A brief history of why we stopped smoking
It may be hard to imagine or remember today, but a young adult might have been excused for smoking in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s, constantly exposed as they were to slick campaigns of the day that promoted smoking as cool.
Movies, the era’s primary date activity, portrayed smoking as macho and sexy ... at the financial encouragement of Big Tobacco. Nightclub sophisticates with gold cases lit their cigarettes for each other, and hoods rolled their packs of camels into the sleeves of their T-shirts. Who could resist?
And our young military members received free cigs as a “public service.” Ha! I also remember college campus student representatives of tobacco companies being provided thousands to freely distribute, even passing packs out in cafeteria lines.
Cigarette TV commercials were rampant in the 1950s and ’60s. I remember the leggy dancing Old Gold cigarette packs, and the macho Marlboro man who rode his way stoically across the plains. (Original man David Millar died of emphysema; newer portrayer Wayne McLaren died of lung cancer.) Respected newsman Edward R. Morrow was always enveloped in a cloud of Camel cigarette smoke. (He died of lung cancer at 57.)
So yes, I did succumb, and smoked (unfiltered Camels, alas) from 1958 until 1971.
But that all changed with the Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act of 1965 and the initial label required by the Surgeon General: “Caution: Cigarette smoking may be hazardous to your health.”
Further restrictions followed, including the current requirement for rotating four much-stronger warning statements. But Big Tobacco resisted; they’re currently fighting the implementation of the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act of 2009, on the basis of “free speech.” How do these guys sleep at night, knowing the trauma, pain and misery of cancer they cause?
A lawsuit by 46 states resulted in the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement and payments of $206 billion toward Medicaid expenses. And in 2006 a U.S. District judge ruled that “the industry had marketed and sold their lethal products with zeal, with deception, with a single-minded focus on their financial success, and without regard for the human tragedy or social costs that success exacted.”
The campaigns worked well. The percentage of Americans smoking fell from 48% in 1965 to 15% today. Unfortunately, we still see young busboys and waitresses out the back door of restaurants smoking on their breaks. Hey guys, the cost of a pack is your hourly wage. (Prices range from $5.72 in the tobacco state of Kentucky to $13.95 in highly taxed New York. When I quit, it was 35 cents.)
Is Big Tobacco hurt? Not really. Moving to emerging, uncontrolled and naive markets in Africa and the Middle East, it’s thriving and increasing its sales. Like the judge said, without regard for the human tragedy.
But back to the USA. In sum, 40 to 50 years ago smoking was cool, presumed safe, inexpensive, freely allowed, and socially accepted. Today it’s uncool, proven deadly, expensive, widely prohibited, and socially abhorrent. There’s absolutely no reason to start and every reason to stop. The American Cancer Society’s annual Great American Smokeout is the third Thursday of November, this year on the 21st. Taper off and get ready?