I was wondering about smoking. No, I’m not going to take it up, nothing like that. I just want to know about the American public’s perception on cigarette smoking over the last 100 or so years.
It seems that in older movies (30s, 40s, 50s, and then some), smoking is much more accepted/people were lax about it. But at the same time, wasn’t there a stigma to it? As in, smoking in public was “common,” particularly when done by women. And of course, children were warned off smoking.
Also…when did people learn that it was dangerous to smoke? I’ve read of people alluding to smoker’s cough in books that pre-dated the whole smoking gives you cancer thing. But I’m guessing they had some inkling about the hazards much earlier on.
So, basically I’m asking for the dope on dope. No, wait, the dope on nicotine. Just a rundown on what people thought of cigarettes over the past century.
Ashes to Ashes: America’s Hundred-Year Cigarette War, the Public Health, and the Unabashed Triumph of Philip Morris by Richard Kluger for an indepth discussion about the history of the cigarette industry and how public perception/knowledge changed (it was once thought of as having positive medicinal effects) as more information surfaced about nicotine and cigarettes. Yes, Kluger has a definite point of view, and it can be difficult to slosh through in some parts, but I found the book extremely fascinating.
In <i>Captains Courageous</i>, published in 1911, there is a scene where a boy reaches into his pocket for money and comes up with a cigarettes. The response is “Not lawful currency and bad for the lungs.” So it seems we can conclude that this was a normal attitude 92 years ago.
I am talking entirely about what I recall, going back to about 1945. In those days, I had the impression that nearly all males smoked. Probably false, but that was my impression. I never heard them referred to as coffin nails, but I am not claiming they weren’t. Relatively few women smoked and they mostly did it only indoors. This change is the source of the Virginia ad, “You’ve come a long way baby”. On the other hand, when my father has a heart attack in 1949, his doctor ordered him to stop smoking (he didn’t). But it was not till the Reader’s Digest ran a campaign on the statistics of smoking and cancer around 1955 or 56 that I became aware of the facts. Even so, I think that their report was largely limited to smoking and cancer (primarily lung). By 1960, when my friends and I bummed cigarettes from each other, we would say something like, “Got a cancerette”. The connection with heart disease only gradually entered my consciousness until I had a heart attack in 1965, age 28. I was told to stop smoking and did and I have reasonably well ever since. At least I have kept out of the hospital. But after 1960 I don’t think I ever knew a smoker who didn’t wish he had never started.
One thing I am seriously worried about is that the US might eventually move to ban smoking. I think this cure is likely to be worse than the disease. I am all in favor of banning it in public places, for various reasons, including the health of the barmaids and so on, but banning it will be the war on drugs and prohibition all over again.
The connection between cigarettes and cancer was made in the 50s; the use of “coffin nail” was dealing with other health effects, like shortness of breath.
“The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens”, published in 1933, referred to a book he read when younger (pre-1900) on the harms of tobacco. Health problems with tobacco were known pre-1900.
A Google on Lincoln Steffens finds all sorts of references to an information battle between Steffens and other “muck-rakers”, and corporate suppression via their advertising dollars in the print media.
So some medical types and trouble-makers were aware, but the typical consumer might not have been.
Tobacco is a dirty weed.
I like it.
It satisfies no normal need.
I like it.
It makes you thin
It makes you lean
It take the hair right off your bean.
It’s the worst darn stuff I’ve ever seen.
I like it.
Wending back to the OP from the hijack, yes, smoking and chewing was tainted as lower-class and dirty to a large extent, or at least the kind of thing you had to ask permission to do in someone’s presence or in someone’s house. Sometimes it was just viewed as rough and masculine.
You see references to this in Mark Twain and other American and British fiction, 1800’s probably until the 1930’s and 40’s.
Pre-1800’s I couldn’t say. Someone with more familiarity with books of those areas might be of assistance.
I was read that doctors noticed a rise in lung cancer rate among women in the 1920’s, right when it was getting fashionable for women to smoke.
I’d make a bet that everyone had a good idea that smoking was addictive and risky back then. Then rise of modern nationwide advertising came and smoking became not just a grown-up vice but something “cool”. It is weird to see a movie star in the old movies holding a conversation with a starlet while smoke is coming out of his mouth and nose. “Don’t smoke while talking to me! You asshole!” is what I’d say to him.
I wonder when smoking became a vice again in Hollywood? 70’s ? 80’s?
Ah youth! It is only in the last few years that the whole (scientifically shaky) notion of addiction has become a commonplace of the majority of ordinary folks. For most of the 20th century, “addiction” was a term used mostly in clinical settings.
So no, before the late 20th century people didn’t think of smoking as “addictive.” Until the 1980s or so, it was considered a “habit” (note the lack of moral approbation in the term). After WWII* smoking was widespread enough that few non-smokers objected to people lighting up in their (the non-smokers’) homes. Everyone kept ashtrays for their guests, and smokers rarely asked “Do you mind if I smoke?”
And until the late 1960s, when the surgeon general’s warnings were required on the packages and TV advertising was banned, most people didn’t think of it as especially risky, either. People spoke about “coffin nails” jokingly, and although smokers obviously noticed the shortness of breath that Reality Chuck mentioned, few people thought that smoking would kill them. (Note that even today, the majority of smokers do not die from smoking related illness.)
Keep in mind that before the last half of the 20th century, life expectancy was shorter, so that the effects of smoking were less obvious, because fewer people were living into their seventies and beyond.
Modern American attitudes toward smoking (and eating “unhealthy” foods and, to a lesser extent, drinking) betray the strange puritanical streak (i.e. sticking your nose into other people’s business with a sense of moral superiority) that is, for reasons I don’t entirely understand, unique to the American populace. In my experience, Europeans don’t have the same judgemental attitudes, although they may (unfortunately) be starting to follow the American example is this area.
Lest anyone think I have an axe to grind here, no, I don’t smoke cigarettes, and never have.
A point that no one here has mentioned is that a big boost to smoking occurred during WWII, when the tobacco companies shipped large quantities of free smokes to the troops, who, for obvious reasons, weren’t too worried about the health effects.
Ah, no one’s mentioned my favorite smoking song, “Smoke, Smoke, Smoke That Cigarette” written by Merle Travis and first made famous (I think) by Tex Williams. “When I get to the pearly gates, tell St Peter he’ll have to wait, 'cause I gotta have another cigarette.”