This is something that I’ve wondered about for a while. I was raised by a non-smoking family, and ever since I was a kid I knew it was bad for you. But I don’t know how it was for the rest of the US, especially in households where people smoked.
I’m in my late 30s, and I vaguely remember (or hearing about) the TV ads for smoking being banned. I don’t know what year that was, but it must have been mid-late 60s, or early 70s. I figure, there would be no excuse for people not to have a clue that smoking wasn’t a health cure by then - probably a lot earlier. I am pretty sure that there were rumblings about health risks and smoking for some while - enough for the information to be presented to most everyone. (Whether they took heed after being informed would be up to them.)
A few years back, some of my smoking friends (all 40 or older) insisted that they did not know the health risks of smoking when they started smoking, and now they’re hooked (the poor things) so what can they do? They were trying to play the “victim” card.
I just don’t buy this. But maybe I’m biased. I was raised in a non-smoking environment. I was also raised in S. California, where possibly anti-smoking sentiments started earlier than in other parts of the country. But I estimate that people in their mid-40s or perhaps older (probably 50) should have had some hint that smoking wasn’t good for them before they started. Obviously anyone starting smoking today knows full well what the risks are.
I am not trying to bring up any arguments or big flames about “Those stupid smokers”, or trying to be a flaming, preachy anti-smoker. Whatever you want to do, you do. I’m not started this thread here to argue about it. As long as a smoker doesn’t light up with me while we are in a closed space, I won’t preach about it with them. I just am trying to establish what year it became reasonably well-known that smoking was not good.
So, I’m asking for input, since I cannot speak for all areas of the country, and all ages, or experiences.
If you’re really looking for one: A landmark year might be when the Surgeon General required warnings on cigarette packs.
Tom would be a big help here. Was it 1964?
Truth is, don’t you suspect that anything we forbid our children to do until they grow up indicates an idea that it might not promote health and happiness?
Like coffee or booze?
But I got much resistance from these “playing the victim card” friends, who claimed utter ignorance of the real dangers of smoking when they started. And I’m sure all of them were 10 or under in 1964. They talked about how “all their friends smoked” and that they started too, and now it’s too late…they’re hooked.
I’m not ragging on smokers here, just the ones who claim that they “didn’t know” when TV ads are being banned, and warning labels are being put on the cigarette packs. I mean, puleeze.
I heard that when the settlers in NC and Virginia first started growing tobacco (1600’s?) and smoking was shown to the British royalty, one of them, the king probably, commented on what an unhealthy habit it seemed like and refused to smoke. I don’t remember his name or the exact quote, but I think people have had an intuition that smoking is bad ever since the first cigs were lit up.
Curious George is correct according to the historians at Jamestown, VA. But, the King only didn’t like the smell and referred to tobacco as “stink-weed” (or a name to that effect) until he discovered it was profitable.
You see, the King was quite dismayed that the New World did not hold all the riches imagined, and he saw no use for tobacco whatsoever. That is, until the sales from tobacco changed his mind.
“They’re coming to take me away ha-ha, ho-ho, hee-hee, to the funny farm where life is beautiful all the time… :)” - Napoleon IV
I have some old magazines at home with ads in them which strongly implied that smoking was not only safe but healthy. Several of them even had quotes from doctors saying that smoking after meals helped digestion and that sort of thing. I believe all of these date from the 1930s.
I seem to remember that the warnings on cigarette packs first started appearing around the mid-1960s and I think the advertising ban went into effect by 1970 at the latest.
FWIW, my Dad used to smoke fairly heavily and I remember my Mom telling him a lot about how dangerous it was. This would have been in the 1960s also. (He finally quit smoking about 10 years ago, btw.)
My board got hacked and all I got was this lousy sig file…
There is a difference between intuition and knowledge.
In fact, it wasn’t until the 1950s that anyone demonstrated conclusively that smoking was bad for you. (When I say conclusively, I mean conclusively for the medical establishment and for the Surgeon General of the U.S. Public Health Service, not necessarily for tobacco industry “scientists” and lawyers.)
The conclusive evidence was in the form of a very well done epidemiological study of British smokers. It is now considered a classic. This was good enough for the Surgeon General and convinced the government to put warnings on cigarette packs (1964 sounds about right). I think it took about 25 years before smoking finally lost much popularity in the U.S.
According to this site: http://www.oralchelation.net/heartdisease/ChapterFive/page5e.htm
The Surgeon Generals report on smoking was released on January 11, 1964. The law requiring cigarettes to carry warning labels was passed in '65. Anyone that started smoking after that has no excuse, IMO.
“You can be smart or pleasant. For years I was smart.
I recommend pleasant.”
Elwood P. Dowd
For the record, I’m in my late 40s, so I remember that era.
A lot of the problem is perception. While most of our parents had an inkling that smoking probably wasn’t really good for anyone, it was pretty strongly perceived that it wasn’t really bad, either.
When the Surgeon General’s report was first published (1964? 1965?) I recall that it focused pretty much on lung cancer. Trouble was, not many of us knew anyone with lung cancer, and those who did could point to someone who got it and never smoked (they usually lived next to a factory smokestack)as well as our 95-year old great grandpa, who started smoking when he was 11.
Other risks, emphysema, heart disease, etc., weren’t identified until later. The one thing everyone recognized, chronic bronchitis, was simply called “smoker’s hack” and put in the same category as “housemaid’s knee” or “farmer’s suntan.” Irritating perhaps, but not a health hazard.
Yes, we were all stupid to start smoking even when some of the health risks were known. No, I don’t play the “victim” card for being a smoker. But no, we didn’t know as much about smoking, alcohol, cholesterol, or even e-coliform as we do now.
I understand all the words, they just don’t make sense together like that.
I think as late as the 1950s, doctors appeared in tobacco advertisements recommending menthol cigarettes as being good for your throat, etc. Who else remembers the tunes of the TV ads? “Winston tastes good, like a (click, click) cigarette should.”
“What do you want? Good grammar or good taste?”
I always liked the “show us your Lark pack” Lark commercials myself (the one with the William Tell overture).
(I also remember a commercial for a snack called “Pizza Spins” which used the same theme, at the end of which someone from the Lark commercial shows up saying “I want to talk to you about your music” followed by the Lone Ranger who says “So do I!”.)
My board got hacked and all I got was this lousy sig file…
I heard a '40’s Tex Ritter song (“Smoke, Smoke that Cigarette” ?). IIRC, it talked about them killing you in the song. Sounds like a “common-knowledge” type thing. Just a thought.
They were being called “coffin nails” generations ago, but I think it was only in the 50’s that serious scientific evidence began to mount up. Reader’s Digest used to do stories specifically relating cigarettes and lung cancer all the time.
The Surgeon General’s report was the first official notice, though.
John W. Kennedy
“Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays.”
– Charles Williams
According to pop culture, the great argument parents presented to kids to keep them from smoking, pre-1964, was “It stunts the growth.”
Is this actually true, or was it an Urban Legend?
I also remember that in the Marx Brothers film AT THE CIRCUS (1938), Groucho refers to an overindulgence in cigars leading to “tobacco heart.” A early linkage of nicotine to heart disease?
There was an exhibit at the '62 worlds fair in Seattle about Cancer and tobacco. I was only 5 years old but I rembember it clearly, especially the mice that had big tumors on their backs after being brushed with tobacco juice. Also plenty of shots of black lungs. People knew it was unhealthy, but not as much as they know now. The military did a real disservice to the country by promoting smoking. I attended a briefing by the SG of the Air Force recently and he said many recruits still take up smoking after they join, in spite of all the attention to prevention in the last few decades.
When I went through Boot Camp, lots of people started so they’d have an excuse for a smoke break; those of us that didn’t smoke got stuck in whatever we were doing before the smoke break. (cleaning the head, boring classes, etc).
A doctor started seeing more and more of a strange lung ailment in the 1920’s. In the early part of the century, he’d only seen 2 other cases. Now he was seeing this disease more and more often.
He came upon a correlation: most of his patients with this disease were veterans of World War I. And they smoked cigarettes.
But not many people smoked cigarettes before WWI. Why? Because they were hand-rolled, which was a talent that most tobacco-users didn’t care to learn.
Then during WWI, care packages were sent to the boys at the front. Within them was a new product: machine-rolled cigarettes. When they got home, they were hooked. Their demand for cigarettes is what made big tobacco big.
The mysterious rare disease that wasn’t so rare anymore? Lung cancer.
(gee, I feel just like Paul Harvey.)
Wrong thinking is punished, right thinking is just as swiftly rewarded. You’ll find it an effective combination.
Alright I am with you so far. I seem to remember in High School that some of us use to believe that smoking marijuana was, of course, less harmful than smoking tobacco. Of course it has been widely reported that in fact the opposite is true. Which is really more harmful on a per diem basis, which has the longer lasting over all effects, and which is really worse for you, weed or tobacco?
“What’s right is only half of what’s wrong
and I want a short-haired girl
Who sometimes wears it twice as long”
George Harrison - Old Brown Shoe
