that’s why I think it’s notable.

Speaker 2: Right.

Another group that criticized cigarettes was made up of eugenicists.

They claimed that cigarettes were a threat to the nation because they were linked to immigrants and degenerates.

Apparently, anti-smoking became linked to nationalism, racism, and xenophobia because it was largely predominant in areas like New York and that’s where the most immigrants were.

Now, immigrants were more likely to smoke at that time because it was simply more common and accepted in Europe where they came from.

To them, it wasn’t a stigma.

You know who else was against smoking? Economists.

Irving Fisher, a Yale economist, criticized cigarettes simply for being a waste on the economy because they cost too much money and provided nothing in return.

Speaker 1: Right, which, you know, makes sense.

I mean the only people making any money off of this are the people selling them, they’re not actually producing anything for this country.

Next we’ll look at everyday life.

Obviously, you know, you look at the science, you look at the social movements, but there were simply everyday ramifications for smoking.

So it’s not just the religious groups complaining about satanic issues or, you know, whatever they want to, you know, say how it’s destroying the families and all these other things, which are obviously important.

But there were concrete results.

And according to Tate in Cigarette Wars, in 1904, a New York judge sent a woman to jail for 30 days for smoking around her children.

Another woman got a divorce based on her husband smoking too much.

And in 1924, a teacher in New Jersey was actually fired for smoking.

And these were all upheld by the state courts.

As far as prominent businessmen of the time, Wanamaker, Thomas Edison, and Ford said they wouldn’t knowingly hire a smoker.

And this goes back to the economist, you know, basically saying it just reduces productivity.

Um, it’s this device that I said they say it’s enslaving, it turns you from work and your family, obviously a moral aspect of it.

But when it comes down to it…

Speaker 2: You smell bad, your hands are yellow.

Speaker 1: Right, but people who are smoking, they’re obviously doing less work.

So I think there’s also just the underlying efficiency of it too where it’s just not helping them do their job either.

Another little anecdote, Amelia Earhart, the perennial Jeopardy answer, she actually got fired for doing an ad for Lucky Strikes claiming she used them on her flight across the Atlantic.

This is actually a little bit after the fervor died down, but still pretty interesting that it happened.

And she didn’t actually even smoke the cigarettes.

I’m not sure she smoked at all.

I think obviously she was just doing it for the money.

Speaker 2: I didn’t know she had a job.

Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, oh yeah, yeah, she had a job.

Speaker 2: She was just a socialite.

It was like, “Doo-doo-doo.”

Speaker 1: Yeah, I don’t know how much money she was making flying around in planes at the time.

So next we’re going to look at the law.

So science knew about the dangers of tobacco.

There’s the cultural pushback.

It culminates with laws, which one could say is how things should work, right? People push back on something, science says it’s bad for you, the law steps in.

Speaker 2: You would think.

Speaker 1: Right.

Now, of course things can be known to some and not others.

Like I said, you know, if you didn’t travel in the same circles with these scientists and information didn’t travel at all like it does now back then, and you can argue

Speaker 1: Hey, they were talking about tobacco, all these groups and stuff.

They’re not all specifically about cigarettes, depending what time you jump into this.

Maybe people were thinking, “Hey, you know, you roll it up into a cigarette, you light it up, you inhale it for you.

Now somehow something that’s bad turns into this great thing.

All you needed to do was light it up and now you got a superfood,” right?

But no, between 1888, 1881, and 1905, Iowa, Tennessee, and Indiana passed laws to ban smoking. 15 states end up banning them, 22 were considering legislation, and there’s clearly this legal movement to stop smoking, which is kind of amazing too because if you consider today, what are the chances you could really get something like that done? So I mean, I think the mostly that this just kind of really shows how big of a deal this anti-smoking movement was, because to get this done at the time, I think was pretty astounding.

So let’s see where this puts us.

On one hand, you have the tobacco companies forming a cigarette-turning monopoly, and on the other, you have science and culture pushing back on their use.

So what is the status of tobacco use at the time? As for overall use, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Americans consumed tobacco primarily in the form of chewing tobacco and cigars.

The per capita consumption of tobacco products in the early 1880s was approximately 6 pounds of tobacco per person age 18 and older.

Now, I couldn’t get specific numbers as to what they were using and how many doses, but I think you can kind of envision 6 pounds of tobacco.

Speaker 2: That’s a lot.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

And 56% of that tobacco was in the form of chewing tobacco, whereas only 1% took the form of manufactured cigarettes.

Around 1900, we’re only up to 1-2% of tobacco users are smokers, and even with Buck Duke’s shenanigans, only 30% of tobacco users are smokers by 1930.

So the cigarettes are a thing, they’re taking off, but it’s not this crazy high usage which we’re going to see in the future.

And to make this a little more concrete, in 1900, the per capita rate of cigarette smoking is 54 cigarettes per year.

So basically for each person in the country, 54 cigarettes are being smoked.

In 1912, that rate goes up to 138.

Speaker 2: More than double.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

And it’s not great, but it’s really nowhere near what we’re going to see.

In 1963, the per capita rate is going to be 4,345 cigarettes per person.

Speaker 2: Wow.

Speaker 1: And just as a way of reference, if every person smoked a pack, which is 20 cigarettes, that would have been 7,300.

So it means…

Speaker 2: Wow.

Speaker 1: …over half a pack per day is being smoked per person in the country.

Speaker 2: Wow.

Speaker 1: And in terms of bulk numbers, it’s 2 billion cigarettes in 1900 versus about 500 billion in 1965.

Speaker 2: Wow.

Speaker 1: To make it clear, it was indeed known to the scientific community that tobacco was bad for you and later smoking specifically.

There were actually social stigmas against smoking.

States were banning cigarettes.

People are not smoking cigarettes very much and tobacco use is in no way anywhere near where it’s going to be.

So in the way we collectively forgot the dangers of asbestos, apparently everybody’s about to forget the dangers of tobacco as well, or at least completely ignore them.

So how does it happen? How do 42% of adults end up smoking? Why do people choose to smoke? The answer seems to be because they were told to.

They were told to smoke cigarettes and they did.

Oh, and soldiers were given free cigarettes to start everything off.

Speaker 2: Get them addicted.

Speaker 1: So how did it happen? It happened with free cigarettes and smoking role models, or more specifically war and advertising.

So we have seen the continual spread of tobacco use from the first time man set foot in its native home of the Americas, but then its eventual transfer into cigarette use by Buck Duke and the birth of government-supported big tobacco.

Then we saw that amazingly, despite this foothold in the US, there’s actually a pushback on tobacco and cigarettes in particular that culminated with outright state bans on use.

So what derails this pushback? What gets us to the 42% of Americans smoking cigarettes in the 60s? They got free cigarettes and they were told to smoke them.

World War I hits and the government starts handing out cigarettes to soldiers like candy.

And then after the war, the cigarette manufacturers’ advertising that started all the way back with Buck Duke’s roller skating team goes into overdrive.

Let’s start with what all the histories indicate was the tipping point: World War I.

So amazingly, cigarette smoking gets its launching pad into the US culture by the US government.

Stanford University has a huge area of research on cigarette usage.

Well, it’s actually a lot of it’s on advertising.

They have this huge advertising segment on their website.

Obviously, it’s a big part of the university and one of the big areas is on cigarette usage.

Very cool.

They have a ton of neat stuff in there.

And they put it simply: World War I was the major event of the 20th century that brought cigarette use to the forefront of tobacco use.

I mean, you can’t put it more plainly than that.

And what you’re going to see is essentially a coordinated effort to get people to smoke.

I mean, that’s not the stated reason.

No one’s like, “Hey, let’s get everybody to smoke.” That’s not what I’m saying here.

This isn’t some kind of conspiracy, okay? If that exists, I know nothing about it.

And I really don’t think it was the actual reason because you’ll see we get actual reasons handed out here.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: But looking back on it from today’s perspective, without being in the war and thinking about what people were trying to do at the time, which is just hard to imagine, it really just comes across as some crazy version of The Truman Show that’s sponsored by Philip Morris.

I mean, if your goal was to get people to smoke, I don’t know how you could have done it more effectively.

So some passages from the Stanford display, even though I’m looking at a website, but some passages from the Stanford website explain this with more depth.

It says, “For most of the 20th century, cigarettes were part of a soldier’s rations.” So it’s not just, “Hey, do you guys want to smoke?” It’s not just, “Hey, you can smoke while you’re fighting.” It’s part of the rations.

Speaker 2: You’re getting the cigarettes.

Here’s your water, here’s your can of meat, and your cigarettes.

Speaker 1: Exactly.

So they explain, “Fighting in World War I was static, with soldiers switching between long waiting periods to battling through day-long artillery barrages in the trenches.

For fighting soldiers, smoking became a coping mechanism to handle both times of stress and boredom.

Leaders such as John Pershing, who was a general, saw cigarettes as necessary to troop morale, with Pershing claiming that the importance of tobacco to the war was equal to that of bullets.”

Speaker 2: That’s insane.

Speaker 1: Yeah, I found he specifically what he actually said in another source.

He said, quote, “You ask what we need to win the war? Tobacco, as much as bullets.” Now, pipe smoking had been more popular at the onset of the war, as it was seen as more masculine.

We already talked about all that.

And many armies were even rationing loose-leaf tobacco so people could smoke their pipe.

But I mean, just think about this.

You know, your pipe’s easily broken during battle and loose-leaf tobacco is nearly impossible to keep dry in the trenches.

Speaker 2: Right.

Just imagine you’re in a trench trying to…

Speaker 1: Physically just live.

Speaker 2: …to fill your pipe with tobacco.

Speaker 1: Yeah, in all the chaos that’s going on and it’s like, “Hey, let me just pull out my little pouch.

Can we take a quick timeout? I gotta…”

Speaker 2: Let me clean it, tap it off.

Speaker 1: Yeah, this is… it doesn’t make any sense, right? So the convenient transportable design of the pocket cigarette made it the signature tobacco product of World War I soldiers.

Now, as an aside, Camels and Lucky Strikes apparently won big as part of the wartime activities.

They actually became a part of wartime vernacular.

When American soldiers arrived at the front, people would say, “The Camels are coming.” So I mean, they just became ingrained in the entire process.

But it was General March who would put canteens back under army control and create the official policy of rationing soldiers four ready-made cigarettes per day.

So that’s it.

They got four a day.

World War I.

This would actually increase over time and by the Second World War, soldiers had access to 12 to 28 army-provided cigarettes per day.

Speaker 2: So they didn’t just give it to them during World War I, they also did it during World War II?

Speaker 1: Oh, it keeps going.

Yeah, yeah, it actually doesn’t drop off until much later.

So yeah, when you’re in the military, you’re getting these cigarettes as part of your rations.

And what happens is men return from army service once the Great War is over and they brought their smoking habit with them.

Speaker 2: Yeah, because they’re addicted now.

Speaker 1: Right.

And the anti-tobacco movement takes a huge hit here because the veterans were known to argue, “Hey, if cigarettes were good enough for us while we were fighting in France, why aren’t they good enough when we’re at home?”

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: And the initial popularity of the cigarette with the World War I generation would continue through the decades, further catalyzed during World War II before culminating in the smoking epidemic of the 1950s and 60s.

Speaker 2: Wow.

Speaker 1: Which is how Stanford wraps up that segment.

So the government is just giving cigarettes to all of its soldiers, its citizens, even if they weren’t smokers.

You know what I mean? They’re just giving you cigarettes.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: Why did they do this? Tate, in her book called Cigarette Wars, argues this was in part supported by the government because it was the lesser of evils for the soldiers to be obsessing on instead of more distracting things like women and alcohol.

It kind of makes sense.

I mean, that’s a pretty blunt assessment of what she said.

Obviously, she goes into this more depth.

But if you think about it, do we want drama going on or do we just give the guys a couple cigarettes if that’s going to shut them up and do what they’re supposed to do? You can see her point.

Either way, from 1915 to 1930, US cigarette production goes from 18 billion to 124 billion a year.

So let’s look a little closer at how this process was actually carried out in the war.

Congress, first of all, appropriates, obviously they control spending, they have to appropriate money to buy cigarettes for soldiers and they do.

The War Industrial Board, which was in charge of industrializing the nation for war, you know, the war comes around and like, “Hey, we gotta stop making cans of this and that, we need the canning to make Spam to send over to the guys,” that kind of thing.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: They deem tobacco companies essential.

A phrase that we all became very familiar with just a few years ago, guaranteeing them the means of production and distribution.

So they don’t have to hand over their equipment, they don’t have to hand over their supplies.

And not only that, they’re actually guaranteed the ability to continue what they’re doing so they can use the cigarettes to send over to the soldiers.

Cigarette companies obviously seize on this and start advertising their part in supporting troops and start campaigns to raise money from private business to send cigarettes in the name of being part of the war effort.

Speaker 2: Wow.

So like buy these bonds and…

Speaker 1: Right.

They’re saying, “Hey, we’re doing this great thing.” They get the shine from that.

Everybody sees them as a hero.

And then also they’re going out to people and saying, “Hey, and why don’t you pay for it in the meantime?” So they’re going out to companies and saying, “Why don’t you pay for these cigarettes we’re giving them?” So we look good and we don’t pay for it.

It’s really just a win-win for them.

I mean, they’re always playing all the angles, right?

So and in his book, Gately relays a story from a soldier.

It’s actually a letter that they found.

And it’s a wounded soldier and he’s lying on a stretcher waiting for water.

And someone arrives and asks if he would like a cigarette.

He says, “Yes.” And then he asks the guy who he was with.

And the person who gave him the cigarette says, “Oh, I’m not a soldier, I’m from the YMCA.”

Speaker 2: Well, how’d you get here?

Speaker 1: I… this is what we’re talking about here.

I mean, this is basically…

Speaker 2: Oh, the YMCA.

Speaker 1: …a little bit of a turn in their policy over the time here.

Speaker 2: How did you get here?

Speaker 1: Pretty quickly.

But yeah, I mean, basically it’s just this concerted effort to get these guys cigarettes.

Like I said, I mean, if you were trying to get everybody addicted on cigarettes, it’s hard to imagine how else you would do it.

But so why smoke? Well, imagine you’re sitting in a trench, you’re getting shot at, you probably aren’t super concerned about the long-term health effects of smoking, if you were concerned about them to begin with.

And I sincerely doubt you read Horatio Wood’s book and memorized all that and were carrying that with you to the trenches.

And the pastime, you’re getting handed free cigarettes every day.

So you’re just going to be hopelessly addicted and bring them back with you, right?

Speaker 2: But the four cigarettes a day doesn’t seem like a lot once you get into it and you get the habit going.

It seems like not enough.

Speaker 1: Oh, it does go up.

But it’s definitely enough to get you addicted.

Speaker 2: Well, yeah.

Speaker 1: I mean, that’s what I said.

They’re talking about if you’re in your adolescence, in the last show we were saying, in adolescence, just smoking a few of them can get you addicted.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: And basically this is not only are you getting them handed to you and being addicted, just the chemical addiction, I feel like on top of it, the psychological addiction of, “Hey, like I get this break for two minutes and I can pretend I’m not sitting in a trench, but I’m at home or I’m doing whatever,” you know what I mean? The ability to pretend you’re doing something else for just a minute.

I can’t imagine what could be more psychologically addictive.

And as Gately puts it, “Combatants smoke for physical, social, and spiritual reasons.

Tobacco’s mild narcotic property and its ability to suppress hunger were valuable qualities in the horrifying conditions that prevailed in the trenches.

Cigarettes were shared between friends and enemies alike.

They were the currency of compassion among fellow sufferers.” And this is where the traditions of having a last cigarette got started.

Then to compound the problem, just imagine when the war is over.

These soldiers come home with a cigarette hanging out of their mouth like the pirates coming back to England, except in this case, there’s just no question about their valor.

They are heroes and they smoke.

So again I ask you, why wouldn’t you? And there you have your imitation once again.

Speaker 2: So what’s the effect of all this?

Speaker 1: Well, it’s the rise of the cigarette.

Cigarette sales rise from 18 billion in 1915 to 124 billion in 1930.

And by 1927, Kansas is the last state to repeal its cigarette ban.

And at this point, cigarettes are just off and running.

And just as a quick aside, the US government involvement in assisting tobacco companies and the growth of cigarettes was hardly limited to wartime activities.

There’s actually a long and pretty dreadful history of this.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: And believe it or not, when they extended the US Capitol building in the mid-19th century, they built what was called the Hall of Columns, which is a hallway, but it even has huge columns that are adorned with tobacco leaves at the top.

And this really just illustrates how intertwined tobacco companies were with the government at the time, right? Because they’re building this new extension and as decoration, they’re just putting tobacco plants on top.

Speaker 2: In the book Cigarette, Sarah Milov discusses this and she goes into further detail on things like government subsidies to grow tobacco, tax breaks, and tax reductions on tobacco products.

Speaker 1: Right.

It’s actually a really good read.

That’s a very good book about those things.

But to get back to the war and sum it up, in essence, I guess you could say the war removed the soldier from any power the anti-smoking climate had in the US, literally and figuratively, and then jammed free cigarettes in their mouth and plopped them in the middle of a nightmare for a few years and sent them home with a new addiction.

So all that’s left now is to get the residual stigma left on smoking removed from the country’s collective consciousness and you have yourself the smoking epidemic.

Obviously, the soldiers go a long way to doing this, but how do you finish off the job? Well, you tell people to smoke and give them something to imitate.

You give them role models who smoke and the best way to do that is advertising.

Now, to be clear, there are a lot of reasons that people smoke other than advertising.

The CDC actually has a good little blurb on this, just kind of wrapping the whole thing up.

They say early in the 20th century, several events coincided that contributed to increases in annual per capita consumption, including the introduction of blends and curing processes—we covered a lot of that—that allowed the inhalation of tobacco, the invention of the safety match—we really didn’t cover that, but you know, having matches is cool when you’re trying to smoke—improvements in mass production, transportation, permitted widespread distribution of cigarettes—we went over all that—and use of mass media advertising to promote cigarettes, which is what we’re going to talk about now.

And quite frankly, I think that’s a nice summation, but the advertising is really the powerful force now and moving forward.

So let’s dig into that.

Advertising companies and cigarettes.

I mentioned earlier that when Buck Duke saw the effect of early advertising on tobacco usage, he dove into the practice, even sponsoring that famous roller skating team that we all love.

He wasn’t the only one, okay? So in the 1870s, Allen & Ginter, their nemesis, the company that actually started the contest for the cigarette roller, they started selling cigarettes in a box so they could put their brand name on it and start actual branding, which obviously is a huge force.

And then they added a cardboard stiffener and they would put a picture of a woman, a sports team, or a national monument on it, just anything to condition you and get that brand going.

So that started way back then.

And this doesn’t stop in the interim or anything.

Obviously, they’re advertising the whole time.

We’re just highlighting this time period because one, it gets way out of control and two, the results are just astounding.

But it really gets into full swing in the 20s.

And just to be clear, obviously cigarette advertising develops with the media itself, right? And in the 20s and 30s, it’s mostly print news and magazines, then radio, and then in the 50s and 60s on the TV, right? So they’re progressing along with this.

Speaker 2: And even movies in the 20s and 30s.

Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it’s everything.

And that’s what I’m saying.

But I’m just not going by that type of timeline, right? Because we all know how media works.

To me, I think the really interesting thing is the role models that are being focused on throughout time.

And the three that I’m going to target here and focus on are doctors, women, and youth.

Now, doctors because the whole basis of the advertising is just to give you someone to imitate, right? Celebrities, movie stars, athletes.

And I just think it’s incredibly notable that doctors were in cigarette ads, right? Because I mean, what is more powerful than a doctor?

Women, this is really important.

This is a really big turn because all the stigmas they had to overturn to get women to smoke and increase that market segment.

Then youth, obviously that’s the number one goal for cigarette manufacturers is more customers, so the younger the better, right?

So let’s look at advertising.

So first let’s look at doctors.

This is mostly the 40s and early 50s.

And again for this, I’m going to rely on that Stanford collection.

Went through some of those and looked at the ads.

So let’s think about this.

I mean, who is better as a role model pretty much for anything than a doctor, right? And I mean, we’re talking about again, we’re talking about the 40s and 50s.

We’re not talking about now when everybody has Google and thinks their doctor’s an idiot and they know everything about everything and you know what I mean? I’m talking about like when doctors were respected as much as they ever were, right?

And in the 40s, there were these huge ad campaigns targeted at convincing customers that doctors preferred a specific brand, right? Just like any other ad. “Hey, your doctor smokes this.” And for example…

Speaker 2: Is this like four out of five dentists prefer Colgate?

Speaker 1: Pretty much.

We’ll see that’s pretty much what it is.

You know, this is the beginning of that and they just did it for cigarettes.

And that this context is why it’s just such a marvel, right? You just can’t imagine that today.

But Camel had print ads and TV commercials like everybody else.

And actually I want to play one of the commercials.

Speaker 3: You know, if you were to follow a busy doctor as he makes his daily round of calls, you’d find yourself having a mighty busy time keeping up with him.

Time out for many men of medicine usually means just long enough to enjoy a cigarette.

And because they know what a pleasure it is to smoke a mild, good-tasting cigarette, they’re particular about the brand they choose.

In a repeated national survey, doctors in all branches of medicine, doctors in all parts of the country were asked, “What cigarette do you smoke, doctor?” Once again, the brand named most was Camel.

Yes, according to this repeated nationwide survey, more doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette.

Why not change to Camels for the next 30 days and see what a difference it makes in your smoking enjoyment? See how Camels agree with your throat.

See how mild and good-tasting a cigarette can be.

Speaker 1: First and foremost, most importantly, kudos on the old-timey TV voice.

Speaker 2: At first I thought it was you.

Speaker 1: Voiceover guy.

I mean, okay, it’s…

I mean obviously he’s enhanced, he’s using cigarettes, so he’s cheating.

Speaker 2: No he’s not, because they’re really, they’re really soothing on his throat, smoking Camels.

Speaker 1: Exactly.

Which every doctor… but that’s a, that’s a TV commercial, right? And it’s all about the imitation.

So they depict a guy who’s supposed to be a doctor, who knows what he is.

He had this old-timey doctor bag, you know, like he’s going out on a, on a house call.

And he’s heading out to his car, you know, but that’s not enough.

At the end they have this beautiful woman smoking a cigarette.

Speaker 2: Oh.

Speaker 1: So I mean it’s, they run the gamut on this.

They got everything.

Speaker 2: They touch every point.

Speaker 1: But that’s just an example of one… it’s unbelievable this was a thing, but that is an example of one of classic TV cigarette commercials.

As far as print ads in 1946, Camel had a whole campaign around the slogan “More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette.” So here’s your four out of five dentists, right? Except it’s doctors and we’re talking about cigarettes.

And all these ads are… not all of them, a lot of them are this very similar type, right? Because they’re in magazines and stuff.

So it’s like a full-page ad.

And basically they’ll have the pack of the cigarettes on the ad and then there’ll be like a heading, like you’re reading a newspaper article in the New York Times in 1980, right?

And then there’ll be like a little, you know, line below that where it kind of explains the story a little bit further.

And then there’s like an article.

And then there’ll be like a little pop-out thing on the side with even more information, like “Oh, special little thing over here,” right?

Speaker 2: Mhm.

Speaker 1: And on this one, they’re explaining why everybody prefers Camels, why doctors prefer Camels.

So the title is “More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette.

This is no casual claim.

It’s an actual fact, based on the statements of doctors themselves to three nationally known independent research organizations.”

Okay, so that’s the heading.

And then they go into the story like you’re just reading about the news here, right?

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: “The question was very simple.

One that you, any smoker, might ask a doctor: What cigarette do you smoke, doctor?” Of course I’d ask him that.

Why wouldn’t I?

“After all, doctors are human too.

Like you, they smoke for pleasure.

Their taste, like yours, enjoys the pleasing flavor of costlier tobaccos.

Their throats too appreciate a cool mildness.

And more doctors name Camels than any other cigarette.” Wait, there’s an exclamation point right there. “And more doctors name Camels than any other cigarette!” Always gotta read those.

“If you are a Camel smoker, this preference for Camels among physicians and surgeons”—now we’re throwing surgeons in there—”will not surprise you.

But if you are not now smoking Camels, by all means try them.

Compare them critically in your T-zone.” Sounds kind of erotic.

Speaker 2: Oh, but you made it.

Speaker 1: It actually, it actually says in parentheses “See right.”

Speaker 2: Well, if you do see that picture of that woman with that T over her face, you’re like, “Huh.”

Speaker 1: Yeah, it’s very strange.

See, a T over her face, and then like I said, it’s like a cartoon picture of a woman.

And then they explain your T-zone, which is just…

Speaker 2: So it kind of, just to describe it a little further, it actually looks like an actual article.

Speaker 1: Yeah, that’s exactly it.

It looks like an actual article.

But it’s an ad.

It’s not like you’re, you know when you’re on Google and it says “ad paid for” whatever, they always have to somehow signify what it is, you know, that there’s an ad.

You know, there’s always like regulations stuff about that, like “Hey, you have to signify that you’re getting paid to put this in your paper” or whatever, right?

This is…

I mean if it says it somewhere, I don’t know where it is.

This basically just says “R.J.

Reynolds” on the top of it in like microprint and then busts out into this advertisement which looks like a newspaper article.

Speaker 2: I was gonna say, even if it did say that, like how many… you know, it still looks like a newspaper article.

So you’re still reading it as a newspaper article, even though you may know that it’s an actual ad, maybe you’re still seeing it, you’re processing it as an article.

Speaker 1: Exactly.

Even if you know it, what does it matter? Because your brain’s seeing this thing in the middle of the newspaper, it looks like, or magazine, and it looks official, right? Like you can only take so much of this before it starts to seep in.

And Lucky Strike had a similar campaign.

I mean there was a bunch of them.

They were touting doctor preference.

I added this part just because I thought it was kind of interesting.

They rewarded doctors for answering the questionnaire they sent them asking their preference.

They said they’d give them five cartons of cigarettes if they answered the question right, correctly.

They got 20,679 doctors to say they preferred Luckies.

So it’s the same for nurses and dentists and everything else, right? They’re doing all these different types of ads.

But they actually targeted ads at the doctors themselves, because what’s better than just getting the guy to smoke them on his own, right? Or smoking them on his own, he’s walking down the street and people see him.

One of them says…

Speaker 2: Lighting up in the office as you’re coming in.

Speaker 1: Exactly.

This is a much smaller ad, but it just says “Don’t smoke is advice hard for patients to swallow.

May we suggest instead smoke Philip Morris? Tests showed three out of every four cases of smoker’s cough cleared on changing to Philip Morris.

Why not observe the results for yourself?”

I mean there’s just so many things about how like it’s gonna be better.

And obviously they already know what’s happening.

I mean this thing is later when they’re arguing, “Yeah, we didn’t think there was anything wrong with this.” There’s 80,000 articles talking about why you should smoke this one instead of the other one because it’s better for your health.

And it’s just, it’s absolutely ridiculous, but clearly they’re trying to claim that they’re actually healthier.

They’re not only denying that they’re not healthy, they’re saying it’s healthier.

Also there was actually a curious little cartoon I noticed, which I thought was interesting because it points out, you know, people know what’s happening.

Not everybody’s an idiot.

Just because you’re getting bombarded with all this advertising, even if you start smoking, it doesn’t mean you don’t know what’s going on.

And there’s this satirical cartoon from a guy named Whitney Darrow.

It looks like Family Circle.

I know that’s a hundred years ago.

I don’t know what you reference as far as comics to explain what they look like because they don’t really a thing anymore.

But basically he has two kids out in their backyard and they’re under a tree and the dad’s standing over them like “What are you two doing?” because they’re smoking a cigarette.

And then the kid says, “But gee pop, they say the doctors all smoke them.”

Speaker 2: Can you do it in your little kid voice?

Speaker 1: I don’t have a little kid voice. “Gee pop, they say the doctors all smoke them!” And then there’s a ton of these ads, right? So it’s that kind of stuff.

You can see all these on Stanford’s ad history website.

It’s really cool.

I advise you to go check it out if you think this is interesting because they are kind of amazing.

So why smoke? Where are we at at this point? Well, doctors are telling you to.

I mean as long as they can get away with that.

But what’s a better role model? A doctor saying, “Hey, these are the ones I smoke, why don’t you do it?” And you’ll notice I said there was a woman in that ad.

That’s already a huge victory for tobacco companies.

So we’re gonna go back because women smoking was just not a thing previously.

So let’s see how they pulled this miracle off for their sales.

Set the scene here.

There was a real Puritan ethic at the turn of the century that had to be overcome by cigarette companies if they were going to get this market segment.

So before World War I, cigarette smoking was associated with prostitutes and low morals.

So obviously they have to attack that image if they’re going to get women to smoke.

And you’ll see they… it’s a bit of a transition.

They’re smoking at home and they’re not smoking in public.

But basically the point is they want them to be smoking all the time like men are.

Like why wouldn’t you? That’s what you’re making your money off of.

So they create these targeted marketing campaigns and latch onto, amazingly, the liberalization of women’s roles and behavior.

Speaker 2: It makes sense, but…

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Jeez.

Speaker 1: Right.

It just seems like there should be some kind of rules and some kind of scruples involved here, but clearly there isn’t because they just go right for, “Hey, we need women to be more liberalized and more independent.” And what better way could you possibly do that than just smoking like a chimney?

So this leads up to increasing acceptability of smoking among women.

Now they’ve been advertising towards women since the 20s, but apparently like I said it’s not going quite as well as they would like because they’re smoking indoors, they’re not smoking publicly.

Obviously the goal is to change this ethic and get women to smoke and double their market.

And a huge breakthrough comes fittingly from the American Tobacco Company, which was originally Buck Duke’s company.

Quick aside, after the monopoly gets formed, it gets broken up as anti-competitive.

It gets broken into its pieces and one of them again is called the American Tobacco Company.

That’s really just a little bit too complex and into the weeds.

We’re not really talking about that.

We’re talking about how you get people to smoke.

So there’s a story about just that from History Magazine.

It’s 1929 and George W.

Hill, now president of the American Tobacco Company, and he is trying to break the taboo on women smoking.

So he seeks out Edward L.

Bernays, who is considered one of the fathers of public relations.

Whole other really interesting story with that guy.

But we’re going to stick to the cigarette aspect of his career.

So George goes to Edward and asks him, “How can we get women to smoke on the street? They’re smoking indoors, but darn it if they spend half the time outdoors and we can get them to smoke outdoors, we’ll darn near double our female market.

Do something! Act! Get on it, Edward!” I don’t know if he talks like that. “Act!”

Speaker 2: I know, did you hire him or…

Speaker 1: Yeah, it’s not his kid.

But anyway.

So now Bernays…

Speaker 2: …becomes a huge actor.

Speaker 1: Yes.

No, he’s actually Sigmund Freud’s nephew.

Speaker 2: Oh.

Speaker 1: Yeah, kind of amazing, right? And he has been using the principles of psychology, though not a psychologist, and manipulation in advertising.

Basically he is the guy in history—and this is why he’s just such an interesting figure—who saw how well propaganda worked in wartime and said, “Hey, what if we call propaganda public relations and use it to sell stuff?”

Speaker 2: Not a bad idea.

Speaker 1: And it works.

Obviously, you know, welcome to America 2024 if you’re unaware of this.

But he does it and it works and it works right away.

I mean he has clients like General Electric, Procter & Gamble, the American Tobacco Company, and even Calvin Coolidge.

Speaker 2: The president?

Speaker 1: Yes.

So he’s… he’s big time, okay? So they’re going right to the top, they got this guy.

Speaker 2: I’ll say.

Speaker 1: And now he’s going to turn his talents on cigarette advertising directed at women.

So how’s he going to do this? Well, first he consults an actual disciple of Freud, psychiatrist A.A.

Brill.

So now Edward goes to Brill and he says, “What is the psychological basis for a woman’s desire to smoke?” And Brill says, “Cigarettes, which are equated with men, become torches of freedom.” I mean this guy, the phrases! That was Bernays’ inspiration.

I feel like they’ve recycled this a few times throughout history, now that I think about it.

So that was Bernays’ inspiration for what is about to happen.

So here you have it.

He’s going to hitch the cigarette wagon to the early feminist movement.

Awesome.

And all reports are he still slept at night.

Somehow.

I don’t know how, but he did.

Speaker 2: Yeah, I don’t think he cared.

Speaker 1: But anyway.

How’s he going to do it? Well, per the article, to get young feminists to light up cigarettes, torches of freedom, in public as an act of emancipation during New York’s Easter Parade.

That’s his plan.

This he believed would make its way into the newspapers.

Because what’s better than that, right? Why are we paying for this advertising? It’s like get someone else to pay for it.

Just like back in the war, it’s like, “Hey, we’ll be the hero, you pay for it.” So that’s what…

Speaker 2: Well, and it’s now part of an actual article, like an actual news article.

Speaker 1: It’s even better, right? Because it’s authoritative.

It’s even better than the ads in the article.

They’re free and it’s even more authoritative.

Speaker 2: And you know the newspapers are going to jump on it because they’re trying to sell papers, so this is scandalous.

Yes, we’re going to report on it.

Speaker 1: Exactly.

So who does he get for this job? Bertha Hunt.

Who was Bertha Hunt? She’s actually a secretary.

What she’s going to do is pretend to be an outspoken feminist without mentioning the tobacco company, and implore other important women to join her smoking outside in a demonstration of their independence.

So basically she’s like going about town trying to be a socialite for a quick minute and get these people on board with her.

Speaker 2: Right.

I mean to be fair, these women were already smoking indoors.

It’s not like it’s going to be a woman that’s not smoking that’s going to be like, “Oh, I’m going to go out and smoke with them.” So…

Speaker 1: Well, yeah, and if you’re addicted and somebody honestly…

Speaker 2: Feminism aside.

Speaker 1: Right, if I was a smoker, which apparently according to you I was, if I was a smoker and I’m forced to smoke inside or I’m thinking that like socially I need to smoke inside and someone comes to me and is like, “Hey, why don’t we go do this?” I’d be like, “Yeah, well let’s go do this.

I’m already smoking.

I want to watch the Easter Parade.”

Speaker 2: It all works together, which is the whole point, right? Like people already want to smoke, you’re just trying to open it up.

This is the easiest market to open up in the history of markets, right? And at the time it does feel like a feminist movement to a feminist because, you know, she’s not… she’s like, “Yeah, why can’t I be like that man?”

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Like if you have a drug addict and you’re like, “Hey, do you want to do drugs at work?” I mean he’s not going to say no.

So the day comes, she gets ten women to walk up and down a New York City street smoking.

And as expected, this is quite a scene, and because of the parade, which is probably the point of doing it at the parade, right? You’re going to have all the reporters are already there for the parade.

A reporter sees this and asks Bertha where she got the idea for this demonstration.

Because they’re, you know, they’re flaunting it.

This isn’t just like them casually standing on the corner, they’re marching back and forth like, “You know, we’re smoking.” She says she first got the idea for the campaign when a man with her in the street asked her to extinguish her cigarette as it embarrassed him. “I talked it over with my friends and we decided it was high time something was done about the situation.”

Speaker 2: So she made that up.

Speaker 1: No, he told her to say it.

Speaker 2: Well, yeah, that’s what I mean.

Like he told her exactly what to say.

Speaker 1: Yeah, he told her exactly what to say.

But what happens? April 1st, 1929, front page of the New York Times, quote: “Group of girls puff at cigarettes as a gesture of freedom.”

Speaker 2: It’s funny that it’s also on April 1st.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

So manufacturers also did market research to see what women look for in a cigarette.

Obviously this is a much bigger plan than just this one step.

They created new flavors, new brands.

Marlboro, interestingly, was actually created for women.

They made a special wrapping on the tip so they wouldn’t stick to makeup.

Speaker 2: Oh.

How about that?

Speaker 1: Yeah.

And they also played up the appetite suppression aspect to play into women’s desires to be slim, which is how I read this, so, you know.

Like I said, that appetite thing, that was a big deal.

They played that up and, you know, that still sticks around today.

So why smoke? It’s imitation and mimicry.

Give people a desirable role model, it’s what moves the dial, it’s what sells cigarettes.

Next time you buy something, maybe think about old Edward and whether, you know, how things work and did you buy it because you wanted to, or, you know, because we’re still living in Edward’s world maybe.

And of course cigarette companies are not just relying on newspaper articles.

In the 20s and 30s, as I said, they were mostly print ads.

And in keeping with Edward’s schemes, they were really pretty heinous.

I mean it was always trying to play into the perceived weakness of women’s personalities and attempts to exploit them by acting like cigarettes are going to make their lives better.

One states boldly at the top, “Believe in yourself”—you know, it’s a Philip Morris ad—”Believe in yourself,” and it’s got a photo of obviously a good-looking woman smoking.

And again, you know, it’s that blurb thing where it’s like a newspaper article with a heading and all that.

And it says how you should try all the cigarettes and then compare it to a Philip Morris.

And light up slowly and let it out your nose as it will be less irritating than other brands.

Jeez.

Or Chesterfield, they had an ad aimed at displaying your individuality.

And that one really kind of stung home.

It’s a visual medium so I can’t really relay it, but you just see these things, right? It’s just kind of gross that you’re trying to say like, “Hey, if you want to be an independent woman, this is your way to do it, then you should, you know, smoke our cigarette.”

And there’s a bunch of these.

And obviously they work because the taboo is gone by the time you get to the 60s, you know, it’s not a thing anymore.

Now, the last group we’re going to talk about here are kids.

Obviously they have these ads for everybody: African Americans, athletes, movie stars.

But the kids thing, it’s kind of amazing.

You know what I mean? They’re literally targeting it at kids.

And it was a big thing.

You had all these court cases come up and it was like, “Were they doing this? Were they not doing this?” You know, we’ll let R.J.

Reynolds answer that question because they came up with some documents from them during all these court cases that went on.

And one of them reads: “Increasing RJRT share among younger adult smokers is a key corporate objective.

Within the established RJRT product line, the highest priority has been placed behind Camel as the best short and long-term opportunity to penetrate younger adult smokers.

Younger adult smokers are critically important to RJRT long-term.

They have been a critical factor in growth of every major brand in the past 50 years.

They will continue to be important in the future as market renewal stems almost entirely from 18-year-old smokers.”

Speaker 2: That’s icky.

Speaker 1: Yeah, obviously because that’s, you know, people are aging out of the market, so to speak.

Now, unfortunately, kids have been smoking for some time.

This isn’t a new thing.

The 1800s and the 1900s are just a different place.

And this article, obviously this segment from R.J.

Reynolds comes at a later time period, but he says the past 50 years, right? So I mean this is talking about what they’ve been doing through the early 1900s.

You know, and the logic’s pretty simple, right? You know, you get them hooked on the cigarettes and you have a customer for the rest of time.

So how do you do this? I mean they target teenagers.

It’s a little more subtle even in the 20s and 30s, it’s not just saying, “Hey kid, smoke a cigarette.” But there’s a lot of ads targeting teens, trying to get them smoking.

And again it’s all these images of students smoking, holding cigarettes, being beautiful.

They have letterman sweaters on.

There’s one where like they have a cigarette brand instead of the college letters on their sweater.

The ads explain how this or that cigarette is the favorite of certain colleges.

The one in particular, Old Gold, which I’ve never heard of, but they do a blind taste test and say it’s Yale’s favorite cigarette.

Chesterfield actually has a campaign around the slogan “The choice of young America.” Of course in the 50s Philip Morris claims the same thing on an ad with some young people holding a pack of cigarettes.

This one’s a real gem.

It says, “Maybe you’ve noticed it yourself, Philip Morris seems to have a way with younger smokers.

That’s because their fresher, unspoiled tastes are quick to appreciate the special quality of gentleness and delicate flavor that vintage tobacco offers.

Follow young America’s lead.”

Speaker 2: Oof, I wish you could see my face.

Speaker 1: Yeah, it’s pretty awesome.

This even gets down to babies.

Not that they’re trying to sell them to babies, but I thought it was kind of amazing.

They actually have ads with babies in them.

I think this is probably more to sell to parents.

But Marlboro had a campaign with pictures of babies and quote bubbles saying things like, “Gee mommy, you sure enjoy your Marlboros.”

Speaker 2: I think that’s more for the mom.

Speaker 1: I know, but I feel like if you saw that today you would be like the kid was like, you know, criticizing her.

Like I said, it’s not advertised at the kids, but it’s just, it’s bizarre.

And of course when TV is available, cigarette companies jump into commercial ads, right?

Speaker 1: And it wasn’t just the ads themselves, but it’s the placement and the characters in the ads, which is kind of amazing.

So I’m going to play one from 1961 that merges cartoon characters right into the cartoon as part of a commercial.

Speaker 3: They sure work hard, don’t they, Barney?

Speaker 4: Yeah, I hate to see them work so hard.

Speaker 3: Yeah, me too.

Em, let’s go around back where we can’t see them.

Speaker 4: Gee, we ought to do something, Fred.

Speaker 3: Okay.

How’s about taking a nap?

Speaker 4: Hey, I got a better idea.

Let’s take a Winston break.

Speaker 5: That’s it! Winston is the one filter cigarette that delivers flavor 20 times a pack.

Winston’s got that filter blend.

Speaker 4: Yeah, Fred.

Filter blend makes the big taste difference and only Winston has it, up front where it counts.

Here, ahead of the pure white filter.

Winston packs rich tobaccos, specially selected and specially processed for good flavor in filter smoking.

Speaker 6: Yeah, Barney, Winston tastes good like a cigarette should.

Speaker 2: Goodness.

But and that’s a – that’s a commercial.

That’s not –

Speaker 1: That’s a TV commercial.

It’s a cartoon.

Speaker 2: It’s not – it’s not product placement during the Flintstones.

Speaker 1: Yeah, no, that’s exactly what it is.

Speaker 2: Oh, so it is during the – the Flintstones.

Speaker 1: Exactly.

And I know you’re supposed to like set up audio when you’re a professional radio or podcast personality.

I am not.

So I didn’t worry about it because I think it just – it hits you a little harder, right, when you just hear Fred and Barney all of a sudden talking about how they’re getting away from their wives to go hang out in the backyard and smoke cigarettes.

But yeah, that’s pretty amazing.

That’s just a commercial with cartoon characters in it, right? Like how much more can you possibly advertise directly towards kids?

So what is the effect on youth? I mean, yeah, you advertise because it works, right? But they have obviously studies to confirm this.

The effectiveness of advertising in 2016, there was a study done on young adults and how effective it is.

And, you know, there was evidence to show that company advertising and promotion influenced young people to start using tobacco.

And basically the three most heavily advertised brands – Marlboro, Newport, and Camel – were the preferred brands of cigarettes smoked by middle school and high school teens.

So that’s how they figured that out.

In 1991, there was a household survey on drug abuse data that revealed the large majority, 89% of persons aged 30 to 39 who ever smoked daily, tried their first cigarette by 18.

And 62% by 16.

Over three-quarters were smoking daily before age 20.

Speaker 2: That’s a lot.

That’s wow.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

I mean, there’s a lot of studies on this.

I don’t think we need to belabor the point.

We – we know what happened.

Uh, but I’m going to give RJ Reynolds – I gave him the opening comment, I’ll give him the – the final word here because, you know, who could possibly know more than them? You can do all the studies you want, you’re not going to spend as much money as they did, right?

And it says, quote, “Young smokers are crucial for tobacco industry success for two reasons: first, the vast majority of smokers begin smoking between the ages of 13 and 21, and almost nobody picks up the habit over the age of 24.” Present company excluded.

Thus, as another RJR document explains, “Younger adults are the only source of replacement smokers once older adult smokers pass away.” So you’re – you’re just really like a – a product, right? You know what I mean? You’re just a – a peg.

Speaker 2: Right.

So tobacco companies just went in there and just advertised to everyone, to everything.

So, you know, they just pounce on them wherever they can make more money.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

And then of course you have just direct deception.

In 1953, the Tobacco Industry and Research Committee was formed, which went on to spend $300 million from the ’50s until 1998 on smoking and health research, which essentially was just a campaign to deny that cigarettes were addictive and dangerous.

The point of this group was to create doubt.

Instead of letting people think that there was a clear-cut answer that cigarettes were dangerous, their goal was to make it seem like there was in fact some sort of controversy around it.

There’s an actual marketing memo from a VP at Brown & Williamson that states, “Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the body of fact that exists in the mind of the general public.”

Right.

So like I said, you have the war, which shoved cigarettes in the hands of soldiers who pretty much have nothing else enjoyable in their lives, and then sends them home as heroes with a cigarette smoking addiction.

And then the cigarette companies take off with advertising in a new unprecedented way, relying on psychology and media manipulation to tell everyone how great it is to smoke.

They have images of everyone looking wonderful, smoking a cigarette, playing sports, and just being happy.

And it all works.

It just – it all works.

You set off the epidemic.

And all of this ignores the mountains of free advertising companies got from some of the most admired and beautiful and imitated people of all, movie stars.

And Gately’s book has a great segment on this.

He does a good write-up and he says, if you think back to the ’20s and the subsequent depression era, there was little else you could afford to emulate of the movie star mystique, and it was a huge influence on people smoking.

So you can’t be driving around fancy cars and all that, there’s no money, but you can get a pack of cigarettes.

And to help people emulate their favorite stars, cigarette companies actually started publishing who smoked what cigarettes.

This perhaps peaks in attracting youth in 1955 with James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause, where, you know, he’s smoking away.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: And he’s a hot star.

I mean, the role models are endless.

There’s rock stars, there’s athletes.

That’s for another day.

So where does this put us? You know, this is how you end up with 42% of population smoking by 1965. 1912, the 138 per capita cigarettes. 1963, 4,345 cigarettes.

This is how you end up with over half a pack a day being smoked for every adult in the country. 500 billion cigarettes.

That’s the history of it.

Big tobacco gets rose up, the war gives everybody cigarettes, and they start advertising.

And the other part of this was why did they do it? Why try smoking? I – I think like I said, it’s imitation.

So from the early Spanish who even when they were programmed to believe that the smoke was from the devil, couldn’t stop themselves from trying after seeing the natives do it.

To the British, they’re seeing their hero pirates come home after raiding the Spanish galleons.

To the US, seeing their troops come home from the World War as heroes smoking cigarettes and then being bombarded with advertising showing them how great it is.

People just imitate people.

It’s how we learn as humans.

I mean, it’s – it’s hard to read a book and learn what it says, right? I mean, obviously we do it, but it’s – it’s not the easiest thing to do.

It’s – it’s way more difficult than other ways of learning.

It’s – it’s not how humanity got as far as it did, right, by reading books.

In most cases, we got this far by seeing someone doing something and then trying it.

You imitate family, you imitate your friends.

That’s why advertising to the young was so important in the cigarette progress.

How many things can you learn by watching a five-minute video of YouTube that would take ten times as long if you were reading it, right? Like you just don’t process information that way.

I mean, if – we played a card game the other day we never played before.

I opened up the directions and I was like, you know, this is going to take 20 minutes to figure this out.

But it actually says right on the directions, “Don’t – don’t read this.” Like literally says that.

Says, “Go watch this YouTube video.” How long did it take us? Two minutes?

Speaker 2: Right.

And then we went on and played it.

Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, you’re trying to like – you gotta figure out what this is, what that is.

I mean, and that – that’s general learning, but that doesn’t just stop because you’re not trying to learn something, right? That’s what we’re talking about with those ads as you’re flipping through the newspaper, right? It looks like a thing, so it seems important.

And if you see someone having a good time doing something, that information, it doesn’t just blow by your senses.

It’s – it’s like little darts hitting a dartboard, you know? Like eventually the whole dartboard’s covered up.

Speaker 2: Well, and it’s also a tribal mentality, you know? It’s – we have a connection with someone else.

Oh, you’re smoking, I also smoke, you know? So it’s kind of like now there’s this other group of people that you can be a member of.

Speaker 1: Right.

And with advertising you can just bombard people, right? Like you said, if it’s a dartboard, eventually the dartboard’s just full of darts.

Now of course you can learn things that are bad, right? You know, you learn, oh, this is not good for you.

But that’s not present with cigarettes this whole time, in this whole story.

You know, there’s nowhere near enough information on the bad aspects to counterbalance those good aspects.

And the reason cigarettes are so interesting to me in this way is because they’re unique, right? Like of all the things that are addictive and hurt you, they actually take a long time to do the damage, right? Like if you think of a bar versus, you know, maybe a heroin den, you know, you’re – you’re not going to see a junkie and be like, yeah, I need that in my life.

Like how long does it take to get to that? And I’m not an expert on that, but just from my perception.

So the desire to imitate and feel good, it can – it can outweigh the fear of the harm more easily with a cigarette, right?

And if you look at the things that finally slowed down the smoking, it was the things that flipped that balance.

There’s actually a chart from a Surgeon General report that came out a little while ago and it shows the progression of increased smoking from 1900 to the peak in the mid-1960s and then it descends from then on.

And it shows the major events that affected these habits.

Obviously the way up we covered, you know what I mean? Uh, going up to the peak.

But on the way down, it starts with 1964 when the Surgeon General report comes out linking it to your bad health.

Then 1966, there’s a requirement that cigarette packs had to state, quote, “Cigarette smoking may be hazardous to your health.” And that was a war just to get that put on the cigarettes.

All this arguing back and forth to say it may be hazardous to your health.

But the fact is it’s something saying, hey, hold on a second, you know, there’s a different type of information here.

And then in 1971, cigarette advertising was banned on television in the US.

And the following year, all forms of remaining advertising were required to carry health warnings.

So you have the broadcast bans and labeling requirements on cigarettes telling you right there on the pack that there’s something dangerous.

And then the smokers’ rights movements where people who didn’t smoke just got tired of smoking and they just came up with all this stuff about secondhand smoke being bad for you, which at the time there’s actually no real proof of.

But the fact of the matter is why should you have to be dealing with this anyway? Like did you need concrete evidence? I don’t think so, you know what I mean? And that’s why probably they won out.

But it’s visible condemnation for your act, right? Like there’s somebody literally saying stop doing that, stop doing that on a plane, we can’t even breathe in here.

And then taxes went up, so you have immediate financial harm.

So every time you go to buy a pack, you’re getting smacked in the face.

Then another Surgeon General report that said talking about this secondhand smoke and you have to consider you’re hurting these people around you.

And it’s that balance, right? Like everything you’re seeing is people having a good time and then all of a sudden, hey, there’s this other side to it.

And you can see on this chart, you know, it’s basically a triangle.

It goes up to the peak and it comes back down and, you know, we get back to 1910 levels by 2020.

And science actually calls this cognitive theory.

Uh, like I said, just a real brief part on this because it – there this is actually a science, right? And I’m not a scientist, so I’m not the one to be telling you how this works, so I just took a caption explaining how this works.

And it’s called Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory.

It emphasizes the central role played by modeling influences in shaping human thinking, values, and patterns of behavior.

Through modeling, one learns behavior and develops preferences as well as a sense of what is normative.

The process of social modeling exerts its effects in several different ways.

One way in which the power of modeling is substantially increased is by showing that the modeled behavior produces desired benefits.

In image advertising, smoking is portrayed as an expression of independence, individualism, and social sophistication.

It engages the consumer in a fantasy and invites the consumer to participate in a promise that the product can do something for you that you cannot do for yourself.

A self-image that the target audience already desires is reinforced.

So I mean, basically that’s just kind of like the science of it, uh, from somebody much more uh in the know of those type of things than I am.

You know, you can call it whatever you want.

We just imitate things and in my opinion, some looks good and you’re more likely to do it.

And I think that’s like I said why this topic was so interesting and cigarettes are just such a peculiar thing in that you can – you can go pretty far before you start to feel the bad effects.

And really it’s just that balance between thinking things look good and thinking things look bad, you know? And that’s like the point of the whole story, right? That’s your whole life, right? You – you can get bombarded with advertising on anything and you’re just doing that – that scale in your head.

Do I do this? Do I not do it? And if anything, I’d say, you know, we just all have to kind of keep that a little bit more conscious, I think, at least for me.

You know, you need a reminder once in a while like, hey, let’s move that to the forefront instead of just letting it all go on in the back of my head, right?

So with that, we will wrap it up.

It’s time for the – the well, we’re not going to do a summation, I just did a summation.

So, uh, it’s time for Julia’s big takeaway.

Julia, did you have a – a big takeaway for us today? What’d you think was interesting?

Speaker 2: Well, the whole thing was interesting.

But it’s how much of a cultural staple tobacco was and still is.

How many things have evolved around it, how much pain and hurt it has caused throughout history, but also how it was present at good times and happy, indulgent moments, you know, even not just portrayed in ads but in real life.

You know, that now constant presence of the no smoking sign, the airplane announcement of tampering with the lavatory smoke detector.

These are all reminders of where we were as a society and how prevalent tobacco was.

Like you wouldn’t have to put that announcement on the plane if people weren’t smoking and then if addiction wasn’t so bad that once they banned smoking you were like, I gotta get a cigarette and you went into the bathroom and you were going to tamper with the smoke detector in the bathroom.

Like that’s insane.

Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2: You know? And um another thing that, you know, stuck out to me was just and it’s what you’ve been talking about this whole time is the power and influence of advertising.

And while I think of that some of that has changed as a society, we’ve moved into a different marketing direction and there are definitely a few things that I’ve bought for myself because I saw them on social media, you know? So our minds are now influenced by viral videos and memes and just quick segments and not just ads on TV.

Speaker 1: Yeah, and now it’s people getting paid for product placement.

Speaker 2: Right, exactly.

Speaker 1: Because it – it’s like a workaround of the advertising thing where it’s like, hey, you know, you can’t take money and advertise something without telling everybody, but you know, product placement, you know, you can do that.

And they did that with cigarettes too.

Speaker 2: Yeah, it’s like the age of the – of the influencer, you know?

Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.

And that’s like I said, you know what I mean, I’m not trying to be preachy and tell everybody how to live their lives.

This podcast is more about exploring, you know, my life quite frankly.

What else would I be talking about? I think that’s important, you know, like just to bring that to the forefront like I said and kind of just think about what you’re doing once in a while and what is influencing you.

I wanted to remind everybody that the sources for this you can get on informatorium56.com.

I do want to give particular mention, I already mentioned it a couple times, but to the book Tobacco by Ian Gately and it’s called Tobacco: A Cultural History of How an Exotic Plant Seduced Civilization.

I actually read this last when I was kind of wrapping up my research, which I’m kind of glad for because this guy has got everything in this book.

I don’t know how I would have even formed opinions after reading this book.

He has like two and a half pages on smoking in James Bond books, you know? So and then on top of it, he actually pays particular attention to the question why do people smoke, which is kind of amazing.

I mean, in the history of my life doing research on anything, I don’t think I ever found something that was quite that pegged into what I was trying to – to look for.

Speaker 2: Interesting.

Speaker 1: But uh yeah, and I mean, it’s weird because the book there’s a cover on the cover there’s a Native American figure and a like an angelic figure and it’s called How It Seduced Civilization.

I thought it was all about like stuff that happened a thousand years ago, but no, it’s – it’s actually an amazing history book.

Speaker 2: It covers the gamut of the whole thing.

Speaker 1: Well, the thing is it yeah, and it’s also just an amazing history book.

Like he just explains pretty much all of history as he’s going through this.

If you just want like a general outline of history, it – I can’t put it any more encompassing than that.

I don’t know how he does it.

It’s kind of an amazing book.

But anyway, it’s really worth a read.

And with that, like I said, we’re going to wrap it up.

You can uh email the show if you would like at informatorium56@gmail.com.

Thank you so much for visiting us here at the Informatorium.

We wish you a happy, healthy, and beautiful journey until we see you again.

Look on the bright side and good luck.

Speaker 2: Bye.