Is it generally true that smoking became common for men during WWI? Is this when it really grew in popularity? What might be the reason for this? Were cigarettes given away free during the war? Whose decision was that?
And what about for women? Was this Hollywood driven after WWI?
You mean cigarette smoking, right?
Yes, did I forget to mention that or did I need to mention that?
Probably very soon after humans first tried it – addiction to this drug is a very quickly acquired addiction.
American Indians were using it extensively, and it was even used as ‘money’ in transactions.
King James I issued a proclamation “A COUNTERBLASTE TO TOBACCO, the manifold abuses of this vile custom …”. This was in 1619. Sir Frances Drake & Sir Walter Raleigh had brought back tobacco from the new world to England in the 1590’s, so it took only 30 years to become common enough for the King to attack it.
Regarding the acceptability of women smoking in modern times: A guy named Edward Bernays, sometimes called “The Father of Public Relations” undertook a campaign in the 1920s on behalf of the American Tobacco Company to make it acceptable for women to smoke in public, and expand his client’s customer base. He made it an emancipation issue, equating cigarettes to “torches of freedom”, and loading his message with a good bit of sexual suggestiveness as well (he was very influenced by the work of Sigmund Freud, whom he was related to). The campaign was one of the early triumphs of his career. In fairness to Bernays, in the 1920s he could not have known how much of a health risk tobacco was. He probably figured it wasn’t exactly good for you, but that was true of a lot of things. Several decades later, in response to medical studies, Bernays lobbied unsuccessfully for the advertising industry to stop promoting tobacco.
I’m positive we’ve done this many times, but the obvious keywords bring up nothing and the five-minute wait between searches has the positive effect - for the hamsters, at least - of making me quit in frustration early on.
A quick summary.
The OP appears to equate smoking with cigarettes. While logical today, this is historically backward. Pipes and cigars were the most popular forms for centuries. While few women were allowed, culturally, to smoke, many in the lower classes and in low-esteem professions like acting always smoked alongside their men.
Cigarette smoking didn’t take hold until commercial mass-production rolling machines were invented after the Civil War. Cigarettes were at first considered to be somewhat effete, especially if you didn’t roll your own, but with time they became more common because they were also cheaper.
IIRC, cigarettes were given free to the troops in WWI, over the objections of those who were already yelling about introducing them to the availability of other European vices, like wine and women.
Smoking increased after the war among men and with the anything goes 1920s, even the modern emancipated women started smoking alongside, especially in speakeasies. Pretty soon a cigarette was the expected accompaniment for anyone with any pretense at style or sophistication or rebellion or appearing grown-up. Cigarette advertising boomed simultaneously, with advertisers aiming at women saying “not a cough in a carload” or “reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet.”
Stage actresses and actors started using cigarettes in shows as soon as they could. Many of them smoked because it was part of their culture. Not having to give it up for a long play eased their addiction. And being able to use a cigarette as a prop - finding one, asking for one, lighting one, smoking one, waving one around - gave the actors bits of business that made everything look more natural. They took their habits out to Hollywood where it seemed that everybody smoked. Cigarettes were already known to help keep people thin. Hollywood was an influence, but one among hundreds.
It’s not clear what the true smoking rate was at any time. Some religious groups banned smoking. Some people didn’t like it, or couldn’t afford it, or hated the smell. Women always smoked in smaller numbers than men, and men continued with pipe and cigar smoking that far fewer women ever took up. Certainly half the population smoked, but the percentage would be far higher in some times and places and settings and groups.
Anybody who somehow missed getting hooked found that cigarettes were given out like ammo to one and all in WWII. Some people claim that the lung cancer rate soars after the war because so many young soldiers got hooked. You still saw doctors advertising cigarettes into the 50s, so despite their reputation as coffin nails, smokers could close their eyes to reality for another decade, until the Surgeon General’s Report of 1964 made it impossible to deny except by true denial.
Smoking has receded tremendously since I was a kid, but about a quarter of the American population - disproportionally young and poor - smoke today. One more generation of making smoking tough to do, hideously expensive, and socially undesirable may be enough to bring on the death throes. Culture usually laughs at predictions like that one, though, so some unexpected twist is surely waiting.
Thanks for that and you bring up a good point about lung cancer rates. Is there a possibility that lung cancer rates skyrocketed due to better detection methods?
Cigarettes were popularized in Western Europe after the Crimean War by soldiers who’d aquired them from their Turkish allies. Still, the British preferred Virginia to Turkish tobacco, so Yankee ingenuity resulted in machine-rolled butts.
(of course, the word “Yankee” was never used)
aside: just like those “stuff envelopes at home” jobs, many people including my grandmother used to roll cigars at home.
Not at the kind of rates they were seeing. From a Guardian article about one of the men who proved the link between lung cancer and smoking
The distinction was needed because ciggies are a quite recent invention. Tobacco was hugely popular in the 17th century, but all smoking was done with pipes.
From Francis Beaumont’s Knight of the Burning Pestle, 1607.
In the Prologue, the City Wife (an actor planted in the audience) is pushing her way to the stage to demand that her apprentice boy be included in the play. As she comes forward she comments:
Fie, this stinking tobacco kills
men. Would there were none in England. –– Now, I pray,
gentlemen, what good does this stinking tobacco do you?
Nothing, I warrant you: make chimneys o’ your faces.
Clearly the air was thick with tobacco smoke, a vivid demonstration of just how rapidly tobacco caught on in England.
With regard to the perceived hazards of smoking, it’s interesting to note that in Captains Courageous (published in 1897) Kipling has one of the main characters saying that cigarettes are “bad for the lungs” in a way that implies this was a common view of that time.
Calling cigarettes “coffin nails” dates from 1880.
Interesting.
Cite?
Tangential, but interesting: alcoholic drinks as coffin nails: “Silently they walked into the Gaiety bar just as though they were going to order a couple of coffins instead of only two more nails.” (April 4, 1888, Fun), cited in Farmer & Henley’s Slang and Its Analogues (1890–1904); they list the metaphorical uses “to do anything that shortens life; specifically, to drink” from 1823. They mention alcohol and overeating but not tobacco.
I’ve always wondered if the American Indians really smoked peace pipes, and if they did, were they filled with what we consider to be cigarette tobacco? Or could they have been filled with other types of leaves that might have elicited even more peaceful tendencies?
The Online Etymology Dictionary.
I remember reading an American Heritage article that basically dealt with the WWI => cigarette smoking link. A doctor who was an intern prewar told the story about a mentor that called him in to the autopsy room to show him something so rare that the intern may never see it again in his career - lung cancer.