Speaker 1: Uh, should really get that checked out. Cut me blowing
Speaker 1: my nose, but keep the yell, keep the yell. It
Speaker 1: sounds like a wounded elephant. I feel like a wounded elephant.
Speaker 1: A pollen counting Oregon right now is unbelievable. Um, I
Speaker 1: just went outside during the break between episode recordings and
Speaker 1: emptied a magazine from an A R fifteen into a tree.
Speaker 1: But it does not appear to have solved the problem.
Speaker 1: So now you gotta gotta get heavier than that many.
Speaker 1: I should have used the three O eight. You know,
Speaker 1: that's why they went. That's that's why the armies, the Cali.
Speaker 1: Yeah you want to up a tree? Yeah, you really
Speaker 1: want You really want to move close to that thirty
Speaker 1: caliber range exported to you by six point eight tree
Speaker 1: killer buster. Yeah, that's three thirty eight lap of a baby.
Speaker 1: When I was a young man, times like this, right
Speaker 1: around near the end of the year, my friends and
Speaker 1: I would go out into the woods and we would
Speaker 1: shoot down a tree in order to have a bonfire
Speaker 1: around it. And um, that doesn't really relate to the
Speaker 1: subject of the episode, but we often smoked cigarettes while
Speaker 1: doing it. Not interesting, It's kind of like shooting down
Speaker 1: a tree, isn't it, Because if you're active consumer base,
Speaker 1: it's a bit like shooting shooting down a tree. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you just have to hope that they can grow up
Speaker 1: faster than you can shoot them, which I mean, and
Speaker 1: it's also what they say about the human race, because
Speaker 1: one thing you got to give it to us is
Speaker 1: we bred slightly faster than cigarettes were able to kill us.
Speaker 1: Once again a win for humanity. Yeah, the Titanic dub
Speaker 1: so cigarettes did not get to have their real moment
Speaker 1: in the sun until a few years after the dissolution
Speaker 1: of American Too Bad Echo, which again the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: knocks it out in nineteen eleven. Probably somewhere under ten
Speaker 1: percent of a merit of smokers, and a much smaller
Speaker 1: portion of the US population um actually smoked cigarettes. So
Speaker 1: a pretty small fraction of the US adult population is
Speaker 1: smoking still, even even as successful as our old buddy
Speaker 1: Duke wasn't getting people to smoke um. But the thing
Speaker 1: that's going to actually start to change this and and
Speaker 1: really turn around cigarettes fortunes is the First World War. Now, James,
Speaker 1: you've been a trench. Yeah, I mean I've been in
Speaker 1: the company trenches, So that's non professional reasons. Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: they're trenches are not the cleanest places in the world,
Speaker 1: especially if it's raining and their muddy. H You wouldn't
Speaker 1: want to have a pipe in a trench necessarily, Like
Speaker 1: you could smoke a pipe in a trench, but stuff's
Speaker 1: gonna get in it. That's kind of gross, right, that's
Speaker 1: not ideal. And when you know, if you're doing trench stuff,
Speaker 1: you probably don't have time to sit down and really
Speaker 1: smoke a cigar. You know, they take a while. Cigarettes
Speaker 1: are depends on what rank you're at, doesn't it once
Speaker 1: you write, right, if you're sitting yeah, yeah, yeah, you
Speaker 1: get up to the field grade officers, they have plenty
Speaker 1: of time for cigars, and they have clean enough areas
Speaker 1: for cigarettes, for for pipes. But if you're a working
Speaker 1: man in the trenches, the best way you have to
Speaker 1: smoke in between getting murdered by German machine guns is
Speaker 1: a cigarette. And that's that's really what causes a shipload
Speaker 1: of people to start adopting cigarettes. That that's what actually
Speaker 1: makes it a mainstream thing. Is World War One. Now death,
Speaker 1: it does go well with death, James. Cigarette adoption had
Speaker 1: crept up only gradually prior to this and it had
Speaker 1: been met by this a really active anti smoking campaign
Speaker 1: the whole time. It's kind of noting that the first
Speaker 1: twenty years of of like the twentieth century, basically from
Speaker 1: like the late eighteen nineties to like nineteen seventeen nineteen eighteen,
Speaker 1: there's a very active anti smoking campaign in the United States,
Speaker 1: and it's powered by a lot of the same voices
Speaker 1: who are also fighting for prohibition. There were even bands
Speaker 1: on the public consumption of tobacco in some states. In
Speaker 1: nineteen ten, a doctor named Charles Peace founded the Non
Speaker 1: Smokers Protective League, advocating for a public smoking ban in
Speaker 1: America's largest city. In nineteen thirteen, The New York Times
Speaker 1: published an op ed opposing the establishment of smoking cars
Speaker 1: in the subway. Now, these people we now know are right,
Speaker 1: you know, like cigarettes bad, public smoking bad. But they're not.
Speaker 1: They're not. Again, there's not strong evidence that proves cigarettes
Speaker 1: cause cancer at this point. There's not really good scientific
Speaker 1: studies at this point. These people are just busybodies, right, yeah, yeah, right,
Speaker 1: they can be right for the wrong reasons. Well, what
Speaker 1: are the arguments that they Well, I don't like it, yeah,
Speaker 1: let me let me yet. Chief among the voices of
Speaker 1: small of non smokers is our old friend of the pod,
Speaker 1: John Harvey Kellogg, America's. Kellogg's complaint was quote, smoking has
Speaker 1: become so nearly universal among men, smokers are practically ignored
Speaker 1: their rights trampled upon. Now that that means that, like,
Speaker 1: by being around cigarette smoke, you're having your rights trampled upon.
Speaker 1: And yes, we now know second hand smoke is seriously
Speaker 1: bad for you at the time we did it. And also,
Speaker 1: let's be honest here nineteen seventeen, walking around a city
Speaker 1: that's still filled with horseshit and now leaded gasoline fumes
Speaker 1: from all of the cars rolling around and industrial smoke
Speaker 1: from all of the different fucking coal factories and stuff.
Speaker 1: Cigarettes are not your number one health risk, Yeah, the
Speaker 1: end of the thing. Number one trampling on your right side. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just not the biggest problem. Look, John Harvey Kellogg,
Speaker 1: don't give him credit. Yeah, do not give him credit
Speaker 1: for being on the right side of history with this one. Um,
Speaker 1: so non smokers. Also, it was not again because there's
Speaker 1: not greats there are some of these people do are
Speaker 1: are ahead of their time and are saying like, hey,
Speaker 1: this stuff is has to be bad for you, and
Speaker 1: we're going to figure out like the way in which
Speaker 1: it's killing people later. A lot of them are just
Speaker 1: angry because they think it's gross, and a huge chunk
Speaker 1: of them are angry because cigarettes are popular with women,
Speaker 1: right because women start smoking. That's a big part of
Speaker 1: the anti smoking campaign. In nineteen o four, New York
Speaker 1: State passes a law that makes it a crime for
Speaker 1: women to quote endanger the morals of children by smoking
Speaker 1: in their presence. A woman named Jenny Lasher was charged
Speaker 1: and sentenced to jail for violating it. In nineteen o eight,
Speaker 1: New York City aldermen passed an ordinance restricting public smoking
Speaker 1: by women. From the Washington Post quote. The Sullivan Ordinance
Speaker 1: made it illegal for restaurant and bar owners to permit
Speaker 1: women to smoke in their establishments. The stated rationale from
Speaker 1: bowty moralist and political chieftain Tim Sullivan was that proper
Speaker 1: ladies were offended by women smoking, and it certainly wasn't
Speaker 1: any it's kind of attempt by a man to control
Speaker 1: women's behavior. Despite the ordinance of short duration, it lasted
Speaker 1: only two weeks, the sentiment underlying it was held by
Speaker 1: others as well. Women smoking was viewed by many as taboo,
Speaker 1: associated with what Amanda Amos and Margarita Haglund have termed
Speaker 1: lucian libidinous moral behavior. So it is a good band name,
Speaker 1: and it's it's interesting. One of the things that cigarettes
Speaker 1: do is they make it. They are a big part
Speaker 1: of why it starts to become okay for men and
Speaker 1: women to socialize together who are unmarried, right in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways. So one of the things that is
Speaker 1: common prior to cigarettes becoming mainstream, after you have like
Speaker 1: a big dinner, if you if you have a fancy potty,
Speaker 1: then after dinner, the men will go to smoke cigars
Speaker 1: and the women will, you know, go clean up or something.
Speaker 1: And increasingly in the early twenties, what starts, or in
Speaker 1: the early nineteen nine hundreds, what starts to happen is
Speaker 1: after dinner everybody has a cigarette. And women didn't smoke cigars,
Speaker 1: but cigarettes are new, and so it's not really that
Speaker 1: weird to a lot of modern people that women would
Speaker 1: smoke them. And also there's not women's cigarettes, so everyone's
Speaker 1: smoking the same cigarettes, and increasingly they start doing it
Speaker 1: in the same places together, unmarried men and women just
Speaker 1: hanging out and having a smoke and talking. This is
Speaker 1: a big part of this is kind of in the
Speaker 1: background of the of the suffrage movement, but it like
Speaker 1: cigarettes do play a significant role in the increasing acceptance
Speaker 1: of social equality for women because men and women spend
Speaker 1: time together to smoke. Yeah, it makes not a non factor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: definite time period when there's generally is changing gender roles,
Speaker 1: right with women working in the First World War, and like,
Speaker 1: well that's yeah, that's another part of it, right, is
Speaker 1: like women are taking on men's jobs, why wouldn't they
Speaker 1: be able to smoke? And you know, it's a it's
Speaker 1: a whole thing. So smokers also started to organize to
Speaker 1: establish more public smoking places. Tobacco dealers would often back
Speaker 1: and on local efforts to lobby for smoking cars on
Speaker 1: trains or to allow the smoking of cigarettes on the
Speaker 1: rear platform of street cars. Within the military, there were
Speaker 1: strenuous debates as to whether or not tobacco should be
Speaker 1: legal for soldiers. In nineteen o seven, the Surgeon General
Speaker 1: of the Navy had recommended that sailors under twenty one
Speaker 1: be banned from smoking cigarettes. This was outrageous to the
Speaker 1: actual men of the Navy, and one enlisted man wrote
Speaker 1: this in response. If this cigarette recommendation has made the
Speaker 1: rule and such a thing as ordered, it's gonna put
Speaker 1: all us young fellows who like them on the beam.
Speaker 1: It's all right to talk about your cigars and your pipes,
Speaker 1: but cigarettes are cigarettes. And when and when you once
Speaker 1: get to liking the little sticks, there's nothing that can
Speaker 1: take their place, then don't forget that. Life on the
Speaker 1: ocean with none of your women, folks, your girlfriends around
Speaker 1: to break the monotony is a lot different from life ashore.
Speaker 1: And I tell you those dreamsticks help you pass away
Speaker 1: many and dreary and homestick our just a bunch of
Speaker 1: navy boys, no women around, sucking down dreamsticks. Dream stakes. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Direct quote from Jerbine's speech pardnering people with marijuana for dreamsticks.
Speaker 1: In an unrelated note, I saw a picture of Joe
Speaker 1: Biden with a quantum computer the other day and it
Speaker 1: just struck me as the most wrong thing. It's like
Speaker 1: looking at Winston Churchill with a game boy, Like, No,
Speaker 1: those aren't supposed to be in the same photograph. Joe
Speaker 1: Biden should never have lived to see a quantum computer,
Speaker 1: like seeing a diplodocus tamagotchi hanging out. Yeah, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: not okay, that's not okay. Um. So opposition to cigarettes
Speaker 1: in the military disappeared overnight once the United States got
Speaker 1: into World War One. Much of this had to do
Speaker 1: with black Jack Pershing, the leader of the American Expeditionary Force, who,
Speaker 1: when asked what Americans could do to support their soldiers
Speaker 1: going overseas, gave this reply. You asked me what we
Speaker 1: need to win this war, I answered, tobacco as much
Speaker 1: as bullets. Great it is. Yeah, yeah, we've spoken about
Speaker 1: this before. But the universal true of conflict journalism. If
Speaker 1: you need something you're not sure that someone's gonna give
Speaker 1: it to you, you can probably get it by giving
Speaker 1: someone enough cigarettes. I keep packs on me every time
Speaker 1: I'm anywhere near because, like, and it's not always just
Speaker 1: getting something. Some of that is like you meet people
Speaker 1: and their stand offish because like, I don't know, they're
Speaker 1: fucking soldiers in a war zone whose daily life involves
Speaker 1: dealing with horrible trauma, and they don't know you. And
Speaker 1: then you like bust out some Marboroughs and you sit
Speaker 1: and smoke for like twenty minutes together, and then they
Speaker 1: just start talking you know, like that's a thing. They're useful,
Speaker 1: they're they're a great tool for journalism. Well, they're also
Speaker 1: in terms of how they're being used. That's not unhealthy
Speaker 1: by the military because cigarettes spoilers make you worse at
Speaker 1: everything that is important for soldiers, almost everything. Right, today,
Speaker 1: US soldiers who smoke score an average of thirty five
Speaker 1: points lower on PT tests. Cigarette smoking harms your night vision,
Speaker 1: like it's bad for your performance. Yes, they are bad
Speaker 1: for your performance in combat. In addition to like people
Speaker 1: get shot smoking cigarettes cherries. Right, But one thing they
Speaker 1: do is they are a stress reliever. And we can
Speaker 1: debate in the long term it's not a great coping strategy,
Speaker 1: but if your daily job is to get shot at repeatedly,
Speaker 1: you don't care about the long term. You just would
Speaker 1: like a moment where things feel okay. Yeah, there is
Speaker 1: not a long term for a lot of people. No, no,
Speaker 1: especially not. And the other thing that they do is,
Speaker 1: as we just talked about, people bond while smoking. It's
Speaker 1: a part of why men and women. It's a way
Speaker 1: in which men and women start to bond socially in
Speaker 1: a way they had not in a long time in
Speaker 1: Western society and soldiers in the trenches, bond sharing smokes.
Speaker 1: It is a thing that you do with each other,
Speaker 1: and you can't Number one, this is a thing I
Speaker 1: don't think the tobacco industry could have anticipated because it's
Speaker 1: just a very human thing. And it's also you can't
Speaker 1: fight this like, there's not there's no nothing to do
Speaker 1: about it. It's just a thing that people have adopted
Speaker 1: for themselves in a difficult time. Um. And so this
Speaker 1: is ah, this is a problem for the anti smoking people. Um.
Speaker 1: Obviously smoking again very bad, uh for everything else that
Speaker 1: makes you be a soldier. But soldiers are not thinking
Speaker 1: about that in the times when they're smoking them. Uh.
Speaker 1: And in a lot of military planners cases like they're
Speaker 1: also it's hard to argue even though you've got people
Speaker 1: who are in the medical profession for the military being
Speaker 1: like these probably aren't good for people. It's hard to
Speaker 1: argue that like a guy who you're asking to run
Speaker 1: in a machine gun nest doesn't deserve to have like
Speaker 1: a cigarette. Yeah. Um, And you know, if you know America,
Speaker 1: you know that love for our military is basically the
Speaker 1: not so secret control level lever for the American mind.
Speaker 1: So cigarettes had been controversial prior to World War One,
Speaker 1: but once we start sending men in the field and
Speaker 1: pershings like we need cigarettes. Organizations that had previously lobbied
Speaker 1: nationwide for smoking, bands like the y m c A
Speaker 1: prior to World War One. The y m c A
Speaker 1: is a massive part of trying to ban public smoking.
Speaker 1: As soon as the war starts, they start shipping palettes
Speaker 1: of cigarettes battle fields. It's it's great truth. For so
Speaker 1: long you can just put the put this support. The
Speaker 1: troops stank on anything, and people will love it. Here.
Speaker 1: It's it's interesting. In the cigarette century, Alan Brandt writes,
Speaker 1: volunteers organized smoke funds to collect donations to assure that
Speaker 1: the troops had adequate supplies of cigarettes. The Sun Fund
Speaker 1: amassed a hundred and thirty seven million cigarettes in a
Speaker 1: two month period. Tobacco may not be a necessity of
Speaker 1: life in the ordinary sense of the term, explained The
Speaker 1: New York Times, but it certainly lightens the inevitable hardships
Speaker 1: of war as nothing else can do. The National Cigarette
Speaker 1: Service Committee collected the names of soldiers without families to
Speaker 1: make sure they received cigarettes. Volunteers prepared packages for shipment
Speaker 1: to the troops under the auspices of groups such as
Speaker 1: the Army Girls Transport Tobacco Fund. Just that's sweet, Um, yeah, amazing.
Speaker 1: I'm sure these people are like, we're also like dying
Speaker 1: of trench foot and would have really appreciated like a
Speaker 1: new pair of songs. Yes, socks probably also would have
Speaker 1: gone over well yeah, I don't know. I mean, I
Speaker 1: assume the military was already attempting to provide those things,
Speaker 1: Like it is knew that you would provide cigarettes as
Speaker 1: the military, so in the early days of the war, uh,
Speaker 1: the US war effort. I should say, the fact that
Speaker 1: most aid organizations in Europe provided cigarettes to soldiers for
Speaker 1: a fee, often substantial, regularly made the news back home.
Speaker 1: Soldiers are like, we're paying as much for a cigarette
Speaker 1: at the front as we have to pay back at home,
Speaker 1: Like that's kind of fucked up. Now, donated cigarettes were
Speaker 1: only able to solve a small portion of this problem.
Speaker 1: D nine million cigarettes is not a lot, um, if
Speaker 1: you if you know anything about cigarettes, that's not very many.
Speaker 1: Sounds like a lot. It is not. Um. A fucking
Speaker 1: army in the field will smoke through a hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty nine million cigarettes quicker than they'll go through that
Speaker 1: many bullets uh donated cigarettes only yet solved a small
Speaker 1: number of the problems, So the War Department had to
Speaker 1: make the decision to issue tobacco rations to soldiers starting
Speaker 1: in May of nineteen eighteen. The New York Times wrote
Speaker 1: of the decision, quote, a wave of joy swept through
Speaker 1: the American army today. Uh So it war fever means
Speaker 1: a temporary end to the anti smoking movement. Many men
Speaker 1: who had hated cigarettes prior to the war had become addicts.
Speaker 1: While overseas, right they they you know, they're they're they're
Speaker 1: big hygiene guys before and then they get shot at
Speaker 1: and they have a smoke in the fucking trench with
Speaker 1: their buddy, and then you know, for the rest of
Speaker 1: their lives they think kindly of cigarettes. Um. And also
Speaker 1: the fact that the cigarette is now associated with a
Speaker 1: hard bitten trench fighter means that you can't attack the
Speaker 1: moral character of smokers. The anti smoking women. They're only
Speaker 1: smoked by criminals and and and not white people, right,
Speaker 1: and now they're like, they're they're part of the icon
Speaker 1: of the heroic soldier. Right. So when in nineteen hundred, again,
Speaker 1: barely five percent of the country smoked or like nineteen
Speaker 1: o four something like that. By nineteen forty and again sorry,
Speaker 1: but in like the start of the nineteen hundreds, about
Speaker 1: five percent of the country who smokes tobacco smokes. Right,
Speaker 1: by nineteen forty of the United States adult population smokes
Speaker 1: on a daily base. Yeah, it is a huge increase. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is crazy. Average per consumer consumption escalated to In
Speaker 1: nineteen hundred, Americans consumed about fifty four cigarettes per person
Speaker 1: per year. Right, that's the average for the whole population.
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty three, Americans consume forty three hundred cigarettes
Speaker 1: perch is not expecting that that is so many cigarettes.
Speaker 1: Forty three hundred Jesus Christ, that's quite a few cigarettes. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're ready opting the intake Pokemon car collections now, oh yeah, no, no,
Speaker 1: a lot of kids are getting a lot of baseball cards. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, those numbers are drive driven up by all
Speaker 1: of the eleven year old smoking twelve thousand cigarettes cigarettes
Speaker 1: at once, just burning through an entire carton in a day.
Speaker 1: Uh So, this new wave of smokers brought with it
Speaker 1: changes in American smoking habits, largely driven by R. J. Reynolds,
Speaker 1: President of the Reynolds Tobacco Company. Richard Joshua Reynolds had
Speaker 1: been born on July eighteen fifty in Patrick County, Virginia.
Speaker 1: His father was a tobacco farmer, and as a young man,
Speaker 1: Reynolds worked for his dad's plantation, which absolutely included a
Speaker 1: funckload of enslaved people. R J was just fifteen when
Speaker 1: the Civil War ended, bringing with it the first tiny
Speaker 1: surgeon cigarette usage. He quickly fell in love with the things,
Speaker 1: and he turned his father's company into an industry leading producer.
Speaker 1: And R. J. Reynolds is different from Duke and that
Speaker 1: Duke when he smoked smoked cigars. Right. He wants to
Speaker 1: sell cigarettes. He thinks they're a good business. He doesn't
Speaker 1: understand them, right. He understands how to get people to
Speaker 1: want to buy something. He's a good marketer. He doesn't
Speaker 1: really get what people like in a cigarette. There is
Speaker 1: nothing that R. J. Reynolds loves more than cigarettes. This
Speaker 1: man like you have never loved a human being in
Speaker 1: your life the way this man loves the concept of
Speaker 1: a cigarette. Uh he is. He is such a cigarette
Speaker 1: lover that he attempts to avoid getting into Duke's tobacco trust. Right,
Speaker 1: He has his own way he wants to do things.
Speaker 1: He doesn't want to get involved in this trust. He
Speaker 1: wants to sell his cigarettes the way he wants to um.
Speaker 1: He actually gets forced by Duke into the trust because
Speaker 1: Duke uses shady methods to buy two thirds of Reynolds
Speaker 1: tobacco stock to force the company into American Tobacco. And
Speaker 1: despite this, R. J. Reynolds refuses to work with Duke,
Speaker 1: and he even secretly helps the US government build an
Speaker 1: antitrust case against American Tobacco. When the Supreme Court broke
Speaker 1: the trust. Reynolds had one goal to funck over buck
Speaker 1: Duke in his company. In nineteen thirteen, he created a
Speaker 1: new cigarette which featured a mix of American and Turkish
Speaker 1: tobacco to create a blended cigarette. He called this new
Speaker 1: cigarette the Camel. Oh there it is camel cigarettes. Why
Speaker 1: did he choose camel because it's Turkish tobacco. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: Turkey camels, two things that are famous, constantly associated with
Speaker 1: each other. Just imagine how it's better be if he
Speaker 1: just called it the Turkey the Turkey right, His angry
Speaker 1: Turkish nationalists love love the fact of those two things
Speaker 1: that they sound the same I mean he should have
Speaker 1: called it the Greek and then had just a drawing
Speaker 1: of the Anatolian Peninsula on it. They'd be banned there
Speaker 1: to this day. It would have been more war than
Speaker 1: twenty century Europe. I'm gonna quote now from the cigarette century.
Speaker 1: To help distinguish it from its competition, Reynolds offered no promotions.
Speaker 1: Smokers realized that the value was in the cigarettes, and
Speaker 1: do not expect promotions or coupons, he explained. Against Duke's
Speaker 1: earlier advertising devoted to these now traditional promotional devices, Reynolds
Speaker 1: went modern. Reynolds committed unprecedented advertising money to promote this
Speaker 1: single product, creating a national campaign to make the camel
Speaker 1: cigarette a truly national brand. In nineteen fourteen, newspapers throughout
Speaker 1: the country ran add several days in succession that announced simply,
Speaker 1: the camels are coming. They were followed by a second
Speaker 1: wave of ads proclaiming tomorrow there will be more in
Speaker 1: this town than all of Asia and Africa combined. Creating
Speaker 1: such expectations and their fulfillment would become a central technique
Speaker 1: of modern consumer advertising. The third ad portraying the camel
Speaker 1: cigarette package read camel cigarettes are here. This advertising campaign,
Speaker 1: and here the term campaign appropriately reflects the strategic technique
Speaker 1: met with unprecedented success. Look at that. Yeahah, smart man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like an iconic brand, Okay, cigarettes, Like I know,
Speaker 1: there are many brands that seem to be as icon
Speaker 1: a cigarette brands, and it's global and yeah, and this
Speaker 1: is the start of that part of it, right, because
Speaker 1: cigarettes have started to go viral in this but not
Speaker 1: necessarily on a brand basis. Right, you do have kind
Speaker 1: of some of these early brands, but they all like
Speaker 1: every tobacco company has a bunch of different brands and
Speaker 1: they sell different ones of different regions. Reynolds is the
Speaker 1: first guy to be like, no, not only do I
Speaker 1: want my company to be the biggest, I want this
Speaker 1: one specific kind of cigarette to be everywhere. So when
Speaker 1: World War One ended, Campbell accounted for more than thirty
Speaker 1: pc of the U. S. Cigarette market. Campbell's came into
Speaker 1: vogue just as a new generation of female smokers came
Speaker 1: onto the scene. These women had traditionally taken male job
Speaker 1: had taken traditionally male jobs from men who had left
Speaker 1: to fight, and after helping to save the U. S. Economy,
Speaker 1: they didn't take well to the argument that them enjoying
Speaker 1: a smoke with some sort of sin against femininity from
Speaker 1: the Washington Post. Cigarette advertising companies, which at the time
Speaker 1: primarily employed Mabel advertising executives, quickly co opted the ideas
Speaker 1: of independence that women began to assert at the polls
Speaker 1: and in the workplace. They targeted women, conveying the notions
Speaker 1: that women who smoked were independent, attractive, and even athletic.
Speaker 1: Lucky Strikes nine marketing pitch to women told them to
Speaker 1: reach for our lucky instead of a suite. The message
Speaker 1: smoke and you'll be thin. Oh great, there is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty fun Yeah minded how long that would take?
Speaker 1: And this is number one. One thing that starts to
Speaker 1: happen in this is a whole new generation of extremely
Speaker 1: skinny female models starts to become popular because of this
Speaker 1: Lucky Strike ad campaign they helped to create. Like that
Speaker 1: that great thing, that whole trend. Yeah image. Now this
Speaker 1: there's a backlash to this, and there's kind of a
Speaker 1: war between cigarettes and the candy industry. Um, and it's
Speaker 1: it's very funny that one of the cigarettes that will
Speaker 1: come on the market at this time, I think it
Speaker 1: might be Marlborough's. Uh, they're advertising campaign is to like
Speaker 1: push back at cammebll by being like, no, cigarettes and
Speaker 1: candy are both good for you. You You should have your
Speaker 1: cigarette and your chocolate. They're a healthy treat. But no,
Speaker 1: the candy industry has to be like the funk are
Speaker 1: you saying about people not eating candy? Come on, we're
Speaker 1: not trying to shoot on cigarettes here too. Nice just
Speaker 1: when they start making candy cigarettes and well, yeah, this
Speaker 1: is that in this period. One of the interesting things
Speaker 1: about candy cigarettes when they first get made, they're all
Speaker 1: made with the brands of real cigarettes. So there will
Speaker 1: be Camels now not legally, they're all illegal. They're all
Speaker 1: candy companies using a brand illegally. The cigarette industry makes
Speaker 1: a concerted decision to never pursue charges over it, to
Speaker 1: never go after them, because they're like, well, if kids
Speaker 1: get used to picking up a pack of Camels, that's
Speaker 1: a win for us. Yeah, Like, there's no downside to
Speaker 1: us letting them do this. Yeah, it's a wind for everyone. Great. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: one thing that does happen in the post war period
Speaker 1: is that female smokers are an easier target for anti
Speaker 1: smoking advocates than soldiers, who are you know, heroic and stuff.
Speaker 1: When the Eighteenth Amendment gets past banning the sale of alcohol,
Speaker 1: moral crusaders like evangelist Billy Sunday turned their attention to tobacco,
Speaker 1: saying in one speech, prohibition is one now for tobacco.
Speaker 1: The Women's Christian Temperance Union and SHOED issued a pamphlet
Speaker 1: titled Smoking Next. The first success in this wave of
Speaker 1: the anti smoking movement came in Utah, which banned the sale,
Speaker 1: giving away, or other exchange of cigarettes. The bill's advocates
Speaker 1: included the w C t U and and the Mormon Church,
Speaker 1: both of which emphasized the moral risks of letting women
Speaker 1: be seen smoking. Senator Edward Southwick, who wrote the bill,
Speaker 1: quoted US Surgeon General Hugh Cumming, which was his real name,
Speaker 1: as saying, if American women generally contract the habit as
Speaker 1: reports now indicate they are doing, the entire American nation
Speaker 1: will suffer. The physical tone of the whole nation will
Speaker 1: be lowered. This is one of the most evil influences
Speaker 1: in American life today. The habit harms a woman more
Speaker 1: than it as a man. Great, thanks you yeah. Intellects
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, real real smart guy, real comer. Hugh Yeah,
Speaker 1: there were the names he could have been cursed with,
Speaker 1: which could have been his first name, could have been worse.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, but we but you know what will
Speaker 1: make you come, James, Uh, please in lighten me the
Speaker 1: sponsors of our podcasts, not their products, which are a
Speaker 1: sexual but the actual people who run in a stock
Speaker 1: in the companies. Anytime you ask for it, that's good
Speaker 1: to know. That's that's a promise. Yeah, I don't play
Speaker 1: that in the old context. But ah, we're back. We're
Speaker 1: talking about come. You know, every time I talk about
Speaker 1: come on this show, somebody gets up in the subreddit
Speaker 1: and they're like, I wish they wouldn't make juvenile jokes aboutcome.
Speaker 1: It's not very funny. It's exactly be funny to make. Yeah. Look,
Speaker 1: I am never going to stop making cup jokes aboutcome,
Speaker 1: and I'm never gonna stop telling people that when Mitch
Speaker 1: McConnell comes, all that exits his penis is a mix
Speaker 1: of dry scabs and spider legs. That that well, no juvenile,
Speaker 1: is still funny. It is. It's funny and true. It's
Speaker 1: it's actually funny. Yeah, it's true, and he can suss over.
Speaker 1: We'll take him to court. Shows show us the evidence, Mitch, Yeah,
Speaker 1: show us the evidence, Mitch, show us the evidence that
Speaker 1: when you come the dry scabs exiting year Urethra don't
Speaker 1: make a sound exactly like crabs scuttling on a soap
Speaker 1: stone bed. Prove it to me. Prove it to me, Mitch.
Speaker 1: I'm now physically unwell. Would you like a cigarette? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think I've been traumatized and level of this girl.
Speaker 1: I'd like to shorten my life. Yes, well, why don't
Speaker 1: you reach for a lucky instead of a suite? That
Speaker 1: will help these day maintain my good as physique. So
Speaker 1: as we've just come back, the Surgeon General has been like,
Speaker 1: this is going to lower the moral tone of women.
Speaker 1: And again, I just so that I'm not mistaken. Cigarettes
Speaker 1: are bad. Don't smoke them. These people are technically in
Speaker 1: the right, but they're in the right for the wrong
Speaker 1: reasons usually, so fuck them. Um. I'm gonna quote again
Speaker 1: from Alan Brandt here, another supporter of the legislation, noted
Speaker 1: that the fingers of our girls are being varnished with
Speaker 1: the stains of those harmful little instruments of destruction, just
Speaker 1: as earlier opponents of the cigarette had done. Senator Southwick
Speaker 1: argued that the use of the cigarette violated the liberties
Speaker 1: of non smokers, which is fair, offended moral sensibilities, which
Speaker 1: is unfair, and polluted public space, which is we'll call
Speaker 1: that one mixed. We cannot bring our wives and daughters
Speaker 1: to the city, he wrote, and cannot come along without
Speaker 1: encountering tobacco smoke everywhere. Is it that saturates our clothing
Speaker 1: and nauseates us personal liberty? Ours is as inviolate or
Speaker 1: as or should be as theirs? Amazing? Like yeah, when
Speaker 1: like industry is ripping children's arms off that body. Yeah no,
Speaker 1: And people are just burning pure petroleum jelly in the
Speaker 1: back of a fucking model t Yeah yeah, just pouring
Speaker 1: some lead into the reserve lead tank. Yeah again, fucking
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty two. Your your worst encounter is not going
Speaker 1: to be with tobacco smoke in the streets of the city.
Speaker 1: The call burning colonialism. Factory isn't a problem. It's women
Speaker 1: smoking we need to worry about. Now. By nine sixteen
Speaker 1: states had banned to restricted cigarette sales and promotion, but
Speaker 1: none of these restrictions lasted long. The disaster that was
Speaker 1: prohibition and the growing number of tobacco addicts made the
Speaker 1: anti smoking cause untenable. A chief issue with the fight
Speaker 1: to restrict smoking was the fact that it rested mostly
Speaker 1: on moral panic grounds. Right again, if all of these
Speaker 1: people are saying smoking is horrible for your health, and
Speaker 1: sure we shouldn't be doing it, that's one thing. But
Speaker 1: a lot of them are being like, well, women shouldn't
Speaker 1: be smoking. It's bad for kids to see it. It's
Speaker 1: gonna stay in their hands. They don't have at this point,
Speaker 1: they don't have widely agreed upon medical evidence that smoking
Speaker 1: is bad for you, And in fact, a lot of
Speaker 1: doctors will argue that smoking is if not healthy, then
Speaker 1: not a serious harm. It was not as common in
Speaker 1: this period for to have doctors be like, smoking clear
Speaker 1: as your lungs, But most of them tended to be like, well,
Speaker 1: it's not that bad for you, right, It's you know,
Speaker 1: it's like it's like it is like eating candy, right,
Speaker 1: That's that's what They's not like eating candy. Please. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying that someone's gonna get really angry at me.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying, if you're a doctor in the twenties,
Speaker 1: odds are rather than saying smoking is bad for you,
Speaker 1: saying like, well, it's probably okay to have the occasional
Speaker 1: cigarette as part of a balanced diet or whatever you know. Right,
Speaker 1: and again, doctors are heavily debating as the thirties dawn
Speaker 1: whether or not smoking causes cancer. There were studies by
Speaker 1: this point that showed a correlation between self reported smoking
Speaker 1: habits and lung cancer, and by the nineteen twenties rates
Speaker 1: of lung cancer had started to soar. Given all of this,
Speaker 1: it might seem easy to of a link between cigarettes
Speaker 1: and lung cancer, but it's not all. All you've got
Speaker 1: in the twenties is that there's a correlation between the two.
Speaker 1: But obviously cigarettes aren't the only thing that's been introduced
Speaker 1: to modern life in in the early part of the
Speaker 1: twentieth century. Right, there's cars Now Suddenly people are getting
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of different medications that didn't used to exist.
Speaker 1: All sorts of ship is around that just wasn't before.
Speaker 1: So how do you know, how do you know think
Speaker 1: about this? How can you prove if you're just a
Speaker 1: dude and nineteen twenty two, that the thing causing lung
Speaker 1: cancer and your friends is the cigarette and not the
Speaker 1: car or the fucking fluorescent light bulbs, right, like, you
Speaker 1: don't know, there's not there's not evidence at this point
Speaker 1: you know of this industrial identity, And again, yeah, a
Speaker 1: lot has changed really quickly. Um, and there's actually there's
Speaker 1: some surprisingly logical reasons to question the early science. One
Speaker 1: doctor in critic over fears of cigarette use, one of
Speaker 1: the guys who's arguing against the people saying that lung
Speaker 1: cancer and smoking are correlated. One of the things he
Speaker 1: says is that, like, well, when we get lung cancer patients,
Speaker 1: they have a lung and one they have a tumor
Speaker 1: and one lung or the other. Very few of them
Speaker 1: have tumors in both lungs. But when you smoke, the
Speaker 1: smoke is drawn into both lungs equally. So if smoking
Speaker 1: is causing lung cancer, why wouldn't it be causing it
Speaker 1: in both lungs at the same time. Obviously we know
Speaker 1: that just that's just the way cancer works, right, Like,
Speaker 1: but again, based on the knowledge at the time, that's
Speaker 1: not a bad point to make, right, he's wrong, But
Speaker 1: you can see how a person who is not like
Speaker 1: in the pocket of big tobacco could make that mistake. Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: his reasoning is not inherently unsound. Right, he's wrong, but
Speaker 1: but not because he's like again, later all the scientists
Speaker 1: on the other side of this will be doing something
Speaker 1: fundamentally dishonest. These are just people trying to understand the
Speaker 1: human body in a period in which we don't have
Speaker 1: that much information about it. Um Other scientists would argue
Speaker 1: that the rise in lung cancer was attributed to the
Speaker 1: fact that life expectancy had risen a lot in the
Speaker 1: first quarter of the twentieth century. People were getting more
Speaker 1: weird cancers, they argued, because people were living longer. Maybe
Speaker 1: lung cancer has always been normal once you hit a
Speaker 1: certain age, and we just didn't have that many people
Speaker 1: reaching it. You know, again, these are not inherently illogical arguments. Now.
Speaker 1: There were, however, doctors early on who were who figured
Speaker 1: out what was happening, who knew and who put together
Speaker 1: that there was a link between smoking and lung cancer,
Speaker 1: But it took data a long time to catch up
Speaker 1: with that. For one thing, epidemiology is in its infancy
Speaker 1: in this period of time, the first small batch studies,
Speaker 1: and by the late twenties we have studies that show
Speaker 1: a correlation between smoking and lung cancer, but there's no
Speaker 1: control group, so all they show it, So there's no
Speaker 1: group of people who don't smoke to see what their
Speaker 1: lung cancer rates are, because that's not a normal part
Speaker 1: of medical science. Yet they're starting to do that. They're
Speaker 1: figuring out like, oh, yeah, you should have fucking control
Speaker 1: groups in your medical studies. But it's not the thing
Speaker 1: that you just do de rigor. At this point in time,
Speaker 1: it becomes it partly partly as a result of this research,
Speaker 1: and in fact there's a night teen twenty article in
Speaker 1: the New England Journal of Medicine in which this that
Speaker 1: points out, like um, it shows a link between smoking
Speaker 1: and lung cancer. But it also points out that their
Speaker 1: study and other similar studies are of little value without
Speaker 1: similar studies on individuals without cancer without control groups. Right.
Speaker 1: So part of why that becomes more common in this
Speaker 1: period is scientists trying to figure out if there's a
Speaker 1: link between smoking and lung cancer. The scientists who write
Speaker 1: that nine study, Herbert Lombard and parl During, carried out
Speaker 1: their own small two persons study with a control group,
Speaker 1: and this is the first good quality study we have
Speaker 1: that shows lung cancer. Is it shows a bunch of things.
Speaker 1: Number One, I shouldn't say shows It suggests a bunch
Speaker 1: of things. Number One, it suggests that lung cancer is
Speaker 1: not a contagious disease, which how would you have known that?
Speaker 1: You know, without psich you don't know that people aren't
Speaker 1: giving it to each other. Right, But it's not some
Speaker 1: weird thing that people got when they started walking in
Speaker 1: the Amazon or whatever. Right, how would you know? Um,
Speaker 1: they know, they find they or at least the data
Speaker 1: suggests that it's. Also there's not a correlation between lung
Speaker 1: cancer and low quality housing, which was another thing people
Speaker 1: didn't know. It's something about the way we insulate our homes,
Speaker 1: you know. Uh. They also find out that it's not
Speaker 1: associated with constipation, which was a thing that some doctor
Speaker 1: And again we can laugh about that, but how would
Speaker 1: you know if you didn't do the study? Um? One
Speaker 1: of the primary like damning thing the study finds is
Speaker 1: that self reported heavy smokers are twenty seven percent likelier
Speaker 1: to get lung cancer. This is the first scientifically solid
Speaker 1: evidence linking cigarettes to lung cancer. Now, two person study
Speaker 1: with a two person control group. That's not definitive, Right,
Speaker 1: that's enough to justify further research. Sure, but that's not
Speaker 1: a huge study. The nineteen thirties are where we're going
Speaker 1: to see the first attempts on a large scale to
Speaker 1: document the relationship between cigarettes and cancer. The impetus to this,
Speaker 1: the impetus for this research actually comes from one of
Speaker 1: the few industries that can rifle big tobacco for sheer evil,
Speaker 1: the insurance industry. They are the people who are going
Speaker 1: to bring because they see this early research in like,
Speaker 1: wait a second, we're paying a shipload of money out
Speaker 1: on all these fuckers die in a lung cancer. If
Speaker 1: cigarettes cause it, we need to be charging people more
Speaker 1: if they smoke, right, like, they're doing it for evil reasons,
Speaker 1: but it is important research exactly. So. One of the
Speaker 1: chief drivers of this is a guy named Frederick Hoffman,
Speaker 1: who is a student a statician at Prudential, and Hoffman
Speaker 1: notices in nineteen thirty one that a lot of fucking
Speaker 1: life insurance policies are being filled for dead lung cancer patients.
Speaker 1: If smoking was the cause, then again, you're gonna need
Speaker 1: to restructure the way premiums work. A lot of money
Speaker 1: is at stake, which is obviously what interest Prudential. They
Speaker 1: don't care about the cost of human life. So the
Speaker 1: thing that Hoffman notices is that in nineteen fifteen, the
Speaker 1: lung cancer rate stands at about point seven people per
Speaker 1: thousand people, right about point seven people per every thousand
Speaker 1: and the population are likely to get lung cancer. By
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty, it's risen to one point one per thousand.
Speaker 1: It's one point six per thousand by nineteen twenty four,
Speaker 1: and one point nine per thousand by nineteen twenty eight.
Speaker 1: That means in thirteen years the rate of lung cancer
Speaker 1: has nearly tripled. Now Hoffman is not bound by the
Speaker 1: ethical constraints of a doctor, right, he doesn't have to
Speaker 1: wait until he has really good data to be like
Speaker 1: smoking causes lung cancer. He sees this, he puts two
Speaker 1: and two together, and he becomes the first prominent pig
Speaker 1: figure to publish a claim that tobacco uses associated with
Speaker 1: a heightened rate of cancer and early death. And he's
Speaker 1: doing it again to Warren insurance companies. A new wave
Speaker 1: of studies follows, and as the nineteen thirties gives away
Speaker 1: to the forties, the tobacco industry keeps a worried, watchful
Speaker 1: eye on this emerging science. They also start exploding their
Speaker 1: advertising budgets in order to kind of make up for
Speaker 1: the increasing talk in the background about maybe cigarettes aren't
Speaker 1: so great to look for us. In nineteen eleven, prior
Speaker 1: to the bust of the American Tobacco Trust, the entire
Speaker 1: cigarette industry profited about thirteen million dollars a year. By
Speaker 1: nineteen eighteen, the big five tobacco companies were spending more
Speaker 1: than thirteen million dollars every year justin ads. In doing so,
Speaker 1: they helped create the very language of American culture. And
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quote from a write up in the Journal
Speaker 1: of Marketing Theory and Practice by Richard Poley. Cigarette sellers
Speaker 1: were among the most enthusiastic pioneers in the use of
Speaker 1: network broadcasting for coast to coast advertising. By nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: American Tobacco, Brown and Williamson, P. Lourellard, and R. J.
Speaker 1: Reynolds were all buying to network radio time. There has
Speaker 1: been no greater enthusiast for radio advert broadcast advertising the
Speaker 1: George W. Hill of the A t C, whose business
Speaker 1: for the first five months of nineteen thirties surpassed all records.
Speaker 1: The company sponsors the Lucky Strike Dance Orchestra. In three
Speaker 1: hour broadcasts each week week. Lucky Strikes sponsored many radio
Speaker 1: comedies and musical shows, such as Jack Benny and the
Speaker 1: Kay Kayser College of Music Musical Knowledge, and the best
Speaker 1: known and longest of running popular musical shows, Lucky Strikes
Speaker 1: Hit Parade. This show started in nineteen twenty eight and
Speaker 1: ran into the nineteen fifties on television. It featured teen
Speaker 1: idol Frank Sinatra when he was launching his career. So
Speaker 1: popular was this show in nineteen thirty eight that a
Speaker 1: Sweeps Aches promotion offering free cartoons of Lucky's for the
Speaker 1: names of the three most popular tunes drew nearly seven
Speaker 1: million entries per week. The Lucky Strike Hit Parade was
Speaker 1: the first show to rank popular music releases in an
Speaker 1: ongoing basis. This is where we get the top forty.
Speaker 1: The entire structure of the musical industry comes out of
Speaker 1: Lucky Strikes hit points. Yeah, there's crappy Christmas number one singles,
Speaker 1: and it seems like podcasts and podcasts we all owe
Speaker 1: a debt to Lucky Strike every time you mean dick
Speaker 1: advert just saying well in more ways than what let's
Speaker 1: let's all give the good folks at lucky strike, a
Speaker 1: solid go and pick out a pack right now that
Speaker 1: you don't have to smoke, and give it to a kid.
Speaker 1: You know they love to smoke. Um, Sophie, what I'm
Speaker 1: done with my script throwing two ads? Now? I'm throwing
Speaker 1: two adds Like the good men at R. J. Reynolds
Speaker 1: and Laura Lard and the other grates of the tobacco
Speaker 1: industry taught me too, Sophie. I'm i'm I'm to ring
Speaker 1: our ancestors. We're back to cigarette and we're ready to go.
Speaker 1: Cigarettes have now just invented the modern music industry. It's
Speaker 1: lunatics taken over, the asygnum taken over. They felt better
Speaker 1: and they yeah, that's that is a lucky strike, if
Speaker 1: you ask me. So. The need to capture smokers young,
Speaker 1: because market research has shown that people tended to be
Speaker 1: brand loyal, also helped to create the modern conception of
Speaker 1: ad demographics. Right, advertisers start learning how to differentiate and
Speaker 1: split over. You know, the idea that like the eighteen
Speaker 1: to thirty five males is like the most valuable at
Speaker 1: that comes out here, right, And it's because like those
Speaker 1: that's when you gotta get them smoking right earlier possible,
Speaker 1: yea ideally I like eleven or twelve. They advertise a
Speaker 1: lot in colleges, and they also it leads tobacco companies
Speaker 1: to steer more and more towards funding children's entertainment. This
Speaker 1: starts with the comics pages a syndicated weekly pop collection
Speaker 1: called Puck is like massive for cigarette ads, but as
Speaker 1: Pole writes, it quickly expanded beyond that quote. In the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, many brands used cartoon trade characters in their advertising.
Speaker 1: The ads on Lucky Strikes Hit Parade for a while
Speaker 1: featured a cute animated character called Scoop, who, through the
Speaker 1: then impressive technical feat of superimposition, appeared on a screened
Speaker 1: with the show's star Dorothy Collins. So that's where we
Speaker 1: get who framed Roger Rabbit? Motherfucker's cigarettes taught us how
Speaker 1: to do that? Philip Morris's US car, Philip Morris's cartoons
Speaker 1: when advertising on Philip Morris used cartoons when advertising on
Speaker 1: I Love Lucy. Laura Lard created TV cartoon ads for
Speaker 1: Old Gold that featured the voices of their Honeymooners stars
Speaker 1: Jackie Gleason and Art Carney. This presage to the Winston
Speaker 1: spots that employed the animated hit characters from The flint Stones,
Speaker 1: a totally cartoon show they sponsored, whose voices, structure, and
Speaker 1: sense of humor all imitated The Honeymooners. And I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people are vaguely aware that The flint
Speaker 1: Stones used to have cigarette ads. You do that right? No? Oh,
Speaker 1: that's why it was created. The flint Stones were made
Speaker 1: as a cigarette ad. Uh. And to get an idea
Speaker 1: for how blatant this advertising was, you need to see
Speaker 1: some old episodes of The flint Stones, And I think
Speaker 1: this one includes a representative scene you should know to
Speaker 1: understand what's happening on the screen. Right at the start
Speaker 1: of this, we see Fred and Barney kind of like
Speaker 1: hanging out in the yard on their asses while their
Speaker 1: wives are doing like yard work and house chores. So
Speaker 1: they're like chilling out watching their wives work. Good stuff. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's go around back. Well we can't see him. Do
Speaker 1: we want to do something? Friends? Okay, I was about
Speaker 1: taking on that. I got a better idea. Let's take
Speaker 1: a Winston break from the cigarette that delivers flavored twenty
Speaker 1: times a pack. The plan mix the big taste difference,
Speaker 1: and only Winston has it up front where it comes
Speaker 1: here ahead of the pure white filter. Winston pacts rich tobaccos,
Speaker 1: specially selected and specially that's a good flavor roil. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're still going like cigarette. Uh yeah, that is a
Speaker 1: lot of cigarette advertising. Yeah. I was at first, I
Speaker 1: was called by the records of it, but then just
Speaker 1: a duration of it. Yeah. Wow, they really were committed
Speaker 1: to selling kids cigarettes. Yeah yeah. Winston also not a
Speaker 1: great name compared to the Camel Camel marborro ye. Just
Speaker 1: a dude called Winston with little imagination. Yeah wow, that
Speaker 1: was amazing. Yeah, it's the best. Yeah, that is like
Speaker 1: Alex Jones here just transition content ads. Fucking Barney Rubble
Speaker 1: wants to get your ass into a pack of Winston's. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be doing what is it, sucking silver or whatever.
Speaker 1: Alex Jons just trying to tell, you know, like colloidal
Speaker 1: silver to see paste that you can shoot up your ass.
Speaker 1: I don't know, Yeah, nor do I care. I don't
Speaker 1: think our listener ship over laps, so no one else
Speaker 1: knows either. So it's fine. No, our listeners are buying
Speaker 1: a lot of gold now because of those gold ads running.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, well that's good. It's been a success. We
Speaker 1: have to get him back from the next season. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we love we love the gold ad people. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna I'm gonna do a free ad right now.
Speaker 1: By gold, it's the cigarettes of currency. Well, actually that's cigarettes.
Speaker 1: Gold's almost as valuable as cigarettes in a pinch, So
Speaker 1: pick some up today, smoke it. Why don't you you
Speaker 1: know what James had an idea, why don't we make
Speaker 1: a lot of We get cigarettes, grind up gold into them,
Speaker 1: pour gold flakes into the cigarettes, and then sell them
Speaker 1: to rich assholes who have taken Yeah, it's definitely this
Speaker 1: like a thing, isn't it like a vodka rols? Don't
Speaker 1: think that hash. Yeah, there's a couple of liquors that
Speaker 1: have it. Yeah, you may not necessarily, but I need
Speaker 1: to sign so many gold gold unnecessary gold. So you
Speaker 1: know how there's you know, pour out some gold liquor
Speaker 1: and uh, yeah, I'm back rapid cigarette. There was no gold,
Speaker 1: but I've got my glass of lead and I'm good.
Speaker 1: So during the late forties to the early fifties, the
Speaker 1: science coming out about cigarettes and cancer starts to look
Speaker 1: worse and worse. The R. J. Reynolds company launches a
Speaker 1: new campaign for camel cigarettes and nineteen six centered around
Speaker 1: the slogan more doctor smoke camels than you have a cigarette.
Speaker 1: Six years. This is like, this is their main advertising
Speaker 1: push for six years and dentist and twoth busting which
Speaker 1: cigarettes amazing? Great? Yeah, absolutely, yes, the cigarette that nine
Speaker 1: out of ten doctors recommend. Reynolds backs up their claim
Speaker 1: that's more stick doctors smoke camels than any other cigarette,
Speaker 1: with surveys that they said had been conducted by quote
Speaker 1: three leading independent research organizations. Now they don't name these organizations.
Speaker 1: One representative ad claims that a survey of a hundred
Speaker 1: and thirteen thousand, five hundred ninety seven doctors from quote
Speaker 1: every branch of medicine had shown that camels were the
Speaker 1: brand most often smoked by doctors. That's what you want?
Speaker 1: Is that the cigarette that your dietrist chooses? Yeah, exactly, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to know. Yeah, No, nobody, nobody knows what
Speaker 1: you should be smoking better than a fucking proctologist. That
Speaker 1: that's that. That's that's who's got it down. Yeah, as
Speaker 1: an obstetrician, my you religious chooses Winston's. Yeah, that would
Speaker 1: be quite funny, boy, Women seemed to really want a
Speaker 1: cigarette after giving birth? Probably good for you? Uh so?
Speaker 1: R J. Reynolds assured customers that this survey, which totally existed,
Speaker 1: was an actual fact and not a casual claim, and
Speaker 1: their competitors were all doing the same thing. American Tobacco
Speaker 1: President President George Washington Hill contracted the legendary ad executive
Speaker 1: Albert Lasker and tasked him to come up with a
Speaker 1: reason why customers should smoke his cigarettes. And I want
Speaker 1: to quote now from a write up in the American
Speaker 1: Journal of Public Health. With no real scientific evidence to
Speaker 1: back their claims, American Tobacco insisted that the toasting process
Speaker 1: that Lucky Strikes Tobacco underwent decreased throat irritation. In fact,
Speaker 1: Lucky Strikes curing process did not significantly differ from that
Speaker 1: of other brands. Related campaigns emphasized that Lucky's would help consumers,
Speaker 1: especially women, their new market stay trimmed since they could
Speaker 1: reach for a Lucky instead of a suite. Along with
Speaker 1: these persistent health claims, a typical advertisement from nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: boldly stated that twenty thousand, six hundred and seventy nine
Speaker 1: physicians say Lucky They're less irritating. Great now, James, do
Speaker 1: you want to know how they've gotten the information that
Speaker 1: Lucky's were seen as less irritating by doctors, They send
Speaker 1: them a packet of lucky strikes and also did yeah,
Speaker 1: they're advertising agency Lloyd Thomas and Logan sent cigarette cartons
Speaker 1: to physicians in nineteen, nineteen seven and ninety eight and
Speaker 1: then asked them to answer our Lucky strikes cigarettes less
Speaker 1: irritating the tender throats than other cigarettes, and the doctors
Speaker 1: were like, yeah, I want more free cigarettes. Sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: why do I watch this pretty cigarette bok school. I'll
Speaker 1: take that one, great good. That's how science is done.
Speaker 1: That is how science is done. Now, touting the toasting
Speaker 1: process and the accompanying cover letter, advertising executive Thomas Logan
Speaker 1: pointed out the virtues of lucky strikes and claimed that
Speaker 1: they had quote heard from a good many people that
Speaker 1: they could smoke lucky strikes with perfect comfort to their throats.
Speaker 1: American Tobacco used doctors responses to this survey in order
Speaker 1: to like push the claim that lucky strikes are less irritating.
Speaker 1: Um the toasting, as they explained as quote, your throat
Speaker 1: protection against irritation against coaugh. Thank god, Thank god they
Speaker 1: figured out toasting, otherwise these cigarettes might really hurt people. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you got toast him. That's how he public up the cigarettes,
Speaker 1: and your toast it. Yeah and yeah, no kinds of
Speaker 1: for you. Some self self reported adults smoking peaked in
Speaker 1: the early nineteen fifties at about forty five percent of
Speaker 1: the population. Big Tobacco's ploy to buy up doctors had
Speaker 1: worked for a while, but in late nineteen fifty three,
Speaker 1: the first irrefutable studies linking lung cancer to tobacco use
Speaker 1: were published. Two tremendous public interest, major peer reviewed journal
Speaker 1: studies had tied not just cancer, but cardiac disease and
Speaker 1: serious respiratory illness to smoking. The situation was serious enough
Speaker 1: that the head executives of the Big five tobacco companies
Speaker 1: all came together in December of nineteen fifty three to
Speaker 1: figure out how to respond to this news. They picked
Speaker 1: the Plaza Hotel in New York City as the place
Speaker 1: to map out their strategy, and it is possible that
Speaker 1: no other location in the United States, including the Pentagon,
Speaker 1: has been used to make plans that ended with a
Speaker 1: greater death toll. The master of the moment was John W. Hill,
Speaker 1: president of the biggest PR firm in the country. Hill
Speaker 1: and Nolton Now. John had been born in Indiana in
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety. He'd spent most of his early career working
Speaker 1: as a journalist. He's a journalist for eighteen years, working
Speaker 1: his way up the ladder to become an editor and
Speaker 1: a popular columnist. In nineteen twenty seven, he blazed a
Speaker 1: trail that generations of soulless hacks would follow, and he
Speaker 1: decided to start a PR firm. By the time nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty three rolled around, it was the largest PR firm
Speaker 1: on the planet. Hill was worth the money, and in
Speaker 1: that hotel conference room he laid out the bones of
Speaker 1: what would be known as Plan White Coat. The basic
Speaker 1: idea was to create an industry sponsored research into a
Speaker 1: think take of scientists, funded by tobacco money but ostensibly independent.
Speaker 1: This would allow big Tobacco to claim they were taking
Speaker 1: fears of lung cancer seriously, while also providing them with
Speaker 1: disinformation to muddy the waters by painting the existing studies
Speaker 1: is insufficient. I'm going to quote, yeah, it's awesome. It's
Speaker 1: it's so good, no one's ever done. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: no one, this is not this is not the thing
Speaker 1: that's going to end all life on this planet. No,
Speaker 1: Hell did not just build the apocalypse bomb. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ. Yeah. Well, they've given us everything from Pokemon
Speaker 1: cards to time It change. It's incredible. Cigarettes are amazing. Yes, wow, Yeah,
Speaker 1: something one of the single most important inventions in the
Speaker 1: history of the planet. Yeah. God, and people die of starvation,
Speaker 1: you know. And here we are. We've made a cancer stick,
Speaker 1: and we've we've created new and exciting ways to lie
Speaker 1: about it. It's amazing. It's so cool. Kind of him. Who, God,
Speaker 1: what a great product. I'm a quote now from a
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve article in the American Journal of Public Health.
Speaker 1: The industry had supported some individual research in recent years,
Speaker 1: but Hill's proposal offered the potential of a research program
Speaker 1: that would be controlled by the industry yet promoted as independent.
Speaker 1: This was a public relations master stroke. Hill understood that
Speaker 1: simply giving Yeah. Hill understood that simply giving money to
Speaker 1: scientists through the National Institutes of Health or some other entity,
Speaker 1: for example, offered little opportunity to shape the public relations environment. However,
Speaker 1: offering funds directly to university based scientists would enlist their
Speaker 1: support independence. Moreover, it would have the added benefit of
Speaker 1: making academic institutions and partners with the tobacco industry in
Speaker 1: its moment of crisis. Hill and his clients had no
Speaker 1: interest yeah in a Hill and his clients had no
Speaker 1: interest in answering a scientific question. Their goal was to
Speaker 1: maintain vigorous control over the research program to use science
Speaker 1: in the service of public relations. Although the tobacco executives
Speaker 1: had proposed forming a Cigarette Information Committee dedicated to defending
Speaker 1: smoking against the medical findings, He'll argued aggressively for adding
Speaker 1: research to the committee's title and agenda. It is believed
Speaker 1: he wrote that the word research is needed in the
Speaker 1: name to give weight and added credence to the committee's statements.
Speaker 1: Hill understood that his clients should be viewed as embracing
Speaker 1: science rather than dismissing it. Now again, Hill's a journalist, right,
Speaker 1: That's part of how he's able to do this. He
Speaker 1: understands how to communicat he understands how people read things. Um.
Speaker 1: One of the first things he emphasized to the industry
Speaker 1: leaders was that they had to stop competing with each
Speaker 1: other trying to move cartons by convincing customers that their
Speaker 1: smokes were more soothing or healthier than the others. This
Speaker 1: was bad, right, Arguing like Lucky strikes are healthier than
Speaker 1: Marlborough's is bad for the whole industry, so we have
Speaker 1: to stop it. The key to surviving, this Hill told them,
Speaker 1: was collective action, and one that looked like a commitment
Speaker 1: to public welfare while actually doing everything possible to harm
Speaker 1: public welfare. The Tobacco Industry Research Committee was formed in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty four and announced its existence with full page
Speaker 1: ads and more than four hundred newspapers. This ad, known
Speaker 1: as the Frank Statement, claimed that tobacco companies were deeply
Speaker 1: concerned about the welfare of their customers and would pursue
Speaker 1: any in to get to the bottom of this whole
Speaker 1: tobacco equals cancer thing. Quote. We accept an interest in
Speaker 1: people's health as a basic responsibility paramount to every other
Speaker 1: consideration in our business. We believe the products we make
Speaker 1: are not injurious to health. We always have and always
Speaker 1: will cooperate closely with those whose task it is to
Speaker 1: safeguard the public health. That's good, great, yeah, sure, very honest,
Speaker 1: very straightforward. So despite these high minded claims. The t
Speaker 1: i r c's agenda was laid out by Hill before
Speaker 1: he consulted a single scientist. The executive director of the organization, W. T. Hoyt,
Speaker 1: had no scientific background. His previous job had been selling
Speaker 1: ads for the Saturday Evening Post. Within his first few
Speaker 1: months of operation, Hot and other executives of the t
Speaker 1: i r C put out a statement directly responding to
Speaker 1: studies that purported to show a link between cigarettes and disease.
Speaker 1: It is an obligation of the Tobacco Industry Research Committee
Speaker 1: at this time to remind the public of these essential points. One,
Speaker 1: there is no conclusive scientific proof of a link between
Speaker 1: smoking and cancer. To medical research points to many possible
Speaker 1: causes of cancer. And three, the millions of people who
Speaker 1: derive pleasure and satisfaction from smoking can be reassured that
Speaker 1: every scientific means will be used to get all the
Speaker 1: facts as soon as possible. Great, Yeah, it's gonna go well, James,
Speaker 1: it's gonna go really well. Yeah, I can see this anying. Well. So.
Speaker 1: The first scientific director appointed to the t i r
Speaker 1: C was Clarence cook Little, an extremely prominent biologist and
Speaker 1: geneticists who had become extremely prominent because he was a
Speaker 1: popular eugenicist. Yeah. Yeah, it's really funny because cook like
Speaker 1: a little The reason he believes that cigarettes because he's
Speaker 1: a He truly believes that the people who connected to
Speaker 1: cancer is wrong because he believes that lung cancer is genetic,
Speaker 1: so it can't be caused by an environment factor, like
Speaker 1: in healing cigarettes a year. It's gotta be. It's gotta
Speaker 1: be something to do with the fact that certain races
Speaker 1: are more likely to get cancer. Oh god, it is
Speaker 1: one thing I'll have to you gotta say for a racist,
Speaker 1: this guy probably killed more white people than any other racist. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he does drop a lot of white folks accidentally, based well,
Speaker 1: he drops everyone else too. Yeah, unlike him, cigarettes don't discriminate, yea.
Speaker 1: Oh god, they would never become a magnet for the
Speaker 1: shittiest things in humanity. It is incredible, how many terrible Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's amazing. What's gonna happen next? They're gonna like
Speaker 1: stand with the turfs or something. Cigarettes. We just don't
Speaker 1: like queer people. I tell you. It's probably in the
Speaker 1: Harry Potter book somewhere. Yeah. In nineteen fifty four, the
Speaker 1: T I R. C S budget was around a million dollars,
Speaker 1: nearly all of which to Hill and Nolton in various
Speaker 1: ads rather than actual science. B By nineteen sixty three,
Speaker 1: the t I r C was giving out close to
Speaker 1: a million dollars in grants. These funded research, actual scientific research,
Speaker 1: but they picked the kind of research carefully. So we're
Speaker 1: not going to do research into what causes lung cancer,
Speaker 1: but we'll do research into how cancer develops over time
Speaker 1: and how it grows in the body, and ways to
Speaker 1: fight it and stuff, um, and this is important stuff.
Speaker 1: So they can keep coming out with these studies funded
Speaker 1: by TRC money that are real studies, but none of
Speaker 1: them happened to look into whether or not smoking causes cancer. Right,
Speaker 1: we can look at how genetics are virology impacts cancer rates,
Speaker 1: and those are important things to study. But by picking
Speaker 1: what gets funded specifically, they are very very purposefully putting
Speaker 1: better air bags and then no brakes model. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: this strategy worked for decades, distracting the public and lawmakers
Speaker 1: from any actions that might negatively impact the rate at
Speaker 1: which people smoked. Key to the success of this program
Speaker 1: was hills understanding of how journalism worked. From that Journal
Speaker 1: of Public Health article. Hill understood that the success of
Speaker 1: any public relations CAN strategy was highly dependent on face
Speaker 1: to face interpersonal relations with important media outlets. Each time
Speaker 1: the t i r C issued a press release, the
Speaker 1: Hill and Nolton organization would initiate a personal contact. The
Speaker 1: firm systematically documented the courtship of newspapers and magazines where
Speaker 1: it could urge balance and fairness in the industry. In
Speaker 1: these entreaties on behalf of the industry, the firm staffers
Speaker 1: repeated several key themes. First, they would note that the
Speaker 1: industry completely understood its important public responsibilities. Second, they would
Speaker 1: affirm that the industry was deeply committed to investigating all
Speaker 1: of the scientific questions relevant to resolving the controversy. Third,
Speaker 1: they urged skepticism regarding statistical studies. Finally, they offered members
Speaker 1: of the media a long list of independent skeptics to
Speaker 1: consult to ensure balance in their presentations. Responsible for the
Speaker 1: dozens of direct marketing emails, I guess three single days, Yeah,
Speaker 1: yea great, right now, I'm personally agree for this. Motphone
Speaker 1: cigarettes created everything. The primary independent skeptic, of course, was
Speaker 1: the t I r C. S Little that's the eugenics guy.
Speaker 1: Given the penchant of the press for controversy and it's
Speaker 1: often naive notion of balance, these appeals were remarkably successful.
Speaker 1: Hilla Nolton expertly broadcast their arguments, typically not based on
Speaker 1: substantial research of any kind, of a small group of skeptics,
Speaker 1: as if their positions represented a dominant perspective on the
Speaker 1: medical science of the cigarette. In this sense, the public
Speaker 1: relations campaign advantaged two critical pieces of mid century media practice. First,
Speaker 1: journalists favored reporting on controversy. Second, by providing opposing positions
Speaker 1: as if they were equal, they affirmed their commitment to balance. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right, baby, that's right baby. Why pace off? Uh
Speaker 1: huh yeah, No, they've invented both sides. They did invent
Speaker 1: both sides of it. So they gave us Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: It's what they gave us, Donald Trump. They gave us
Speaker 1: climate change denial. Uh. They gave us a lot of
Speaker 1: the gun industries, tactics, Barry Wise, all of that ship
Speaker 1: comes from big tobacco, they gave us. They gave us
Speaker 1: the fucking Iraq war. All of these, all of these
Speaker 1: strategies are the things that like we're pie like they
Speaker 1: pioneered all of those strategies and that's where we're going
Speaker 1: to end for the day. James, Um, yeah, there's yeah,
Speaker 1: let's stop. So I've become enraged. We will we will
Speaker 1: talk in more detail about the tobacco industry later. Um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, this is this is how they like, there's
Speaker 1: a bigger story and kind of how they kept this
Speaker 1: up as it became increasingly obvious that cigarettes caused cancer,
Speaker 1: and like how they advertised to children and like the
Speaker 1: nineties and stuff and Joe Campbell. There's a story, and
Speaker 1: like how they tried to destroy the lives of people
Speaker 1: who blew the whistle on them, like former tobacco employees. Um,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about all of those one day, but this
Speaker 1: is this is the story of how tobacco invented everything
Speaker 1: in the modern world. Yeah. Great, I feel really good
Speaker 1: about all the things that we've got from it. It's
Speaker 1: cool that you can tie like Funko pops, climate change, denial,
Speaker 1: and the Iraq War all to try and to get
Speaker 1: people to smoke. Yes, yeah, it's really it's really great.
Speaker 1: And capitism and that's nothing but good. Yeah, pokemon and
Speaker 1: medical patents all all have cigarettes to think. Yeah, god, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just unfathomable. It's terrible, it's freaking awful. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's the nature of the system we live in. Maybe
Speaker 1: change it. It's the nature of the system we live
Speaker 1: in part because of cigarettes. Yeah, very good. Maybe maybe
Speaker 1: consider a different system. Yeah, maybe consider a system in
Speaker 1: which it's not possible to do. The good thing is
Speaker 1: Robert that none of these issues are tied to vaping,
Speaker 1: which is fine and totally totally normal and good, and
Speaker 1: therefore you should just get a fruit loop vight. Yeah,
Speaker 1: get get a flavored vape um, you know, buy some
Speaker 1: of that. Uh, I don't know what else? What other
Speaker 1: what drugs do kids like to do today? Get some
Speaker 1: of Get some of that, Get some of that flavored finnel,
Speaker 1: tide pods mixture fitnel and your tide pods together, kids
Speaker 1: have a good one that's doing that on taking the
Speaker 1: talk right now from what I understand, Yeah, TikTok and
Speaker 1: everything that. Any further, is there anything like to plug
Speaker 1: apart from tide pods? Yeah, again, we talked about a podcast.
Speaker 1: I've written a book. It's called The Popular Front and
Speaker 1: the ninety six plus Owner Olympics. You can probably find
Speaker 1: it at the library. Then you won't be helping to
Speaker 1: create the system which gave us, you know, Pokemon cards
Speaker 1: and everyone having cancer. Uh and yeah, you can find
Speaker 1: me on Twitter. It's just my name James, like Bob Stet,
Speaker 1: like the Beers. Anarchism is the other thing I always
Speaker 1: like to plug on podcasts. So maybe yeah, read poking
Speaker 1: and we're doing going nickot happen here at livestream virtual
Speaker 1: show on October. Yeah, motherfucker's yep. So pick up a
Speaker 1: pack of Lucky strikes. I want to see all of
Speaker 1: you beautiful people smoking when we do our live show.
Speaker 1: Just just really burn them down. Nothing raises the value
Speaker 1: of a house faster than smoking cigarettes and bring go
Speaker 1: back to your return to tradition by sticking to cigarettes,
Speaker 1: you know, smoking them that way. Yeah, smoke your cigarettes
Speaker 1: the traditional way anyway. Yeah. Buying Behind the Bastards is
Speaker 1: a production of cool Zone Media. For more from cool
Speaker 1: Zone Media, visit our website cool zone Media dot com,
Speaker 1: or check us out on the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.