Smoking or Cheating?

Decades of lecturing around America and of speaking with parents on my radio show have led me to an incredible conclusion: More American parents would be upset with their teenage children if they smoked a cigarette than if they cheated on a test.

How has this come about? This is, after all, an entirely new phenomenon. Almost no member of my generation (those who became teenagers in the 1960s), let alone a member of any previous generation, could ever have imagined that parents would be angrier with their teenage child for smoking than for cheating.

There has been a profound change in American values. In a nutshell, health has overtaken morality. Or, if you prefer, health has become our morality.

The war against tobacco is both a cause and a symptom of this moral confusion. It has saturated American society with the belief that smoking is wrong, even immoral, not simply unhealthy.

Anti-smoking zealots (the term is redundant) in the California Department of Health Services launched a statewide billboard campaign equating cigarettes with drugs. Parents call my show to tell me that when their children see someone smoking, they say, "Look, that person is using drugs!"

Judges in child custody disputes have imbibed the moral idiocy that smoking tells us something about a person's character. An increasing number of judges take smoking into consideration when choosing which parent is more fit to raise a child. Millions of Americans agree with these judges that smoking is a moral flaw. That is one reason the government airbrushes cigarettes out of pictures of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and other famous Americans. If a young American were to see President Roosevelt smoking a cigarette or Sir Winston Churchill smoking a cigar, what might happen to that child's wholehearted acceptance of the smoking-is-bad (not merely unhealthy) brainwash?

I smoke a pipe and cigar, and I am amazed at the certitude and chutzpah in the 5-year-olds who have visited my home who confidently walked over to me to tell me I shouldn't smoke! Had they seen me drinking alcohol, as children regularly see adults do, it would never occur to them to say such a thing.

That we have a war against tobacco rather than alcohol well illustrates the moral confusion of our time. Eighty years ago, when American society warred against a vice, it was alcohol — because the society cared more about fighting evil than fighting potential dangers to health. Alcohol leads to more child and spousal abuse as well as to murder and rape than any other single factor. Was one child ever abused because a cigarette or pipe dulled an adult's conscience? Have any drivers ever killed whole families because they smoked before they drove?

But in this Age of Moral Confusion we have chosen tobacco, not alcohol, as the villain. Because health and living long are our greatest values.

When I was a boy, I attended baseball games where most spectators smoked, but none cursed. Today there is no smoking at ballparks, but obscene language is shouted out with impunity. We have traded in opposition to firsthand cursing for opposition to secondhand smoke.

So, ask your children if they think you would be more disappointed in their smoking or their cheating. If your child responds "smoking," you are morally failing your child. If you are pleased with that answer, the situation is even worse. If enough Americans prefer that their children cheat than smoke, we are a doomed society. Nor can the issue be avoided by claiming you don't want your child to either smoke or cheat. That just means you can't say that cheating is far worse than smoking. You are another American led to believe that healthy and decent are synonymous.

But if you do believe that, ponder these questions: Would you rather your business partner smoke or cheat? Your lawyer? Your friends? Would you feel better if your doctor cheated on medical exams or smoked?

The questions would have been considered absurd a generation ago. The war against tobacco is a symptom and cause of a shallower society. It has done far more harm to America than tobacco. Just ask your teenager.

I'm certainly convinced now that you've found one smoker that was better than one non-smoker, and I like the added touch of choosing people who lived in an age before the dangers of smoking were known.

Twentieth Century--The Rise of the Cigarette
1900-1950: Growing Pains

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• 1900: LEGISLATION: Washington, Iowa, Tennessee and North Dakota have outlawed the sale of cigarettes.
• 1900: STATISTICS: 4.4 billion cigarettes are sold this year. The anit-cigarette movement has destroyed many smaller companies. Buck Duke is selling 9 out of 10 cigarettes in the US.
• 1900: US Supreme Court uphold's Tennessee's ban on cigarette sales. One Justice, repeating a popular notion of the day, says, "there are many [cigarettes] whose tobacco has been mixed with opium or some other drug, and whose wrapper has been saturated in a solution of arsenic.".
• 1900: BUSINESS: RJ Reynolds reluctantly folds his company into Duke's Tobacco Trust
• 1901: ENGLAND: END OF AN AGE: QUEEN VICTORIA DIES. Edward VII, the tobacco-hating queen's son and successor, gathers friends together in a large drawing room at Buckingham Palace. He enters the room with a lit cigar in his hand and announces, "Gentlemen, you may smoke."
• 1901: BUSINESS: Duke fuses his Continental Tobacco and American Tobacco companies into Consolidated Tobacco.
• 1901: BUSINESS: UK: Duke's Consolidated buys the British Ogden tobacco firm, signalling a raid on the British industry.
• 1901: BUSINESS: UK: Imperial is born. The largest British tobacco companies unite to combat Duke's take-over, forming the Bristol-based Imperial Tobacco Group.
• 1902: BUSINESS: In an end to the war, Imperial and American agree to stay in their own countries, and unite to form the British American Tobacco Company (BAT) to sell both companies' brands abroad.
• 1901: 3.5 billion cigarettes smoked; 6 billion cigars sold
• 1902: Philip Morris sets up a corporation in New York to sell its British brands, including one named "Marlboro."
• 1902: BUSINESS: ENGLAND: King Albert, long a fan of Philip Morris, Ltd., appoints the Bond St. boutique royal tobacconist.(RK)
• 1902: USA: Sears, Roebuck and Co catalogue (page 441) sells "Sure Cure for the Tobacco Habit". Slogan "Tobacco to the Dogs". The product "will destroy the effects of nicotine". (LB)
• 1903-08: The August Harpers Weekly says, "A great many thoughtful and intelligent men who smoke don't know if it does them good or harm. They notice bad effects when they smoke too much. They know that having once acquired the habit, it bothers them . . . to have their allowance of tobacco cut off."
• 1904: BUSINESS: Cigarette coupons first used as "come ons" for a new chain of tobacco stores.
• 1904: BUSINESS: Duke forms the American Tobacco Co. by the merger of 2 subsidiaries, Consolidated and American & Continental. The only form of tobacco Duke does not control is cigars--the form with the most prestige.
• 1904: MEDICINE: The first laboratory synthesis of nicotine is reported
• 1904: New York CIty. A woman is arrested for smoking a cigarette in an automobile. "You can't do that on Fifth Avenue," the arresting officer says
• 1904: Kentucky tobacco farmers form a violent "protective association" to protect themselves against rapacious tactics of large manufacturers, mostly the Duke combine. They destroy tobacco factories, crops, and even murder other planters. Disbanded in 1915.
• 1905: POLITICS: Indiana legislature bribery attempt is exposed, leading to passage of total cigarette ban
• 1905: U.S. warships head to Nicaragua on behalf of William Albers, a Amaerican accused of evading tobacco taxes
• 1905: REGULATION: "Tobacco" does not appear in the US Pharmacopoeia, an official government listing of drugs. "The removal of tobacco from the Pharmacopoeia was the price that had to be paid to get the support of tobacco state legislators for the Food and Drug Act of 1906. The elimination of the word tobacco automatically removed the leaf from FDA supervision."--Smoking and Politics: Policymaking and the Federal Bureaucracy Fritschler, A. Lee. 1969, p. 37
• 1906 BUSINESS: Brown and Williamson Tobacco Company is formed
• 1906 BUSINESS: R.J. Reynolds introduces Prince Albert pipe tobacco
• 1906-06-30: Pure Food and Drug Act prohibits sale of adulterated foods and drugs, and mandates honest statement of contents on labels. Food and Drug Administration begins; originally, nicotine is on the list of drugs; after tobacco industry lobbying efforts, nicotine is removed from the list.
• 1907: REGULATION: Teddy Roosevelt's Justice Department files anti-trust charges against American Tobacco.
• 1907-01-26: REGULATION: Congress enacts law prohibiting campaign contributions by corporations to candidates for national posts.
• 1907: Business owners are refusing to hire smokers. On August 8, the New York Times writes: "Business ... is doing what all the anti-cigarette specialists could not do."
• 1908: CANADA: LEGISLATION: The Tobacco Restraint Act passed. Bans sales of cigarettes to those under 16; never enforced.
• 1908: BUSINESS: RJ Reynolds release, Prince Albert pipe tobacco, "the Joy Smoke.", catapulting Reynolds to a national market. (RK)
• 1909: 15 states have passed legislation banning the sale of cigarettes.
• 1909: SPORTS: Baseball great Honus Wagner orders American Tobacco Company take his picture off their "Sweet Caporal" cigarette packs, fearing they would lead children to smoke. The shortage makes the Honus Wagner card the most valuable of all time, worth close to $500,000.

• 1910: TAXES: Federal tax revenues from tobacco products are $58 million, 13% from cigarettes.
• 1910: THE STATE OF TOBACCO: Per capita consumption: 138/year. Because of the heavy use of the inexpensive cigarette by immigrants, New York still accounts for 25% of all cigarette sales. The New York Times editorializes praises the Non Smokers Protective League, saying anything that could be done to allay "the general and indiscriminate use of tobacco in public places, hotels, restaurants, and railroad cars, will receive the approval of everybody whose approval is worth having." (RK)
• 1911: BUSINESS: THE INDUSTRY IN 1911:

•Duke's American Tobacco Co. controls 92% of the world's tobacco business. •Leading National Brand: Fatima, (first popular brand to be sold in 20-unit packs; 15 cents) from Liggett & Myers, a Turkish/domestic blend. Most popular in Eastern urban areas. Other Turkish/domesitc competitors: Omar (ATC); Zubelda (Lorillard); Even the straight domestic brands were seasoned with a sprinkling of Turkish, like Sweet Caporals (originally made for F.S. Kinney and later for American Tobacco) •Leading Brand in Southeast: Piedmont, an all-Bright leaf brand. •Leading Brand in New Orleans: Home Run, (5 cents for 20) an all-Burley leaf brand.

• 1911: Tobacco -growing is allowed in England for the first time for more than 250 years.
• 1911-05-29: "Trustbusters" break up American Tobacco Co. US Supreme Court dissolves Duke's trust as a monopoly and in violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act (1890). The major companies to emerge are: American Tobacco Co., R.J. Reynolds, Liggett & Myers Tobacco Company (Durham, NC), Lorillard and BAT. RJ Reynolds says, "Now watch me give Buck Duke hell."
• 1911: Dr. Charles Pease states position of the NonSmokers' Protective League of America:
• 1912: BUSINESS: Newly freed Liggett & Myers introduces "Chesterfield" brand cigarettes, with the slogan: They do satisfy
• 1912: BUSINESS: George Whelan puts his United Cigar Stores company under a holding company, Tobacco Products Corporation, and starts buying small tobacco independents. They do satisfy
• 1912: USA: Reprint of report of the perfection of a nicotine oil spray. This makes it easier to apply the nicotine extract as an insecticde to plants. (LB)
• 1912: USA: The members of the Non-Smokers' Protective League received editorial ridicule in various newspapers. One newspaper states, "Smoking may be offensive to some people, but ecourages peace and morality". Pipes and cigars are easily defended, but cigarettes may be a problem. (LB)
• 1912: HEALTH: First strong connection made between lung cancer and smoking. Dr. I. Adler is the first to strongly suggest that lung cancer is related to smoking in a monograph.
• 1912: USA: Article on substitutes for tobacco, such as ground coffee, coffee bean, hemp, leaves of the tomato or potato or holly or camphor, or "the egg plant, and the colt's foot". (LB)
• 1912: USA: Article titled "How some men stop smoking"; in which they never stop for more than a few hours. The question is raised, "How can we break ourselves of it? -- not the tobacco, but the thought that we ought to stop it?" (LB)
• 1912: SINKING OF THE TITANIC Men in tuxedos are observed smoking cigarettes as they await their fate. (RK)
• 1913: American Society for the Control of Cancer is formed to inform the public about the disease. It will later become the American Cancer Society.(RK)
• 1913: BUSINESS: Birth of the "modern" cigarette: RJ Reynolds introduces Camel
• 1913-14: ADVERTISING: Prince Albert tobacco uses Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce Indians in its ads.
• 1914: HEALTH: Lung cancer death rate is 0.6 per 100,000 (US Census Bureau); 371 cases reported in the US. (RK).
• 1914: OPINION: Thomas Edison writes to Henry Ford that the health danger of cigarettes actually lies in "the burning paper wrapper" which emits acrolein. Acrolein has an irreversible "violent action on the nerve centers, producing degeneration of the cells of the brain, which is quite rapid among boys. . . I employ no person who smokes."
• 1915: BUSINESS: Liggett & Myers reconstitutes Chesterfield in the Camel mode; shortens slogan to: They Satisfy
• 1915: BUSINESS: Thorne Bros. sell majority stake in Montgomery Ward to tobacco interests.
• 1915: POETRY:
Tobacco is a dirty weed. I like it.
It satisfies no normal need. I like it.
It makes you thin, it makes you lean,
It takes the hair right off your bean.
It's the worst darn stuff I've ever seen.
I like it.
--Graham Lee Hemminger, Penn State Froth, Tobacco
• c. 1915: OPINION: Release of poster with quote from biologist Davis Starr Jordan, "The boy who smokes cigarettes need not be anxious about his future, he has none" (LB)
• 1916: Henry Ford publishes anti-cigarette pamphlet titled "The Case against the Little White Slaver". (LB)
• 1916: BUSINESS: To compete with the phenomenal success of RJR's Camel, American introduces Lucky Strike, the name revived from an 1871 pipe tobacco brand that referenced the Gold Rush days. On the package, the motto: "It's Toasted!" (like all other cigarettes.) .
• 1917: BUSINESS: American Tobacco unleashes an ad campaign for Lucky Strike aimed at women: "Avoid that future shadow," warns one ad, comparing ladies' jowls.
• 1917-18: WORLD WAR I Cigarette rations determined by market share, a great boost to Camel, which had over a third of the domestic market.

•Virtually an entire generation return from the war addicted to cigarettes.

• Turkish leaf is unavailable; American tobacco farmers get up to 70 cents/pound.
• • Those opposed to sending cigarettes to the doughboys are accused of being traitors. According to General John J. Pershing:

•You ask me what we need to win this war. I answer tobacco as much as bullets. •Tobacco is as indispensable as the daily ration; we must have thousands of tons without delay.

• 1918: War Department buys the entire output of Bull Durham tobacco. Bull Durham advertises, "When our boys light up, the Huns will light out."

• 1918: Frederick J. Pack publishes his "Tobaco and Human Efficiency," the most comprehensive compilation of anti-cigarette opinion to date. (RK)
• 1919: HEALTH: Washington University medical student Alton Ochsner is summoned to observe lung cancer surgery--something, he is told, he may never see again. He doesn't see another case for 17 years. Then he sees 8 in six months--all smokers who had picked up the habit in WW I.
• 1919: Richard Joshua (R.J.) Reynolds, 68, dies.
• 1919: The 18th Admendment ratified by states. (LB)
• 1919: Evangelist Billy Sunday declares "Prohibition is won; now for tobacco". The success of alcohol prohibition suggusted to some the possibility of tobacco prohibition (LB)
• 1919: Lucy Payne Gaston's tactics are attracting lawsuits; she is asked to resign from Anti-Cigarettel League of the World.
• 1919: BUSINESS: George Whelan Tobacco Products picks up tiny Philip Morris & Company, Ltd. Inc, including PM's brands Cambridge, Oxford Blues, English Ovals, Players, and Marlboro
• 1919: BUSINESS: Manufactured cigarettes surpass smoking tobacco in poundage of tobacco consumed. (RK)
• 1919: BUSINESS: ADVERTINSING: Lorillard unsuccessfully targets women with its Helmar and Murad brands. (RK)

• 1920-06-11: Republican party leaders, meeting in the "smoke-filled room" (Suite 408-10 of Chicago's Blackstone Hotel) engineered the presidential nomination of Warren G. Harding.
• 1921: BUSINESS: RJR spends $8 million in advertising, mostly on Camel; inaugurates the "I'd Walk a Mile for a Camel" slogan. (RK)
• 1921: Iowa becomes first state to add its own cigarette tax (2 cents a pack) onto federal excise levy (6 cents).(RK)
• 1922: BUSINESS: RJR takes Industry leadership. from American for first time.(RK)
• 1922: BUSINESS: Manufactured cigarettes surpass plug in poundage of tobacco consumed to become US's highest grossing tobacco product. (RK)
• 1922: OPINION: "Is There a Cigarette War Coming?" in Atlantic magazine says, "scientific truth" has found "that the claims of those who inveigh aginst tobacco are wholy without foundation has been proved time and again by famous chemists, physicians, toxicologists, physiologists, and experts of every nation and clime." (RK)
• 1922: Lucy Payne Gaston runs for President of the U.S. against "cigarette face" Warren G. Harding, whom she asks to quit smoking. Within two years they both will be dead, he of a stroke mid-term, she of throat cancer. (There is no record of her ever having smoked.)
• 1923: BUSINESS: Camel has 45% of the US market.
• 1923: ARTS: "Confessions of Zeno" by Italo Svevo
• 1923: BUSINESS: Camel has over 40% of the US market.
• 1924: Lucy Payne Gaston dies of throat cancer.
• 1924: STATISTICS: 73 billion cigarettes sold in US
• 1924: BUSINESS: Philip Morris introduces Marlboro, a women's cigarette that is "Mild as May"
• 1924: Durham, NC: James B. Duke creates Duke University.Duke gives an endowment to Trinity College. Under provisions of the fund, Trinity becomes Duke University
• 1925: HEALTH: Lung cancer death rate is 1.7 per 100,000 (US Census Bureau)(RK).
• 1925: BUSINESS: Philip Morris' Marlboro, "Mild as May," targets "decent, respectable" women. "Has smoking any more to do with a woman's morals than has the color of her hair?" A 1927 ad reads, "Women quickly develop discerning taste. That is why Marlboros now ride in so many limousines, attend so many bridge parties, and repose in so many handbags."
• 1925: BUSINESS: Helen Hayes, Al Jolson and Amelia Earhart endorse Luckies
• 1925: BUSINESS: Both Percival Hill and Buck Duke die by end of the year; Duke was 69. George Washington Hill becomes President of American Tobacco Co. Becomes known for creating the slogans, "Reach for a Lucky" and "With men who know tobacco best, it's Luckies two to one"
• 1925: SOCIETY: Women's college Bryn Mawr lifts its ban on smoking.
• 1925: OPINION: "American Mercury" magazine: "A dispassionate review of the [scientific] findings compels the conclusion that the cigarette is tobacco in its mildest form, and that tobacco, used moderately by people in normal health, does not appreciably impair either the mental efficiency or the physical condition." (RK)
• 1926: BUSINESS: P. Lorillard introduces Old Gold cigarettes with expensive campaigns. John Held Flappers, Petty girls, comic-strip style illustrations and "Not a Cough in a Carload" helped the brand capture 7% of the market by 1930.
• 1926: BUSINESS: Lloyd (Spud) Hughes' menthol Spud Brand and recipe sold to Axton-Fisher Tobacco Co., which markets it nationally.
• 1926: BUSINESS: ADVERTISING: Liggett & Myers' Chesterfield targets women for second-hand smoke in "Blow some my way" ad.
• 1927: LEGISLATION: Kansas is the last state to drop its ban on cigarette sales.
• 1927: BUSINESS: British American Tobacco (BATCo) acquires Brown & Williamson, and introduces the 15-cent-pack Raleigh. Raleigh soon reintroduces the concept of coupons for merchandise.
• 1927: ADVERTISING: Luckies target women A sensation is created when George Washington Hill aims Lucky Strike advertising campaign at women for the first time, using testimonials from female movie stars and singers. Soon Lucky Strike has 38% of the American market. Smoking initiation rates among adolescent females triple between 1925-1935.
• 1928: HEALTH: Lombard & Doering examine 217 Mass. cancer victims, comparing age, gender, economic status, diet, smoking and drinking. Their New England Journal of Medicine report finds overall cancer rates only slightly less for nonsmokers, but finds 34 of 35 site-specific (lung, lips, cheek, jaw) cancer sufferers are heavy smokers.(RK).
• 1929: HEALTH: Statistician Frederick Hoffman in the "American Review of Tuberculosis" finds "There is no definite evidence that smoking habits are a direct contributory cause toward malignant growths in the lungs."(RK).
• 1929-Spring: ADVERTISING: Edward Bernays mounts a "freedom march" of smoking debutantes/fashion models who walk down Fifth Avenue during the Easter parade dressed as Statues of Liberty and holding aloft their cigarettes as "torches of freedom."
• 1929: BUSINESS: Whelan's Tobacco Products Corporation crashes shortly before the market; Philip Morris is picked up by Rube Ellis, who calls in Leonard McKitterick to help run it. (RK).
• 1929: BUSINESS: Philip Morris buys a factory in Richmond, Virginia, and finally begins manufacturing its own cigarettes.

• 1930: BRAND CONSUMPTION:

RANK	BRAND	BILLIONS SOLD
1	Lucky Strike Regulars	43.2 billion
2	Camel	35.3
3	Chesterfield Regulars	26.4 billion
4	Old Gold Regulars	8.5 billion
5	Raleigh 85s	0.2 billion

• 1930: HEALTH: 2,357 cases of lung cancer reported in the US. (RK) The lung cancer death rate in white males is 3.8 per 100,000.
• 1930: RESEARCH: Researchers in Cologne, Germany, made a statistical correlation between cancer and smoking.
• 1930: TAXES: Federal tax revenues from tobacco products are over $500 million, 80% from cigarettes.
• 1930: BUSINESS: The successors of the Tobacco Trust, led by RJ Reynolds, hike cigarette prices (at the beginning of the Depression), leaving a perfect opening for Philip Morris, Brown & Williamson, and other small manufacturers to counter with low-priced brands..
• 1931-06: Cigarette Price Wars begin. Cigs sold for 14 cents a pack, 2-for-27 cents in the depths of the depression. Even with cheap leaf prices and manufacturing costs, and with "Luckies" advancing, RJReynolds President S. Clay Williams ups "Camel" prices a penny a pack. Others follow suit. The major TCs are seen as greedy opportunists. Dime-a-pack discount cigs eat into the majors' market share, taking as much as 20% of the market in 1932; PM releases "Paul Jones" discount brand. In 1933, TCs lower prices. Discounts maintain 11% of the market for the rest of the 30s (RK)
• 1931: Parliament features the first commercial filter tip: a wad of cotton, soaked in caustic soda.
• 1932: BUSINESS: Zippo lighter invented by George G. Blaisdell
• 1933: LEGISLATION: The Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 institutes price supports, saves tobacco farmers from ruin
• 1933: BUSINESS: B&W introduce a menthol cigarette, Kool, to compete with Axton-Fisher's Spud, the only other mentholated brand.
• 1933: BUSINESS: Philip Morris resuscitates and revitalizes its Philip Morris as a tony, but only premium-priced ("Now only 15 cents") "English Blend" brand.
• 1933: ADVERTISING: Page boy Johnny Roventini is discovered in the New Yorker hotel and soon becomes the world's first living trademark, his distinctive voice making the famous, "Call for Philip Morris."
• 1933: ADVERTISING: Chesterfield begins running ads in the New York State Journal of Medicine, with claims like, "Just as pure as the water you drink . . . and practically untouched by human hands."
• 1934: LEGISLATION: Garrison Act is passed outlawing marijuana and other drugs; tobacco is not considered.
• 1936: BUSINESS: B&W introduces Viceroy, the first serious brand to feature a filter of cellulose acetate. (RK)
• 1936: BUSINESS Viceroy intorduces a cellulose filter that it claimed removed half the particles in smoke.
• 1936: BUSINESS: RJR discontinues Red Kamel brand
• 1937: Federal Government establishes the National Cancer Institute at Bethesday, MD (RK)
• 1937: BUSINESS: 'Printers Ink' reports that R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., and Ligett & Myers Tobacco Co. each spent at least two million dollars on advertising in the first half of 1937. (LB)
• 1937: BUSINESS: By the end of the year, Camels are ouselling Luckies and Chesterfield by about 40%. (RK)
• 1938: LEGISLATION: Agricultural Adjustment Act is passed again, this time authorizing marketing quotas.
• 1938: RESEARCH: Dr. Raymond Pearl of Johns Hopkins University reports that smokers do not live as long as non-smokers.
• 1938: MEDIA: Consumer Reports rates 36 cigarette brands.

•CR notes that Philip Morris lays "great stress in their advertising upon their substitution of glycol for glycerine. The aura of science surrounding their 'proofs' that this makes a less irritating smoke, does not convince many toxicologists that they were valid. Of the many irritating combustion products in tobacco smoke, the modification of one has probably little more than a psychological ffect in reducing irritation felt by the smoker." •In blindfold tests, finds little to distinguish brands •Knocks "the obvious bias of cigarette manufacturers, as well as of the 'scientists' whm they directly or indirectly subsidize." •Rates nicotine content, finding:
•Chesterfield: 2.3 mg nicotine •Marlboro: 2.3 mg nicotine •Philip Morris: 2.2 mg nicotine •Old Gold: 2.0 mg nicotine •Camel: 1.9 mg nicotine •Lucky Strike: 1.4 mg nicotine(RK)
• 1939: HEALTH: "Tobacco Misuse and Lung Carcinoma" by Franz Hermann Muller of the University of Cologne's Pathological Institute finds extremely strong dose relationship between smoking and lung cancer.
• 1939: BUSINESS: Tobacco companies are found price-fixing.
• 1939: BUSINESS: ATC introduces "king size" Pall Mall. With Pall Mall and Lucky Strike, American will rule the 40s.
• 1939: Fortune magazine finds 53% of adult American males smoke; 66% of males under 40 smoke..
• 1939: GERMANY: Hermann Goring issues a decree forbidding the military to smoke on the streets, on marches, and on brief off duty periods.

• 1939-1945: WORLD WAR II As part of the war effort, Roosevelt makes tobacco a protected crop. General Douglas McArthur makes the corncob pipe his trademark by posing with it on dramatic occasions such as his wading ashore during the invasion and reconquest of the Philippines. Cigarettes are included in GI's C-Rations. Tobacco companies send millions of free cigs to GI's, mostly the popular brands; the home front had to make do with off-brands like Rameses or Pacayunes. Tobacco consumption is so fierce a shortage develops. By the end of the war, cigarette sales are at an all-time high.

• 1940: HEALTH: 7,121 cases of lung cancer reported in the US. (RK).
• 1940: CONSUMPTION: Adult Americans smoke 2,558 cigarettes per capita a year, nearly twice the consumption of 1930.
• 1940: MEDIA: As most tobacco-ad-laden newspapers refused to report the growing evidence of tobacco's hazards, muckraking pioneer George Seldes starts his own newsletter in which he covered tobacco. "For 10 years, we pounded on tobacco as one of the only legal poisons you could buy in America," he told R. Holhut, editor of The George Seldes Reader.
• 1940: BUSINESS: MARKET SHARE BY COMPANY:

•1. RJR •2. ATC •3. Liggett & Myers •4. Brown & Williamson •5. Philip Morris (7%)

• 1940: BUSINESS: MARKET SHARE BY BRAND:

•1. Camel (RJR) (24%) •2. Lucky Strike (ATC) (22.6%) •3. Chesterfield (18%) •-- Combined 10 cent brands (12%) •4. Raleigh (B&W) (5.1%) •5. Old Gold (3%) •5. Pall Mall (PM) (2%)

• 1941: MEDIA: Reader's Digest publishes "Nicotine Knockout"
• 1941: HEALTH: Dr. Michael DeBakey, in an article, cites a correlation between the increased sale of tobacco and the increasing prevalence of lung cancer
• 1942: BUSINESS: Luckies uses the dye shortage to change its package from green to white. It's slogan: "Lucky Strike green has gone to war." Ad campaign coincides with US invasion of North Africa. Sales increase 38%.
• 1942: HEALTH: British researcher L.M. Johnston successfully substituted nicotine injections for smoking Johnston discusses aspects of addiction including tolerance, craving and withdrawal symptoms. He concludes: Clearly the essence of tobacco smoking is the tobacco and not the smoking. Satisfaction can be obtained from chewing it, from snuff taking, and from the administration of nicotine. The experiment is reported in the British medical journal Lancet.
•
• 1942: ARTS: FILM: Casablanca starring Humphrey Bogart, and Now Voyager with Bette Davis and Paul Henreid are released.
• 1942: GERMANY: The Federation of German Women launch a campaign against tobacco and alcohol abuse; restaurants and cafes are forbidden to sell cigarettes to women customers.
• 1942: ADVERTISING: Brown and Williamson claims that Kools would keep the head clear and/or give extra protection against colds.
• 1943: ADVERTISING: Philip Morris places an ad in the National Medical Journal which reads: "'Don't smoke' is advice hard for patients to swallow. May we suggest instead 'Smoking Philip Morris?' Tests showed three out of every four cases of smokers' cough cleared on changing to Philip Morris. Why not observe the results for yourself?"
• 1943-07: GERMANY: LEGISLATION: a law is passed forbidding tobacco use in public places by anyone under 18 years of age.
• 1945: GERMANY: Cigarettes are the unofficial currency. Value: 50 cents each
• 1946: A letter from a Lorillard chemist to its manufacturing committee states: "Certain scientists and medical authorities have claimed for many years that the use of tobacco contributes to cancer development in susceptible people. Just enough evidence has been presented to justify the possibility of such a presumption." (Maryland "Medicaid" Lawsuit 5/1/96)
• 1947: CULTURE: "Smoke! Smoke! Smoke! (That Cigarette)," Written by Merle Travis for Tex Williams, is national hit. The lyric "Puff, Puff, Puff, And if you smoke yourself to death" is later used in Cipollone case as defense that Rose Cipollone knew cigarettes were dangerous.
• 1947: LITIGATION: Grady Carter begins smoking Lucky Strikes
• 1948: HEALTH: The Journal of the American Medical Association argues, "more can be said in behalf of smoking as a form of escape from tension than against it . . . there does not seem to be any preponderance of evidence that would indicate the abolition of the use of tobacco as a substance contrary to the public health."
• 1948: HEALTH: Lung cancer has grown 5 times faster than other cancers since 1938; behind stomach cancer, it is now the most common form of the disease.
• 1949: LEGISLATION: Agricultural Adjustment Act is passed again, this time authorizing price supports.
• 1949: STATISTICS: 44-47% of all adult Americans smoke; over 50% of men, and about 33% of women.

Can't say smoking wasn't an issue as far back as 1900 for whatever reason.

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