Speaker 1: We all need a break from the constant cycle to
Speaker 1: learn something new, to gain new perspectives. The Great Courses
Speaker 1: Plus streaming service is an excellent resource to expand our
Speaker 1: knowledge on a variety of subjects or pick up a
Speaker 1: new hobby. I've been enjoying the Great Courses Plus while
Speaker 1: researching this season of flashback lectures like Playball, the rise
Speaker 1: of Baseball is America's pastime, History of the Supreme Court,
Speaker 1: and Battlefield Europe have helped me connect the dots on
Speaker 1: several stories from history. Right now, they're giving our listeners
Speaker 1: a special limited time offer a free month of unlimited
Speaker 1: access to their entire library. Sign up now through our
Speaker 1: special U r L go to the Great Courses Plus
Speaker 1: dot com slash Aussie. That's the Great Courses Plus dot
Speaker 1: Com slash o z y The Great Courses Plus dot
Speaker 1: Com Slash Aussi authority is in North Carolina first started
Speaker 1: to get suspicious in that's when they noticed two odd
Speaker 1: things near the city of Fayetteville. First, there was an
Speaker 1: unusually large number of cigarettes being sold in the area,
Speaker 1: far more than could be explained by local demand. The second,
Speaker 1: police were stopping a number of vehicles along the local
Speaker 1: interstate highway that were carrying cash, lots of cash. The
Speaker 1: investigation led authorities to a plain, gray brick building. This
Speaker 1: is where investigators say it all started. This business behind
Speaker 1: me here is called free Co is listed on Google
Speaker 1: as a candy business. But authorities say what was coming
Speaker 1: out of here wasn't candy. It certainly wasn't what authorities
Speaker 1: unearthened Fayetteville last year was one of the largest cigarettes
Speaker 1: smuggling rings of its kind. Authorities seized about eight hundred
Speaker 1: and forty tho dollars in cash, eleven vehicles, and four
Speaker 1: hundred thousand cartons of cigarettes and five guns. More than
Speaker 1: two dozen people were arrested in connection with the twelve
Speaker 1: million dollar operation. So why is there so much money
Speaker 1: in moving cigarettes across state borders? Why would someone in
Speaker 1: New York even want to buy the exact same cigarettes
Speaker 1: from North Carolina that they can buy at home, And
Speaker 1: most importantly, how did we get in this mess in
Speaker 1: the first place. The answer, as we shall see, involves
Speaker 1: a potent combination of taxes, war, and big business. But
Speaker 1: most of all, the rampant cigarettes smuggling in America today
Speaker 1: is the unintended product of good intentions and if you're
Speaker 1: looking for someone to blame, you could accuse everyone from
Speaker 1: the smuggler to the tobacco industry to the tax collector.
Speaker 1: But before you point any fingers, let me first tell
Speaker 1: you a little story about the y m c A.
Speaker 1: I'm Sean Braswell. Welcome to Flashback, a history podcast from Aussie.
Speaker 1: This season, we are diving deep into some of the
Speaker 1: most remarkable and unsettling examples of unintended consequences from history.
Speaker 1: In this episode, we'll see how an enormous active virtue
Speaker 1: by the y m c A more than a century
Speaker 1: ago continues to lead to all manner of vice, including
Speaker 1: that cigarette smuggling operation in Fayetteville, North Carolina. The reason
Speaker 1: that criminal operations like the one in Fayetteville exists is
Speaker 1: pretty simple. The federal government imposes attacks on cigarettes. That's
Speaker 1: a dollar and one cent per pack. Thomas E. Hall
Speaker 1: is an emeritus economics professor at the University of Miami,
Speaker 1: Ohio and the author of Aftermath, The Unintended Consequences of
Speaker 1: Public Policies. But it doesn't matter where you buy them.
Speaker 1: In the United States, you're gonna pay the federal tax.
Speaker 1: What differs are these state taxes and the state taxes
Speaker 1: on cigarettes very a great deal. Some states are low
Speaker 1: tax states, some like New York, are not. The state
Speaker 1: of New York adds attacks of four dollars and thirty
Speaker 1: five cents to a pack of cigarettes. Then the City
Speaker 1: of New York also taxes, and they had an additional dollar.
Speaker 1: And if he sent signed to a pack of cigarettes.
Speaker 1: So that means if you bought a pack of cigarettes
Speaker 1: in New York City, uh, there's five dollars and five
Speaker 1: cents of taxes on a pack. Were close to sixty
Speaker 1: dollars of tax per carton. North Carolina, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: collect only about five dollars in tax per carton. I
Speaker 1: may be a history buff, but even I can do
Speaker 1: that math. Smugglers can make up to fifty five dollars
Speaker 1: per carton selling North Carolina cigarettes in New York. And
Speaker 1: if each truck of black market cigarettes carries about fifty
Speaker 1: thou cartons, then you're talking about two point seven million
Speaker 1: dollars in potential profit per truck. Two point seven million
Speaker 1: dollars per truck. So you can see what's going on here.
Speaker 1: You have this this profit opportunity. To say the least,
Speaker 1: there's more than just an opportunity, there's an easily moved commodity.
Speaker 1: Cigarettes are a product that are very easy to move
Speaker 1: around because they're they're light, um, they're small, and they're durable.
Speaker 1: This sort of tax arbitrage opportunity and can play out
Speaker 1: even within a radius of a few miles. I live
Speaker 1: in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Cincinnati, Ohio is a river town.
Speaker 1: It's on the Ohio River, and across the river is
Speaker 1: the state of Kentucky. Now, Kentucky is a tobacco grower.
Speaker 1: There's a big crop down there, so, needless to say,
Speaker 1: the Kentucky state legislature has an interest in keeping its
Speaker 1: tobacco farmers happy. Now, that means that the taxes on
Speaker 1: tobacco are not as high in Kentucky as they are
Speaker 1: aren't Ohio. In fact, it's a difference about fifty cents
Speaker 1: a pack, which means if you're a smoker in Cincinnati,
Speaker 1: all you have to do to save fifty cents for
Speaker 1: a pack of cigarettes or five dollars for a carton
Speaker 1: is drive across the John A Robling suspension bridge to Kentucky.
Speaker 1: And when you cross one of those bridges, you'll find
Speaker 1: one liquor and tobacco store after another right there by
Speaker 1: the river. But the real opportunity for smugglers is moving
Speaker 1: cigarettes from a low tax state like North Carolina where
Speaker 1: I live, and a high tax one like New York.
Speaker 1: I asked Hall if I should be getting in on
Speaker 1: the action. If you could keep the mafia off your back,
Speaker 1: you can make one helpful lot of money moving cigarettes
Speaker 1: up to New York. It's a dangerous business, though, I
Speaker 1: guess I'll pass. So how did we get in this
Speaker 1: bizarre tax situation in America? The US first started taxing
Speaker 1: tobacco to help raise money for the Civil War, and
Speaker 1: they continued to do so after the war was over.
Speaker 1: Thomas Holligan. Essentially, what the government discovered was that this
Speaker 1: was a great revenue raiser. By nineteen thirty, tobacco taxes
Speaker 1: were generating about fifteen percent of the federal government's tax
Speaker 1: collections four hundred and fifty million dollars of annual revenue
Speaker 1: for about seven billion dollars worth today, and soon states
Speaker 1: wanted in on the action. To The first state cigarette
Speaker 1: taxes popped up in nearly nineteen twenties, and the reason
Speaker 1: why they did was because we had a fairly bad
Speaker 1: recession from nineteen twenty to twenty one, and during economic recessions,
Speaker 1: revenue to governments goes down. The states were trying to
Speaker 1: close their budget upsets, so they decided to start taxing cigarettes.
Speaker 1: In nineteen one, Iowa became the first state to enact
Speaker 1: the state level cigarette tax. By the nineteen thirties, more
Speaker 1: than thirty other states had followed. The original cigarette taxes
Speaker 1: were pretty low. We're just talking about a few pennies
Speaker 1: on the pack. But that's all it took to get
Speaker 1: the smuggling started. Because once you impost higher taxes in
Speaker 1: one area than another, then you have this opera economic
Speaker 1: consent of to buy the cigarettes in the low cost
Speaker 1: area and try to sell them in the high cost area. Still,
Speaker 1: there wasn't a whole lot of money in smuggling cigarettes yet,
Speaker 1: and most smugglers were still small time criminals. Meanwhile, the
Speaker 1: popularity of cigarettes in America continued to soar even doctors
Speaker 1: recommended them. Time out for many men of medicine usually
Speaker 1: means just long enough to enjoy a cigarette, and because
Speaker 1: they know what a pleasure it is to smoke a mild,
Speaker 1: good tasting cigarette, they're particular about the brand. They choose
Speaker 1: more doctors smoke camels than any other cigarette. Yes, you
Speaker 1: heard that right. Then in the mid nineteen sixties, a
Speaker 1: landmark event occurred, one that would prompt several states to
Speaker 1: raise their cigarette taxes even higher. The reason why was
Speaker 1: because the famous Surgeon General's Report of nineteen sixty four
Speaker 1: came out. This book, containing three seven carefully worded pages,
Speaker 1: as a federal government report. It was released at noon
Speaker 1: today and it says, in view of the continuing and
Speaker 1: mounting evidence from many sources, it is the judgment of
Speaker 1: the committee that cigarettes smoking contributes substantially to mortality from
Speaker 1: certain specific diseases and to the overall death rate. That
Speaker 1: is the basic conclusion. That was the study that linked
Speaker 1: tobacco consumption to all kinds of health problems. And when
Speaker 1: that study came out, then people began to say, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, we ought to try to discourage smoking. It's
Speaker 1: very bad for people, and how can we discourage it. Well,
Speaker 1: one way is to raise the price of it by taxes.
Speaker 1: The Surgeon General and states like New York had good
Speaker 1: intentions to warn people about the harms of smoking and
Speaker 1: to price them out of it. But the price difference
Speaker 1: between states grew as a result. It was that wider
Speaker 1: differential into prices that increase the profitability of smuggling. And
Speaker 1: that's when the organized crime figures got into it in
Speaker 1: a big way. And where did these smugglers see a
Speaker 1: unique opportunity. Nope, not in North Carolina reservations. The Indian
Speaker 1: reservations are not required by law to assess the state taxes,
Speaker 1: and they govern their own territories and they are not
Speaker 1: subject to the state laws. So a pack of cigarettes
Speaker 1: will show up on this Indian reservation in New York
Speaker 1: and no state tax has been paid on it. So
Speaker 1: if if Joe consumer walks onto the reservation, they can
Speaker 1: buy a pack of cigarettes without paying the New York
Speaker 1: state tax. And so a reservation becomes a giant costco
Speaker 1: for cigarettes. One reservation in New York is the Poospatuck
Speaker 1: Reservation on Long Island. It's one square mile of territory,
Speaker 1: has two hundred and seventy residents. And when somebody was
Speaker 1: looking into this about ten years ago, they discovered that
Speaker 1: they had in one year, imported one hundred million packs
Speaker 1: of cigarettes. Overall, it's estimated that New York State loses
Speaker 1: nearly one billion dollars in tax revenue per year because
Speaker 1: of cigarette smuggling, and experts say that governments lose more
Speaker 1: than forty billion dollars worldwide. But what makes it even
Speaker 1: worse is where the money goes instead, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of profits to be had here. When there's a lot
Speaker 1: of profits to be had, illegally, um questionable characters will
Speaker 1: get involved in it. Remember the first bombing of the
Speaker 1: World Trade Center in New York, back the one where
Speaker 1: terrorists plays a truck bomb in the parking garage underneath
Speaker 1: the building. When the investigators went to the apartment of
Speaker 1: those uh, those men who had done that dastardly deed,
Speaker 1: they found phony cigarette stamps in there. They were apparently
Speaker 1: involved in cigarette smuggling. That's just one example. The Irish
Speaker 1: Republican Army back under hey Day was smuggling cigarettes. Saddam
Speaker 1: Hussein was a cigarette smuggler. In fact, his son who Day,
Speaker 1: was running the operation. It gets worse. They caught a
Speaker 1: guy up in New York a few years ago. He
Speaker 1: was smuggling cigarettes and using the proceeds to fund scholarships
Speaker 1: at terrorist training camps in Afghani Stands. In the year
Speaker 1: two thousand smugglers involved in another eight billion dollar ring
Speaker 1: were arrested here in North Carolina. Where were they sending
Speaker 1: their profits to the terrorist group has blah? So the
Speaker 1: government decides to tax cigarettes. Different states tax them at
Speaker 1: different levels, and ban smuggling. Becomes a multibillion dollar industry,
Speaker 1: one whose proceeds can be seen everywhere from reservations to
Speaker 1: terrorist training camps. But that's only part of the story.
Speaker 1: The reason that cigarettes first became so popular in America
Speaker 1: and such a prime target for taxation by different states,
Speaker 1: can be traced back to World War One. That's where
Speaker 1: this problem really starts and our story truly begins. Do
Speaker 1: you have an interesting tale about unintended consequences from history
Speaker 1: or your own life, Please share it with us by
Speaker 1: emailing flashback at Aussie dot com. That's flashback at o
Speaker 1: z y dot com. Cigarettes may be found by the
Speaker 1: truckload on some Native American reservations, but there's one place
Speaker 1: you don't see them nearly as much as you used to.
Speaker 1: I remember it as a young lieutenant, you know, the
Speaker 1: the the and and hearing the stories from some of
Speaker 1: the older guys about how everyone pretty much smoked in
Speaker 1: the military. This is Joel Bias, the lieutenant colonel in
Speaker 1: the United States Air Force. He's also a professor at
Speaker 1: their Air Command Staff College. And you watch the movies,
Speaker 1: or you watch documentaries, or you think back to World
Speaker 1: War Two, et cetera, just how different it is now.
Speaker 1: It's hard to find, especially an officer that smokes, especially
Speaker 1: smokes in uniform UM, whereas forty years ago, in my business,
Speaker 1: it would be probably hard to find a person in
Speaker 1: uniform that didn't smoke cigarettes. Bias wrote a book called
Speaker 1: Smoke Him, If You Got Him, The Rising Fall of
Speaker 1: the Military Cigarette Ration. It looks at how the history
Speaker 1: of cigarettes in America is closely connected to the armed forces. Obviously,
Speaker 1: tobacco has a storied history in America going back to
Speaker 1: the very beginning with the Mayflower and the Pilgrims in
Speaker 1: the early founders UM. But for most of that sev.
Speaker 1: Eighteen hundreds, it was not manu what we call today
Speaker 1: a manufactured cigarette. And why weren't manufactured cigarettes all that
Speaker 1: popular in early America, Well, it's because it was seen
Speaker 1: as effeminate, meaning to smoke a cigarette was seeing something
Speaker 1: that uh, a dandy would do. It wasn't seen as
Speaker 1: very masculine or manly to be smoking a cigarette. In fact,
Speaker 1: prior to World War One, cigars, pipes, and chewing tobacco,
Speaker 1: not cigarettes, were the predominant nicotine delivery devices in America.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't just effeminate cigarette smokers that were viewed
Speaker 1: differently by Americans. Soldiers were two. So when America entered
Speaker 1: the war against Germany in nineteen seventeen and started drafting
Speaker 1: young men to fight in it, there were lots of
Speaker 1: American mothers worried about what sort of morally compromising behavior
Speaker 1: their sons would encounter even before they left camp for
Speaker 1: actual combat. And of course, the great concerns at the
Speaker 1: time for these progressives is they're bringing these millions of
Speaker 1: soldiers into camp and training them for war. Is the
Speaker 1: scourge of alcohol, prostitution, and idleness. The same Christian progressive
Speaker 1: temperance groups like the y m c A that would
Speaker 1: later help get prohibition passed in America set out to
Speaker 1: reform the business of war, and one of the great
Speaker 1: concerns of the this movement was the the ability of
Speaker 1: young men to be morally and physically healthy. And thanks
Speaker 1: to their lobbying, the U. S. Army prohibited alcohol near
Speaker 1: training camps, made sure that any brothels within ten miles
Speaker 1: of a camp were shut down. Even the U S
Speaker 1: Secretary of War Newton Baker was involved. He gives a
Speaker 1: speech to mothers and about the draft on what's going on,
Speaker 1: and says, I'm gonna give your young men invisible armor. Uh.
Speaker 1: And you would think he might be talking about to
Speaker 1: save them from the death, you know, casualties and calm
Speaker 1: at shrapnel, etcetera. But now he was talking about a
Speaker 1: moral invisible armor to protect him from the the negative
Speaker 1: moral effects that could happen for me in the military
Speaker 1: and the war. But soldiers at war needs some form
Speaker 1: of creature, comfort or distraction. The British and French soldiers
Speaker 1: certainly had theirs. The British soldiers had got their own
Speaker 1: ration every day, and the French soldiers had state sponsored brothels,
Speaker 1: where the Newton Baker in the United States government is
Speaker 1: not gonna truck with that. But they do allow cigarettes
Speaker 1: to start being sold in the post exchange. That's right.
Speaker 1: Cigarettes smoking became The American soldiers sanctioned vice during World
Speaker 1: War One, and the group in charge of providing the smokes,
Speaker 1: the y m c A. You know, history is often
Speaker 1: irony and tragedy, and that's one of the ironic things
Speaker 1: of history. Is one of the leading edge progressive organizations
Speaker 1: concerned with soldiers health, morale, you know, morality becomes one
Speaker 1: of the leading providers of the manufactured cigarettes starting in
Speaker 1: World War One. There were good reasons in nineteen seventeen
Speaker 1: to believe that cigarettes were the least worst option as
Speaker 1: far as soldiering vices, and they might even be helpful.
Speaker 1: Smoking a cigarette has a pharmacological effect. It causes the
Speaker 1: blood vessels to to constrict, and it has a bit
Speaker 1: of you know, relaxing calming um sensation to it. They're
Speaker 1: made to be the smooth and desirable, deeply inheld and
Speaker 1: they give that relaxing euphoria kind of feelings. Obviously, there's
Speaker 1: some stress involved in soldiering, especially in the type of
Speaker 1: trench warfare situation that many soldiers found themselves in when
Speaker 1: they got to Europe. You've got jittery hands, you know,
Speaker 1: and you're on the front lines and you're trying to
Speaker 1: shoot a rifle. Smoking a cigarette calming to hands is
Speaker 1: something that you might want to have. And then there's
Speaker 1: also just boredom. The y m c A dispensed around
Speaker 1: two billion cigarettes to soldiers. Eventually the army took over
Speaker 1: and included cigarettes in their standard ration. In total, around
Speaker 1: seven billion cigarettes were distributed, and when the war ended,
Speaker 1: the soldiers returned victorious and with a new habit. After
Speaker 1: War one, seeing all the dough boys smoking cigarettes, coming
Speaker 1: home with a cigarette in their mouth, um continuing to smoke,
Speaker 1: it was considered manly, something that someone with very positive
Speaker 1: character at morals UH engaged in. In fact, it was,
Speaker 1: you know, a desirable kind of trade, you know. And
Speaker 1: what emerges is is, hey, i can just put a
Speaker 1: cigarette in my mouth and I'm instantly considered masculine or manly.
Speaker 1: And so, thanks to the Y m c A, the U. S.
Speaker 1: Army and others, America emerged from World War One with
Speaker 1: millions of new and very manly nicotine addicts. And away
Speaker 1: we go in the nineteen twenties and thirties to where,
Speaker 1: by the time we get to World War two, manufactured
Speaker 1: cigarette smoking is a normative behavior and it profitable industry,
Speaker 1: very profitable, so profitable that the government decided it needed
Speaker 1: to take a larger piece of the action from the
Speaker 1: pool of addicts it had helped create. So how is
Speaker 1: this for a tale of good intentions gone dreadfully wrong.
Speaker 1: The y m C, a of all groups, starts to
Speaker 1: hand out cigarettes to soldiers during the First World War.
Speaker 1: They want to make their struggle more manageable. Instead, they
Speaker 1: create an army of new addicts, addicts increasingly willing to
Speaker 1: fork over millions of their hard earned dollars to the
Speaker 1: tobacco companies who make cigarettes and the governments that tax them.
Speaker 1: Once the harms of smoking become a parent, the surgeon
Speaker 1: general and state government step in to try to discourage
Speaker 1: the use of cigarettes. They pass even higher taxes in
Speaker 1: some states. But what does this accomplish. They create a
Speaker 1: massive opportunity for smugglers, organized crime, and terrorists, one that
Speaker 1: continues until this day. Is there anything that can be
Speaker 1: done about this? And have we learned our us and
Speaker 1: about when a virtuous act can actually lead to more vice?
Speaker 1: And what sorts of substances should we be handing out
Speaker 1: to our armed forces? That's next. We all need a
Speaker 1: break from the constant cycle to learn something new, to
Speaker 1: gain new perspectives. The Great Courses Plus streaming service is
Speaker 1: an excellent resource to expand our knowledge on a variety
Speaker 1: of subjects or pick up a new hobby. I've been
Speaker 1: enjoying the Great Courses Plus while researching this season of
Speaker 1: flashback lectures like Playball, the Rise of Baseball is America's Pastime,
Speaker 1: History of the Supreme Court, and Battlefield Europe have helped
Speaker 1: me connect the dots on several stories from history. Right now,
Speaker 1: they're giving our listeners a special limited time offer a
Speaker 1: free month of unlimited access to their entire library. Sign
Speaker 1: up now through our special U r L to the
Speaker 1: Great Courses Plus dot Com Slash Aussie. That's the Great
Speaker 1: Courses plus dot Com Slash o z Y the Great
Speaker 1: Courses Plus dot Com slash As. According to Thomas Hall,
Speaker 1: there's only one fool proof way to curtail the massive
Speaker 1: cigarette smuggling we see today. If you want to take
Speaker 1: away the smuggling, you way you do it is you
Speaker 1: take away the profit opportunity. And to take away the
Speaker 1: profit opportunity is to take away these tax differentials. You'd
Speaker 1: get a little rid of a lot of smuggling if
Speaker 1: every state and locality had the same cigarette tax. But
Speaker 1: how realistic is that? Anyway? That will probably never happen
Speaker 1: because you have totally different interest groups that work here,
Speaker 1: the tobacco producing states do not want high cigarette taxes.
Speaker 1: The tobacco consuming states are the ones who want that.
Speaker 1: So the Virginias in the North Carolinas and the Kentucky's
Speaker 1: and the Missouris of the world are not going to
Speaker 1: go along with this plan to equalize cigarette taxes because
Speaker 1: and did they know that means raising their great square
Speaker 1: a bit. Joel Bias is also skeptical about cigarette tax reform.
Speaker 1: We're also uh looking at a massively profitable industry that
Speaker 1: makes a lot of jobs, a lot of money, and
Speaker 1: a lot of tax receipts for local, state, and federal government.
Speaker 1: In other words, we can't expect either big tobacco or
Speaker 1: big government to change their stripes. But long term, says Hall,
Speaker 1: it won't matter. Fewer and fewer Americans is a proportion
Speaker 1: of the population eat your smoke. So it's this waning habit,
Speaker 1: and as it wanes, smuggling opportunities will continue to diminish.
Speaker 1: They won't go away, but they will diminish. The percentage
Speaker 1: of Americans who smoke is at an all time low,
Speaker 1: less than fift a half century ago. Before the Surgeon
Speaker 1: General's report, that number was closer to But tobacco is
Speaker 1: not the only harmful substance we have to worry about.
Speaker 1: It's not even the only one threatening ranks of the
Speaker 1: nation's military. Just as the Surgeon General once learned some
Speaker 1: disturbing truths about smoking, researchers today are learning some new
Speaker 1: ones about energy drinks. Back in Fayetteville, North Carolina, where
Speaker 1: authorities found our cigarette smugglers, there's another operation going on
Speaker 1: down the road at Fort Bragg. Just days after President
Speaker 1: Trump ordered the killing of Iron's top military leader, about
Speaker 1: thirty d U S Service members are now being deployed
Speaker 1: to the Middle East, and at times like these, volunteers
Speaker 1: and groups like the U s O spring into action. Well. Today,
Speaker 1: hundreds of community members came together to make care packages
Speaker 1: for military men and women. It's all part of a
Speaker 1: brigade created a care for those serving overseas. Donations are
Speaker 1: gathered and volunteers as symbol for packing parties. About four
Speaker 1: hundred people gathered in a church gym to bring donations,
Speaker 1: pack boxes, and write heartfelt letters. A wide variety of
Speaker 1: items can make it in of the packages, from trail
Speaker 1: mix and toothpaste to socks and sunblock. Another item you
Speaker 1: often see energy drinks. More than five cases of donated
Speaker 1: energy drinks were shipped off to troops in connection with
Speaker 1: the recent deployment from Fort Bragg. It's a well intentioned gesture,
Speaker 1: but it's one that can lead to some devastating consequences.
Speaker 1: We were doing this study with soldiers. This is Dr
Speaker 1: Amy Adler. She's a research psychologist with the Walter Reed
Speaker 1: Army Institute of Research, and we happened to have them
Speaker 1: in military classrooms, battalion classrooms, and they were sitting at
Speaker 1: their desks and as we were handing out our surveys,
Speaker 1: we noticed that at the top of almost every soldier's
Speaker 1: desk were energy drinks. And just looking out across all
Speaker 1: the soldiers, it seemed really amazing to me and to
Speaker 1: the team that there were so many energy drinks present
Speaker 1: in the room. And why do soldiers drink so many
Speaker 1: energy drinks? You know, they want to perform at their
Speaker 1: us they want to be able to function under conditions
Speaker 1: of restricted sleep. So energy drinks really offer an opportunity
Speaker 1: to kind of boost their performance when they are sleep deprived,
Speaker 1: and energy drink makers know they have a good market
Speaker 1: with soldiers. Even the packaging of brands like Rip It
Speaker 1: reflects why these drinks could be popular among soldiers. One
Speaker 1: can of camouflage, another in stars and stripes. Each can
Speaker 1: of Rip It also featuring a silhouette of an American
Speaker 1: hero on the battlefield, and it works. The energy drinks
Speaker 1: are enormously popular among soldiers, maybe too popular, amy Addler.
Speaker 1: More than seventy of the soldiers we surveyed reported drinking
Speaker 1: at least one energy drink sometime in the past month
Speaker 1: and said that they drink an energy drink daily. But
Speaker 1: the even more alarming number was the percentage of soldiers
Speaker 1: who had had two or more energy drinks per day.
Speaker 1: And that's one in six or of the soldiers who
Speaker 1: we surveyed, So that's a sizeable group, and that's a
Speaker 1: lot of energy drinks and consuming that amount had some consequences.
Speaker 1: So we found that for those soldiers drinking two or
Speaker 1: more energy drinks per day, that they were more than
Speaker 1: double at risk for reporting depression, anxiety, post traumatic stress disorder,
Speaker 1: alcohol misuse, and aggression, even after we controlled for things
Speaker 1: like rank and sleep problems. And one of the studies
Speaker 1: most surprising findings was related to sleep drinking high levels
Speaker 1: of energy drinks was associated actually with more fatigue and
Speaker 1: not less fatigue. That's right, energy drinks made those who
Speaker 1: drank them even more tired. Now, there's no evidence to
Speaker 1: suggest that energy drinks are as harmful as cigarettes, but
Speaker 1: that shouldn't stop us from taking to heart the lessons
Speaker 1: of history. Just as their well meaning counterparts in the
Speaker 1: Y m c. A. Distributed billions of cigarettes to soldiers
Speaker 1: a century ago. Scores of earnest volunteers and army officials
Speaker 1: today are sending off crate after crate of energy drinks
Speaker 1: to soldiers, and we ought to know better than that
Speaker 1: by now. I think if people know about the risks,
Speaker 1: then they can make good decisions. And really, in terms
Speaker 1: of what the military can do, the military can can
Speaker 1: inform soldiers about the risk, they can inform healthcare providers
Speaker 1: about the risk, they can inform leaders, so leaders are
Speaker 1: armed with this kind of information. We still had time
Speaker 1: to do something about the problem of abusing energy drinks.
Speaker 1: We have the science and the lessons of history to
Speaker 1: guide us, but we really didn't have that luxury when
Speaker 1: we were confronted with cigarettes a century ago. You know,
Speaker 1: as much as I want to stand and judge and
Speaker 1: say Oh my gosh, Joel Bias. Again. We have to
Speaker 1: judge people for their own time, you know, and people
Speaker 1: would judge us as well a hundred or two hundred
Speaker 1: years for for for our own time. People are products
Speaker 1: of their time, and so I think that that's the
Speaker 1: tragedy of the irony of history. What did we learn
Speaker 1: today about the tragedy and irony of history? One? The
Speaker 1: y m c A is responsible for more than just
Speaker 1: your local basketball league, way more. Two. Well, the y
Speaker 1: m c A and the U. S. Army were handing
Speaker 1: out cigarettes to American soldiers in World War One. The
Speaker 1: French Army was operating state sponsored brothels for its soldiers.
Speaker 1: That probably explains a lot of the difference between our
Speaker 1: two countries. Three, too many energy drinks can make you
Speaker 1: even more tired. And finally, if you want to save
Speaker 1: a lot of money and avoid sponsoring terrorism, don't smoke
Speaker 1: at all unless you're a doctor of course. Flashback is
Speaker 1: written and hosted by me Sean Braswell, senior writer and
Speaker 1: executive producer at Ozzie. It was produced by Robert Coulos,
Speaker 1: Tracy Moran, Fiorio Digiza, and Shannon Williamson. Chris Hoff injury
Speaker 1: You at our show special thanks to the crew at
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio podcast Networks, especially Sophie Lichtman and Jack O'Brien.
Speaker 1: Make sure to subscribe to Flashback on the I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Flashback is
Speaker 1: the latest podcast from Ozzie, a modern media company producing
Speaker 1: original TV series, festivals, news and podcasts for curious people.
Speaker 1: Ozzie's unique storytelling focuses on the new and the next,
Speaker 1: whether that's forward looking news and features, bold new perspectives
Speaker 1: on TV or brand new ways of looking at history.
Speaker 1: Here's one final thought from my lecture notes for this episode.
Speaker 1: Saddam Hussein's firstborn son, Uday was a lot of things.
Speaker 1: A playboy, a rapist, a brutal killer as head of
Speaker 1: a Rocks World Cup soccer team, even tortured players who
Speaker 1: played badly. But there was perhaps one thing Day was
Speaker 1: beyond all others. A cigarette smuggler. During the late ninety
Speaker 1: nineties and early two thousands, at a time when a
Speaker 1: Rock was under un sanctions, he was pulling in up
Speaker 1: to ten million dollars per year for himself and his
Speaker 1: father's regime by trafficking in illegal cigarettes. Day and his
Speaker 1: brother say were killed by US forces in two thousand
Speaker 1: and three, but you can still see Uday's gold plated
Speaker 1: assault rifle today. It's location the JFK Special Warfare Museum
Speaker 1: on Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, North Carolina. To dive deeper,
Speaker 1: head to AUSI dot com slash flashback. That's oz y
Speaker 1: dot com slash flashback. There you can find some of
Speaker 1: my lecture notes from today's episode, featuring extended interviews, links
Speaker 1: to further reading and more information on the surprising history
Speaker 1: of cigarettes, as well as links to other hidden stories
Speaker 1: from history uncovered by me and other reporters at AUSSI.
Speaker 1: We all need a break from the constant cycle to
Speaker 1: learn something new, to gain new perspectives. The Great Courses
Speaker 1: Plus streaming service is an excellent resource to expand our
Speaker 1: knowledge on a variety of subjects or pick up a
Speaker 1: new hobby. I've been enjoying the Great Courses Plus while
Speaker 1: researching this season of flashback lectures like Playball, the rise
Speaker 1: of Baseball is America's pastime, History of the Supreme Court,
Speaker 1: and Battlefield Europe have helped me connect the dots on
Speaker 1: several stories from history. Right now, they're giving our listeners
Speaker 1: a special, limited time offer a free month of unlimited
Speaker 1: access to their entire library. Sign Up now through our
Speaker 1: special u r L go to the Great Courses plus
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