# Two questions re pr-1964 smoking health hazard awareness **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 31, 2022, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-questions-re-pr-1964-smoking-health-hazard-awareness/968889 "2022-07-31T20:51:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Moriarty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/moriarty/32/49_2.png) [@Moriarty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moriarty)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2022, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-questions-re-pr-1964-smoking-health-hazard-awareness/968889/41 "2022-08-01T23:15:27Z")
Theodore Roosevelt was a sickly child who suffered from asthma. It was actually a reason why he later embraced physical activity (what he dubbed “the strenuous life”) once he grew up. When he was a kid (he was born in 1858) one “treatment” was to have him smoke a cigar. I guess the coughing fits were presumed to be helping. It’s only an anecdote, but it does reflect that there was sometimes a warped positive view of childhood smoking. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2022, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-questions-re-pr-1964-smoking-health-hazard-awareness/968889/42 "2022-08-02T00:50:43Z")
I don’t know if the OP has seen this recent thread, but it’s not too far off the same topic: > [@Why does anyone today under seventy years old smoke cigarettes?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-anyone-today-under-seventy-years-old-smoke-cigarettes/960990): > > The Surgeon General’s report on the dangers of smoking came out in 1964. That means if you are under seventy today, you have known about the dangers of smoking since you were twelve, or younger, or all your life. Assuming most people don’t start smoking prior to their twelfth birthday, why is anyone under seventy smoking cigarettes in 2022? Why would you start the habit in the first place, given all the warnings? If I had lived in the mid-1960s, I would have assumed that cigarette smoking wo… ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2022, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-questions-re-pr-1964-smoking-health-hazard-awareness/968889/43 "2022-08-02T00:56:11Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > However, Cig smoking (the most deadly) wasn’t all that common until ww2, It’s hard to find good data on that. [This paper, Cigarette Smoking Behavior in the United States,](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwi8t83N9qb5AhXhMVkFHW-VCCAQFnoECCgQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fcancercontrol.cancer.gov%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2F2020-08%2Fm08_2.pdf&usg=AOvVaw1XXF7qTwqWLlkBnPECeeCW) shows cigarette usage soaring starting in 1940, with the period from 1945 to 1965 at peak. But it also shows cigarettes with steep growth continually from 1910 to 1930, a slight drop at the beginning of the Depression, and then an almost vertical curve until 1940. The paper credits the steep growth to the marketing of cigarettes to women in the 1930s, especially the Lucky Strikes “Reach for a Lucky instead of a Sweet” campaign. I don’t doubt that WWII increased smoking. When it became “common” is something people can have nice long arguments about. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2022, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-questions-re-pr-1964-smoking-health-hazard-awareness/968889/44 "2022-08-02T01:06:19Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > But it also shows cigarettes with steep growth continually from 1910 to 1930, a slight drop at the beginning of the Depression, and then an almost vertical curve until 1940. Yes, as I said "The first surge in smoking occurred due to the Spanish Flu epidemic, since chaw and thus spitting was considered a cause of it. Before that, men smoked pipes or especially cigars, and did smokeless. " Starring around then, there was a long and fairly constant climb up. Try “The Golden Holocaust” by Robert Proctor. ---
**Author:** ![Isilder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/cc9497/32.png) [@Isilder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isilder)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2022, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-questions-re-pr-1964-smoking-health-hazard-awareness/968889/45 "2022-08-02T01:23:38Z")
An article published in 1921 , quoting british Surgeon Sir James Cantile … ( He thought tea and coffee were poisonous even worse than tobacco though, just an example of how people could turn things around to say it was even good… prevents caffiene addiction, geeze thats one steep slippery slope that caffiene addiction… probably because he treated palpitations as a sign of imminent heart attack. Or had some info on the failure of caffiene as a treatment for someone with heart disease… > **[LEATHER LUNGS OF SMOKERS. - TOBACCO EFFECT ON HEART ACTION. - Geraldton...](https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/66511786?searchTerm=cigarrette%20health%20effects)** > > "Tobacco is one of the four social poisons—tea, coffee, tobacco, and alcohol. But it is the least harmful of them all. This oponion, which will ... Cigarettes, he said, stained the lungs in the same way as they stained the fingers. A man who constantly smoked cigarettes became ‘leather lunged’ and short winded. … ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2022, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-questions-re-pr-1964-smoking-health-hazard-awareness/968889/46 "2022-08-02T01:24:32Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > A newspaper search found candy shops selling candy cigarettes back to 1889. I remember candy cigarettes being handed out as prizes at my grade school carnival. The box held four, they were peppermint flavored and stained pink at one end to simulate the cherry. ---
**Author:** ![md-2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@md-2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md-2000)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2022, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-questions-re-pr-1964-smoking-health-hazard-awareness/968889/47 "2022-08-05T16:36:30Z")
I remember those candy cigarettes back in the 60’s - there were probably a dozen or more in a cigarette-pack-looking box but were about half the size of real cigarettes, white candy with a red tip. But then one form or licorice was shaped like a pipe with red sprinkles to simulate the burning tobacco. It was considered “cute” I guess, but when over half of men smoked, it wasn’t a scandal. Children were told “smoking stunts your growth”. I wonder if it was less of an issue back then, because (as one doctor said about prostate cancer on _Frankie and Grace_ ) “The good news is something else will probably kill you first.” Cancer has only become a major fear over the last half-century as so many other killers have been controlled. We have better medicine for surviving heart attacks; childhood killers like polio are gone (theoretically). We have antibiotics and other treatments against common killers of the elderly. Both my great uncles and my one grandfather died in their 60’s from weakened hearts due to scarlet fever; the other grandfather also had a heart attack in his 60’s. My father and uncles lasted into their 90’s. (None smoked) Back in the day cancer was a minor risk among many things that could kill you, some like contagious diseases, not easily avoided. As the risk from other issues diminished and people lasted longer - so more likely to develop cancer from bad habits - it has become a more prominent killer. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2022, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-questions-re-pr-1964-smoking-health-hazard-awareness/968889/48 "2022-08-05T17:48:32Z")
While looking for something else I stumbled across _Sponsor_ magazine, a trade mag for radio and television advertising in the early 50s. Things were both very different and incredibly the same back then. Anyway, the December 17, 1951 issue had an article titled “Is today’s rash of cigarette claims harmful to all advertising?” Apparently, cigarette companies had discovered negative advertising and were blasting one another by name. The gist of the ads was that X brand wasn’t healthy even though they claimed it was. "The public was barraged with a mumbo-jumbo of chemical terms, percentages, bar graphs, medical reports, irritation tests, and the inevitable white-clad physician peering somberly through a microscope. An industry _bon mot_ was, “Nowadays you’ve got to quote either the _American Medical Journal_ or _Reader’s Digest_.” (The Digest was anti-smoking. A year later, according to an [online article](https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/01/05/historic-smoking-report-marks-50th-anniversary/4318233/) “A widely read article in Reader’s Digest in 1952, “Cancer by the Carton,” contributed to the largest drop in cigarette consumption since the Depression.”) A spokesman for Philip Morris said, “What most concerns us is that 2,000,000 people converted to Philip Morris because of our hardsell ‘nose test’. It works. In a way, smokers, are like drunkards; they have a guilt feeling about the habit. So you have to sell them on the idea that the cigarette you offer them is _less_ harmful than others.” If cigarette companies concentrated their advertising on this subject, several conclusions follow. The big one is that smokers knew that the habit could be unhealthy _generally_ but were easily persuaded that their _individual_ habit wasn’t as bad, so they didn’t have to think about it. The companies introduced filter-tipped cigarettes to the broad audience in 1954, giving another reassuring pat on the back. It took another decade for the anti forces to gather around the Surgeon General’s Report of Jan. 11, 1964. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2022, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-questions-re-pr-1964-smoking-health-hazard-awareness/968889/49 "2022-08-05T19:24:42Z")
[Candy cigarettes are still available.](https://www.amazon.com/Worlds-King-Size-Candy-Cigarettes/dp/B01BD0V2PC) If you heard they were banned it only resulted in removing the word “cigarette” from the package. They may not be readily recognizable to children who haven’t seen their parents or anyone smoking on TV, but for anyone exposed to smoking it’s obvious what they are meant to look like. It’s a good sign to see they are uncommon now. ---
**Author:** ![veryfrank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/87869e/32.png) [@veryfrank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/veryfrank)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2022, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-questions-re-pr-1964-smoking-health-hazard-awareness/968889/50 "2022-08-05T19:28:51Z")
> [@Slithy\_Tove](#): > > I’m not sure if he coined the term “coffin nail,” but I do remember reading the term in an O. Henry short story. I’ve always been partial to “lung dart” myself. (never been a smoker, I should mention) ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2022, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-questions-re-pr-1964-smoking-health-hazard-awareness/968889/51 "2022-08-05T23:06:45Z")
> [@veryfrank](#): > > I’ve always been partial to “lung dart” myself. Oh, so that’s why they call 'em “darts” on _Letterkenny_. ---
**Author:** ![Banksiaman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banksiaman/32/3334_2.png) [@Banksiaman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banksiaman)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2022, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-questions-re-pr-1964-smoking-health-hazard-awareness/968889/52 "2022-08-06T01:27:04Z")
The Australian version was called [Fags](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FADS_Fun_Sticks) [trad. slang name for cigarettes]. When political correctness went mad the branding was changed to Fads. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-questions-re-pr-1964-smoking-health-hazard-awareness/968889.md?page=2)