CZM Rewind: Part Two: How Cigarettes Invented Everything

Robert is joined again by James Stout to continue to discuss the Tobacco Industry.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hey everybody, Robert here, just introducing we've got another rerun.
This is the first time we've done two weeks in
a row. Normally we just do one week at the
end of the year. But all of the other shows
on our network and most of the other shows that
I know in podcasting take off two weeks. And Sophie
was like, hey, Robert, why don't you actually take off

(00:25):
two weeks instead of cramming during your vacation to write
another podcast so that we don't fall behind. And I
was like, you know what, Sophie, that's a pretty good idea.
So anyway, that's what we're doing. Enjoy this episode on
how cigarettes invented everything. Should really get that checked out.

(00:52):
Cut me blowing my nose, but keep the yell, keep
the It sounded like a wounded elephant. I feel like
a wounded elephant. The pollen count in Oregon right now
is unbelievable. I just went outside during the break between
episode recordings and emptied a magazine from an AR fifteen

(01:12):
into a tree, but it does not appear to have
solved the problem.

Speaker 3 (01:16):
So, yeah, you gotta gotta get heavier than that, man,
You gotta Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
I should have used the three eight. You know, that's
why they went.

Speaker 3 (01:24):
Yeah, that's that's why the army is up created.

Speaker 2 (01:29):
Yeah you want to fuck up a tree? Yeah you
really want you really want to move closer to that
thirty caliber range.

Speaker 3 (01:36):
Yep, so spoil to you by six point eight tree killer.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
Yeah that's three thirty eight Lappawa baby.

Speaker 3 (01:46):
Yeah, that' fuck up.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
When I was a young man, times like this, right
around near the end of the year, my friends and
I would go out into the woods and we would
shoot down a tree in order to have a bonfire
around it. And that doesn't really relate to the subject
of the episode, but we often smoked cigarettes while doing it.

Speaker 3 (02:06):
Interesting, and it's kind of like shooting down a tree,
isn't it, Because if you're active consumer base, it's a
bit like shooting shooting down a tree.

Speaker 2 (02:17):
Yeah. You just have to hope that they can grow
up faster than you can shoot them shoot them, yeah,
I mean. And it's also what they say about the
human race, because one thing you got to give it
to us is we bred slightly faster than cigarettes were
able to kill us.

Speaker 3 (02:32):
Once again, a win for humanity.

Speaker 2 (02:35):
Yeah, a titanic dub So cigarettes did not get to
have their real moment in the sun until a few
years after the dissolution of American tobacco, which again the
Supreme Court knocks it out in nineteen eleven. Probably somewhere
under ten percent of a merit of smokers and a
much smaller portion of the US population actually smoked cigarettes.

(02:58):
So a pretty small fraction of the US adult population
is smoking still, even even as successful as our old
buddy Duke wasn't getting people to smoke. But the thing
that's going to actually start to change this and really
turn around cigarettes fortunes is the First World War. Now, James,

(03:18):
you've been a trench.

Speaker 3 (03:21):
Yeah, I've been in a couple of trenches, so yeah,
that's no professional reasons.

Speaker 2 (03:28):
Yeah, there trenches are not the cleanest places in the world,
especially if it's raining and their muddy. You wouldn't want
to have a pipe in a trench necessarily, Like you
could smoke a pipe in a trench, but stuff's going
to get in it. That's kind of gross, right, that's
not ideal. Yeah, And when you know, if you're doing
trench stuff, you probably don't have time to sit down
and really smoke a cigar. You know, they take a while.

(03:49):
Cigarettes are the depends on what rank you're at, doesn't
it Once you write right, if you're sitting yeah.

Speaker 3 (03:55):
Yeah, yeah, you get up to the you know, the
field grade officers, you find a cigarette.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
They have plenty of time for cigars, and they have
clean enough areas for cigarette or for pipes. But if
you're a working man in the trenches, the best way
you have to smoke in between getting murdered by German
machine guns is a cigarette. And that's really what causes
a shitload of people to start adopting cigarettes. That's what

(04:20):
actually makes it a mainstream thing. Is World War One.

Speaker 3 (04:25):
Now it goes well with death, It.

Speaker 2 (04:28):
Does go well with death, James. Cigarette adoption had crept
up only gradually prior to this, and it had been
met by this a really active anti smoking campaign the
whole time. It's kind of always noting that the first
twenty years of like the twentieth century, basically from like
the late eighteen nineties to like nineteen seventeen nineteen eighteen,
there's a very active anti smoking campaign in the United States,

(04:50):
and it's powered by a lot of the same voices
who are also fighting for prohibition. There were even bands
on the public consumption of tobacco in some states. In
nineteen ten, a doctor named Charles Peace founded the Non
Smoker's Protective League, advocating for a public smoking band in
America's largest city. In nineteen thirteen, The New York Times
published an op ed opposing the establishment of smoking cars

(05:12):
in the subway. Now, these people we now know are right,
you know, like cigarettes bad, public smoking bad. But they're not. Again,
there's not strong evidence that proves cigarettes cause cancer at
this point. There's not really good scientific studies at this point.
These people are just busybodies, right, Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (05:35):
Right, they can be right for the wrong reasons. Well,
what are their arguments that they well don't like it?

Speaker 2 (05:42):
Yeah, let me let me tell you. Chief among the
voices of small of non smokers is our old friend
of the pod, John Harvey Kellogg, America's good.

Speaker 3 (05:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (05:51):
Kellogg's complaint was quote, smoking has become so nearly universal
among men that non smokers are practically ignored and their
rights trampled upon. Now that means that, like, by being
around cigarette smoke, you're having your rights trampled upon. And yes,
we now know secondhand smoke is seriously bad for you.
At the time we did it. And also, let's be

(06:11):
honest here nineteen seventeen, walking around a city that's still
filled with horseshit and now leaded gasoline fumes from all
of the cars rolling around and industrial smoke from all
of the different fucking coal factories and stuff. Cigarettes are
not your number one health risk.

Speaker 3 (06:27):
Yeah, the end of the thing, number one trampling on
your right side of seventeen.

Speaker 2 (06:32):
Yeah, it's just not the biggest problem. Look, John Harvey Kellogg,
Well he don't give him credit. Yeah, do not give
him credit for being on the right side of history
with this one. So non smokers also, it was not
again because there's not greats there are some of these
people do so ours are ahead of their time and

(06:53):
are saying like, hey, this stuff is has to be
bad for you, and we're going to figure out like
the way in which it's killing people later. A lot
of them are just angry because they think it's gross,
And a huge chunk of them are angry because cigarettes
are popular with women, right because women start smoking. That's
a big part of the anti smoking campaign. In nineteen
oh four, New York State passes a law that makes

(07:14):
it a crime for women to quote, endanger the morals
of children by smoking in their presence. A woman named
Jinny Lasher was charged and sentenced to jail for violating it.
In nineteen oh eight, New York City aldermen passed an
ordinance restricting public smoking by women from the Washington Post quote.
The Sullivan Ordinance made it illegal for restaurant and bar
owners to permit women to smoke in their establishments. The

(07:36):
stated rationale from Bowery moralist and political chieftain Tim Sullivan
was that proper ladies were offended by women smoking, and
it certainly wasn't any kind of attempt by a man
to control women's behavior. Despite the ordinance's short duration it
lasted only two weeks, the sentiment underlying it was held
by others as well. Women smoking was viewed by many
as taboo, associated with what Amanda Amos and Margaretha Haglund

(07:58):
have termed lush and libbid moral behavior. So it is
a good band name, and it's interesting. One of the
things that cigarettes do is they make it. They are
a big part of why it starts to become okay
for men and women to socialize together who are unmarried.
Right in a lot of ways. So one of the

(08:19):
things that is common prior to cigarettes becoming mainstream, after
you have like a big dinner, if you have a
fancy pody, then after dinner, the men will go to
smoke cigars and the women will, you know, go clean
up or something. And increasingly in the early twenties, what starts,
or in the early nineteenth nineteen hundreds, what starts to
happen is after dinner, everybody has a cigarette. And women

(08:41):
didn't smoke cigars, but cigarettes are new, and so it's
not really that weird to a lot of modern people
that women would smoke them. And also there's not women's cigarettes,
so everyone's smoking the same cigarettes, and increasingly they start
doing it in the same places together, unmarried men and
women just hanging out and having a smoke and talking.
This is a big part of this is kind of

(09:03):
in the background of the of the suffrage movement, but
cigarettes do play a significant role in the increasing acceptance
of social equality for women because men and women spend
time together to smoke. Yeah, it makes not a non factor.

Speaker 3 (09:18):
Yeah, yeah, It's definitely a time period when there's generally
this change in gender roles, right with women working in
a first World War and like, well.

Speaker 2 (09:26):
That's yeah, that's another part of it, right, is like
women are taking on men's jobs, why wouldn't they be
able to smoke? And you know, it's a it's a
whole thing. So smokers also started to organize to establish
more public smoking places. Tobacco dealers would often back and
fund local efforts to lobby for smoking cars on trains

(09:46):
or to allow the smoking of cigarettes on the rear
platform of street cars. Within the military, there were strenuous
debates as to whether or not tobaccos should be legal
for soldiers. In nineteen oh seven, the surgeon General of
the Navy had recommended that sailors under twenty one be
banned from smoking cigarettes. This was outrageous to the actual
men of the Navy, and one enlisted man wrote this

(10:07):
in response, If this cigarette recommendation has made the rule,
and such a thing as ordered, it's gonna put all
us young fellows who like them on the beam. It's
all right to talk about your cigars and your pipes,
but cigarettes are cigarettes, and when you once get to
liking the little sticks, there's nothing that can take their place.
Then don't forget that life on the ocean with none
of your women, folks or girlfriends around to break the monotony.
Is a lot different from life ashore. And I tell

(10:29):
you those dream sticks help you pass away Miniga, dreary
and homestick hour. Just a bunch of navy boys, no
women around, sucking down dream sticks.

Speaker 3 (10:41):
Dreamsticks.

Speaker 1 (10:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (10:42):
Direct quote from Joe Biden's speech about pardoning people with marijuana.

Speaker 2 (10:48):
For dream sticks. In an unrelated note, I saw a
picture of Joe Biden with a quantum computer the other
day and it just struck me as the most wrong thing.
It's like looking at Winston Churchill with a game boy. Know,
those aren't supposed to be in the same photograph. And
Joe Biden should never have lived to see a quantum computer.

Speaker 3 (11:05):
It's like seeing a diplodocus for Tamagotchi hang it out
and yeah, yeah, I expect.

Speaker 2 (11:10):
No, that's not okay, that's not okay. So opposition to
cigarettes in the military disappeared overnight once the United States
got into World War One. Much of this had to
do with black Jack Pershing, the leader of the American
Expeditionary Force, who, when asked what Americans could do to
support their soldiers going overseas gave this reply. You asked

(11:32):
me what we need to win this war. I answered,
tobacco as much as bullets.

Speaker 3 (11:37):
Oh great, it's so true.

Speaker 2 (11:39):
It is.

Speaker 3 (11:40):
Yeah, yeah, we've spoken about this before, but the universal
truth of conflict journalism that if you need something and
you're not sure that someone's going to give it to you,
you can probably get it by giving someone enough cigarettes.

Speaker 2 (11:51):
I keep packs on me every time I'm anywhere near
because like it's not always just getting something. Some of
it is like you meet people and their stand on
because like I don't know, they're fucking soldiers in a
war zone whose daily life involves dealing with horrible trauma,
and they don't know you. And then you like bust
out some Marboroughs and you sit and smoke for like
twenty minutes together, and then they just start talking. You know,

(12:13):
like that's a thing. They're useful, yeah.

Speaker 3 (12:16):
Work, Yeah, they're a great tool for journalism.

Speaker 2 (12:20):
Well, they're also in terms of how they're being used
that's not unhealthy by the military, because cigarettes spoilers make
you worse at everything that is important for soldiers, almost everything.
Right today, US soldiers who smoke score an average of
thirty five points lower on PT tests. Cigarette smoking harms
your night vision, like it's bad for your performance. Yes,

(12:41):
they are bad for your performance in combat. In addition
to like people get shot smoking cigarettes cherries.

Speaker 3 (12:47):
Right, that happens for sure.

Speaker 2 (12:49):
But one thing they do is they are a stress reliever.
And we can debate in the long term it's not
a great coping strategy, but if your daily job is
to get shot at repeatedly, you don't care about the
long term. You just went like a moment where things
feel okay.

Speaker 3 (13:03):
Yeah, there is not a long term for a lot
of people in World War One.

Speaker 2 (13:06):
No, no, especially not. And the other thing that they
do is, as we just talked about, people bond while smoking.
It's a part of why men and women. It's a
way in which men and women start to bond socially
in a way they had not in a long time
in Western society. And soldiers in the trenches bond sharing smokes. Yeah,
it is a thing that you do with each other
and you can't Number one, this is a thing I

(13:28):
don't think the tobacco industry could have anticipated because it's
just a very human thing. And it's also you can't
fight this like there's nothing to do about it. It's
just a thing that people have adopted for themselves in
a difficult time. And so this is a this is
a problem for the anti smoking people. Obviously smoking again

(13:52):
very bad for everything else that makes you be a soldier,
But soldiers are not thinking about that in the times
when they're smoking them, and in a lot of military
planners cases like they're also it's hard to argue even
though you've got people who are in the medical profession
for the military being like these probably aren't good for people.
It's hard to argue that like a guy who you're

(14:13):
asking to run at a machine gun nest doesn't deserve
to have like a cigarette. Yeah. Yes, And you know,
if you know America, you know that love for our
military is basically the not so secret control level lever
for the American mind. So cigarettes had been controversial prior
to World War One, but once we start sending men
in the field and pershings like we need cigarettes. Organizations

(14:36):
that had previously lobbied nationwide for smoking bands like the
YMCA prior to World War One. The YMCA is a
massive part of trying to ban public smoking as soon
as the war starts they start shipping palettes of cigarettes
to the battlefields.

Speaker 3 (14:51):
It's great entry for so long. You can just put
the support of the troops stank on anything and people
will love it.

Speaker 1 (14:59):
Here.

Speaker 2 (15:00):
It's it's interesting. In the cigarette century, Alan Brandt writes,
volunteers organized smoke funds to collect donations to assure that
the troops had adequate supplies of cigarettes. The Sun Fund
A massed one hundred and thirty seven million cigarettes in
a two month period. Tobacco may not be a necessity
of life in the ordinary sense of the term, explained
The New York Times, but it certainly lightens the inevitable

(15:21):
hardships of war as nothing else can do. The National
Cigarette Service Committee collected the names of soldiers without families
to make sure they received cigarettes. Volunteers prepared packages for
shipment to the troops under the auspices of groups such
as the Army Girls Transport Tobacco Fund. That's sweet, yeah.

Speaker 3 (15:43):
Yeah, amazing. I'm sure these people were also like dying
of trench foot and would have really appreciated like a
new pair of socks.

Speaker 2 (15:49):
Yes, socks probably also would have gone over well yeah coat,
I mean, I assume the military was already attempting to
provide those things, Like, it is new that you would
provide cigarettes as the military.

Speaker 3 (16:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (16:02):
So, in the early days of the war, the US
war effort, I should say, the fact that most aid
organizations in Europe provided cigarettes to soldiers for a fee,
often substantial, regularly made the news back home. Soldiers are like,
we're paying as much for a cigarette at the front
as we have to pay back at home. Like, that's
kind of fucked up.

Speaker 3 (16:21):
Now.

Speaker 2 (16:22):
Donated cigarettes were only able to solve a small portion
of this problem. One hundred and thirty nine million cigarettes
is not a lot. If you know anything about cigarettes,
that's not very many. Sounds like a lot. It is not.
A fucking army in the field will smoke through one
hundred and thirty nine million cigarettes quicker than they'll go
through that many bullets.

Speaker 3 (16:43):
Yeah, that is true.

Speaker 2 (16:45):
Donated cigarettes only, yeh, solved a small number of the problems.
So the War Department had to make the decision to
issue tobacco rations to soldiers starting in May of nineteen eighteen.
The New York Times wrote of the decision, quote, a
wave of joy swept through the American Army.

Speaker 3 (17:02):
Great and them have it.

Speaker 2 (17:04):
War fever means a temporary end to the anti smoking movement.
Many men who had hated cigarettes prior to the war
had become addicts while overseas, right they you know, they're
big hygiene guys before and then they get shot at
and they have a smoke in the fucking trench with
their buddy, and then you know, for the rest of
their lives they think kindly of cigarettes. And also the

(17:25):
fact that the cigarette is now associated with the hard
bitten trench fighter means that you can't attack the moral
character of smokers the anti smoking movement. They're only smoked
by criminals and not white people, right, and now they're
like they're part of the icon of the heroic soldier. Right.
So in nineteen hundred, again, barely five percent of the
country smoked, or like nineteen oh four something like that.

(17:47):
By nineteen forty and again sorry, in like the start
of the nineteen hundreds, about five percent of the country
who smokes tobacco smokes. Right. By nineteen forty, forty percent
of the United States adult population smokes on a daily
BASEI oh, yeah, it is a huge increase.

Speaker 3 (18:06):
Yeah, that is crazy.

Speaker 2 (18:08):
Average per consumer consumption escalated to in nineteen hundred, Americans
consumed about fifty four cigarettes per person per year. Right,
that's the average for the whole population. In nineteen sixty three,
Americans consume forty three hundred cigarettes per Jesus Christ. Was
not expecting that. That is so many cigarettes.

Speaker 3 (18:29):
Forty three hundred per Jesus Christ.

Speaker 2 (18:34):
That's quite a few cigarettes.

Speaker 3 (18:36):
Yeah, yeah, you're really opting the intake they're going to get. True.
Those Pokemon car collections now, oh.

Speaker 2 (18:42):
Yeah, no, no, a lot of kids are getting a
lot of baseball cards. Yep. You know, those numbers are
drive driven up by all of this. The eleven year
old smoking twelve thousand cigarettes.

Speaker 3 (18:53):
Smoking four cigarettes at once, just burning through an entire
carton in a day. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (19:02):
So this new wave of smokers brought with it changes
in American smoking habits, largely driven by R. J. Reynolds,
president of the Reynolds Tobacco Company. Richard Joshua Reynolds had
been born on July twentieth, eighteen fifty, in Patrick County, Virginia.
His father was a tobacco farmer, and as a young man,
Reynolds worked for his dad's plantation, which absolutely included a

(19:23):
fuckload of enslaved people. R J was just fifteen when
the Civil War ended, bringing with it the first tiny
surge and cigarette usage. He quickly fell in love with
the things, and he turned his father's company into an
industry leading producer. And R. J. Reynolds is different from
Duke in that Duke, when he smokes, smokes cigars right.
He wants to sell cigarettes. He thinks they're a good business.

(19:44):
He doesn't understand them, right. He understands how to get
people to want to buy something. He's a good marketer.
He doesn't really get what people like in a cigarette.
There is nothing that R. J. Reynolds loves more than cigarettes.
This man. You have never loved a human being in
your life the way this man loves the concept of
a cigarette. He is such a cigarette lover that he

(20:07):
attempts to avoid getting into Duke's tobacco trust. Right. He
has his own way. He wants to do things. He
doesn't want to get involved in this trust. He wants
to sell his cigarettes the way he wants to. He
actually gets forced by Duke into the trust because Duke
uses shady methods to buy two thirds of reynolds tobacco
stock to force the company into American tobacco, and despite this, R. J.

(20:28):
Reynolds refuses to work with Duke, and he even secretly
helps the US government build an anti trust case against
American Tobacco. When the Supreme Court broke the trust, Reynolds
had one goal to fuck over Buck Duke and his company.
In nineteen thirteen, he created a new cigarette which featured
a mix of American and Turkish tobacco to create a
blended cigarette. He called this new cigarette the Camel.

Speaker 3 (20:52):
Oh, there is camel cigarettes. Why did he choose camel
because it's Turkish tobacco. I see, you know, Turkey, camels,
two things that are famous, constantly associated with each other.
Just imagine how much better he just called it the
Turkey the Turkey, right, yeah, yes, His angry Turkish nationalists

(21:15):
love love the fact that those two things are sort of.

Speaker 2 (21:19):
Say he should have called it the Greek and then
had just a drawing of the Anatolian Peninsula on it.
They'd be banned there to this day.

Speaker 3 (21:30):
There would have been more wars in twentieth century Europe.

Speaker 2 (21:35):
I'm going to quote now from the cigarette century. To
help distinguish it from its competition, Reynolds offered no promotions.
Smokers realized that the value was in the cigarettes, and
do not expect promotions or coupons, he explained. Against Duke's
earlier advertising devoted to these now traditional promotional devices, Reynolds
went modern. Reynolds committed unprecedented advertising money to promote this

(21:56):
single product, creating a national campaign to make the camel
cigarette a true national brand. In nineteen fourteen, newspapers throughout
the country ran ads several days in succession that announced simply,
the camels are coming. They were followed by a second
wave of ads proclaiming tomorrow there will be more in
this town than all of Asia and Africa combined. Creating
such expectations and their fulfillment would become a central technique

(22:19):
of modern consumer advertising. The third ad portraying the camel
cigarette package read, camel cigarettes are here this advertising campaign
and here The term campaign appropriately reflects the strategic technique
met with unprecedented success. We look at that yeah, yeah,
smart man.

Speaker 3 (22:36):
Yeah, and it is like iconic brand, okay, cigarettes, Like
I know, there are many brands that seem to like
be as iconic as cigarette brands, and its global and.

Speaker 2 (22:46):
Yeah, and this is the start of that part of it, right,
because cigarettes have started to go viral in this but
not necessarily on a brand basis. Right, you do have
kind of some of these early brands, but they all,
like every tobacco company has a bunch of different and
they sell different ones in different regions. Reynolds is the
first guy to be like, no, not only do I
want my company to be the biggest, I want this

(23:07):
one specific kind of cigarette to be everywhere. So when
World War One ended, Campbell accounted for more than thirty
percent of the US cigarette market. Campbell's came into vogue
just as a new generation of female smokers came onto
the scene. These women had traditionally taken male job had
taken traditionally male jobs for men who'd left to fight,
and after helping to save the US economy, they didn't

(23:27):
take well to the argument that them enjoying a smoke
with some sort of sin against femininity from the Washington Post.
Cigarette advertising companies, which at the time primarily employed Mabel
advertising executives, quickly co opted the ideas of independence that
women began to assert at the polls and in the workplace.
They targeted women, conveying the notions that women who smoked
were independent, attractive, and even athletic. Lucky Strikes nineteen twenty

(23:50):
five marketing pitch to women told them to reach for
a lucky instead of a suite, the message smoke and
you'll be thin.

Speaker 3 (23:57):
Oh great, there is.

Speaker 2 (23:59):
Yeah, it's pretty fun.

Speaker 3 (24:00):
Yeah how long that would take?

Speaker 2 (24:03):
And this is number one. One thing that starts to
happen in this is a whole new generation of extremely
skinny female models starts to become popular because of this
Lucky Strike ad campaign they helped to create, like that
that whole great thing, that whole trend.

Speaker 3 (24:18):
Yeah, yeah, body image.

Speaker 2 (24:21):
Now this there's a backlash to this, and there's kind
of a war between cigarettes and the candy industry, and
it's it's very funny that one of the cigarettes that
will come in the market at this time, I think
it might be Marlboroughs. Their advertising campaign is to like
push back at camel by being like, no, cigarettes and
candy are both good for you. You should have your

(24:41):
cigarette and your chocolate. They're a healthy treat. But no,
the candy industry has to be like, the fuck are
you saying about people not eating candy? Come on, we're
not trying to shit on cigarettes.

Speaker 3 (24:53):
Here, they're just too nice, you won't care. And just
when they start making candy cigarettes and reading, well.

Speaker 2 (25:03):
Yeah, this is that. And in this period. One of
the interesting things about candy cigarettes when they first get made,
they're all made with the brands of real cigarettes. So
there'll be cammebl's now not legally they're all illegal. They're
all candy companies using a brand illegally. The cigarette industry
makes a concerted decision to never pursue charges over it,

(25:24):
to never go after them, because they're like, well, if
kids get used to picking up a pack of camels,
that's a win for us. Yeah, Like, there's no downside
to us letting them do this.

Speaker 3 (25:36):
Yeah, it's a win for everyone. Great.

Speaker 2 (25:39):
Yeah. Now, one thing that does happen in the post
war period is that female smokers are an easier target
for anti smoking advocates than soldiers who are you know,
heroic and stuff. When the Eighteenth Amendment gets past banning
the sale of alcohol, moral crusaders like evangelist Billy Sunday
turn their attention to tobacco, saying in one speech, prohibition
is one now for tobacco. The Women's Christian Temperance Union

(26:03):
issued a pamphlet titled Smoking Next. The first success in
this wave of the anti smoking movement came in Utah,
which banned the sale, giving away, or other exchange of cigarettes.
The bill's advocates included the WCTU and and the Mormon Church,
both of which emphasized the moral risks of letting women
be seen smoking. Senator Edward Southwick, who wrote the bill,

(26:24):
quoted US Surgeon General Hugh Cumming, which was his real name,
as saying, if American women generally contract the habit as
reports now indicate they are doing, the entire American nation
will suffer. The physical tone of the whole nation will
be lowered. This is one of the most evil influences
in American life today. The habit harms a woman more
than it does a man. Great, thanks you, Yeah, yeah, yeah,

(26:52):
real smart guy, real comer. Hugh.

Speaker 3 (26:55):
Yeah, there are the names he could have been cursed
with which his first name could have been worse.

Speaker 2 (27:00):
Yeah, but you know what will make you come, James,
Please lend me the sponsors of our podcasts, not their products,
which are a sexual but the actual people who run
an own stock in the companies. Any time you ask for.

Speaker 3 (27:19):
It, that's that's a promise. Yeah, I don't put that
in the old context.

Speaker 2 (27:23):
But ah, we're back. We're talking about come. You know,
every time I talk about come on this show, somebody
gets up in the subreddit and they're like, I wish
they wouldn't make juvenile jokes about come. It's not very funny.

Speaker 3 (27:43):
It's exceptionally funny to make you.

Speaker 2 (27:45):
Yeah, look, I am never going to stop making jokes
about come, and I'm never going to stop telling people
that when Mitch McConnell comes, all that exits his penis
is a mix of dry scabs and spider legs.

Speaker 3 (27:58):
That that well, no juvenile, is still funny.

Speaker 2 (28:01):
It is.

Speaker 3 (28:01):
It's funny and true, exceptionally funny. Yeah, it's true, and
he can sew us over it, will take him to court.
Shows show us the evidence, Mitch.

Speaker 2 (28:10):
Yeah, show us the evidence, Mitch, show us the evidence
that when you come, the dry scabs exiting year urethra
don't make a sound exactly like crabs scuttling on a
soap stone bed. Prove it to me. Prove it to me, Mitch.

Speaker 3 (28:26):
I now physically and will.

Speaker 2 (28:30):
Would you like a cigarette?

Speaker 3 (28:32):
Yeah? I think I've been traumatized on a level. Yeah,
I'd like to shorten my life.

Speaker 2 (28:40):
Yes, well, why don't you reach for a lucky instead
of a sweet.

Speaker 3 (28:44):
That will help me stay maintain my girl physique.

Speaker 2 (28:47):
So as we've just come back, the Surgeon General has
been like, this is going to lower the moral tone
of women. And again, I just so that I'm not mistaken.
Cigarettes are bad. Don't smoke them. These people are technically
in the right, but they're in the right for the
wrong reasons usually, so fuck them. I'm going to quote
again from Alan Brandt here, another supporter of the legislation,

(29:10):
noted that the fingers of our girls are being varnished
with the stains of those harmful little instruments of destruction,
just as earlier opponents of the cigarette had done. Senator
Southwook argued that the use of the cigarette violated the
liberties of non smokers, which is fair, offended moral sensibilities
which is unfair, and polluted public space, which is we'll
call that one mixed. We cannot bring our wives and

(29:31):
daughters to the city, he wrote, and cannot come along
without encountering tobacco smoke everywhere. Is it that saturates our
clothing and nauseates us personal liberty. Ours is as inviolate
or as or should be as theirs.

Speaker 3 (29:43):
Amazing. Yeah, when industry is ripping children's arms off their body.

Speaker 2 (29:48):
Oh yeah, No, people are just burning pure petroleum jelly
in the back of a fucking model ty Yeah.

Speaker 3 (29:55):
Yeah, just pouring some lead into the reserve lead tank.

Speaker 2 (29:58):
Yeah again, fucking nineteen twenty two. Your worst encounter is
not going to be with tobacco smoke in the streets of society.

Speaker 3 (30:06):
The coal burning colonialism factory isn't a problem. It's women
smoking that we need to worry about.

Speaker 2 (30:11):
Now. By nineteen twenty two, sixteen states had banned a
restrict the cigarette sales and promotion, but none of these
restrictions lasted long. The disaster that was prohibition and the
growing number of tobacco addicts made the anti smoking cause untenable.
A chief issue with the fight to restrict smoking was
the fact that it rested mostly on moral panic grounds.
Right again, If all of these people are saying smoking

(30:33):
is horrible for your health, and I'm sure we shouldn't
be doing it, that's one thing. But a lot of
them are being like, well, women shouldn't be smoking. It's
bad for kins to see it it's going to stain
in their hands. They don't have at this point, they
don't have widely agreed upon medical evidence that smoking is
bad for you, And in fact, a lot of doctors
will argue that smoking is if not healthy, then not

(30:56):
a serious harm. It was not as common in this
period for you have doctors be like, smoking clears your lungs,
But most of them tended to be like, well, it's
not that bad for you, right, you know, It's like
it's like it is like eating candy, right, that's what
they It's not like eating candy. Please. I'm not saying
that someone's gonna get really angry at me. I'm just saying,
if you're a doctor in the twenties, odds are rather

(31:17):
than saying smoking is bad for you, saying like, well,
it's probably okay to have the occasional cigarette as part
of a balanced diet or whatever, you know. Right, And again,
doctors are heavily debating as the thirties dawn whether or
not smoking causes cancer. There were studies by this point
that showed a correlation between self reported smoking habits and

(31:37):
lung cancer, and by the nineteen twenties, rates of lung
cancer had started to soar. Given all of this, it
might seem easy to prove a link between cigarettes and
lung cancer, but it's not. All you've got in the
twenties is that there's a correlation between the two. But
obviously cigarettes aren't the only thing that's been introduced to
modern life in the early part of the twentieth century,

(31:58):
Right there's cars now, Suddenly people are getting a whole
bunch of different medications that didn't used to exist. All
sorts of shit is around that just wasn't before. So
how do you know, how do you know think about this?
How can you prove if you're just a dude in
nineteen twenty fucking two, that the thing causing lung cancer
in your friends is the cigarette and not the car

(32:20):
or the fucking fluorescent light bulbs, right, Like, you don't know,
there's not evidence at this point, you know, Yeah, it is.

Speaker 3 (32:28):
Part of this industrial my identity again.

Speaker 2 (32:30):
Yeah, a lot has changed really quickly, and there's actually
there's some surprisingly logical reasons to question the early science.
One doctor and critic over fears of cigarette use. One
of the guys who's arguing against the people saying that
lung cancer and smoking are correlated. One of the things
he says is that, like, well, when we get lung
cancer patients, they have a lung and one they have
a tumor and one lung or the other. Very few

(32:52):
of them have tumors in both lungs. But when you smoke,
the smoke is drawn into both lungs equally. So if
smoking is causing lung cancer, why wouldn't it be causing
it in both lungs at the same time. Obviously we
know that's just the way cancer works. Right, But again,
based on the knowledge at the time, that's not a
bad point to make. Right, he's wrong, but you can
see how a person who is not like in the

(33:13):
pocket of big tobacco could make that stake. Yeah, his
reasoning is not inherently unsound. Right, he's wrong, but not
because he's like again, later all the scientists on the
other side of this will be doing something fundamentally dishonest.
These are just people trying to understand the human body
in a period in which we don't have that much
information about it. Other scientists would argue that the rise

(33:37):
in lung cancer was attributed to the fact that life
expectancy had risen a lot in the first quarter of
the twentieth century, people were getting more weird cancers, they argued,
because people were living longer. Maybe lung cancer has always
been normal once you hit a certain age, and we
just didn't have that many people reaching it. You know, again,
these are not inherently illogical arguments. Now. There were, however,

(33:59):
doctors early on who were who figured out what was happening,
who knew and who put together that there was a
link between smoking and lung cancer, But it took data
a long time to catch up with that. For one thing,
epidemiology is in its infancy in this period of time,
the first small batch studies, and by the late twenties,
we have studies that show a correlation between smoking and

(34:19):
lung cancer, but there's no control group so all they
show it, So there's no group of people who don't
smoke to see what their lung cancer rates are, because
that's not a normal part of medical science. Yet they're
starting to do that. They're figuring out like, oh, yeah,
you should have fucking control groups in your medical studies,
but it's not the thing that you just do. Derigor
At this point in time, it becomes that partly as

(34:41):
a result of this research, and in fact, there's a
nineteen twenty eight article in the New England Journal of
Medicine in which that points out like it shows a
link between smoking and lung cancer, but it also points
out that their study and other similar studies are of
little value without similar studies on individuals without cancer, without
control groups. Right, So part of why that becomes more

(35:03):
common in this period is scientists trying to figure out
if there's a link between smoking and lung cancer. The
scientists to write that nineteen twenty eight study, Herbert Lombard and
paroled during carried out their own small two hundred person
study with a control group, and this is the first
good quality study we have that shows lung cancer. Is
it shows a bunch of things? Number one, I shouldn't

(35:23):
say shows. It suggests a bunch of things. Number one,
It suggests that lung cancer is not a contagious disease.
Which how would you have known that, you know, without psyche,
you don't know that people aren't giving it to each other, Right,
that it's not some weird thing that people got when
they started walking in the Amazon or whatever. Right, how
would you know they know they find they or at
least the data suggests that it's also there's not a

(35:45):
correlation between lung cancer and low quality housing, which was
another thing people didn't know. It's something about the way
we insulate our homes, you know. They also find out
that it's not associated with constipation, which was a thing
that some doc And again we can laugh about that,
but how would you know if you didn't do the study. Yeah.
One of the primary, like damning thing the study finds

(36:06):
is that self reported heavy smokers are twenty seven percent
likely to get lung cancer. This is the first scientifically
solid evidence linking cigarettes to lung cancer. Now, two hundred
person study with a two hundred person control group. That's
not definitive, right, That's enough to justify further research. Sure,
but that's not a huge study. The nineteen thirties are
what we're going to see the first attempts on a

(36:27):
large scale to document the relationship between cigarettes and cancer.
The impetus to this, the impetus for this research actually
comes from one of the few industries that can rifle
big tobacco for sheer evil, the insurance industry. They are
the people who are going to break them because they
see this early research and they're like, wait a second,
we're paying a shitload of money out on all these
fuckers dieing a lung cancer. If cigarettes cause it, we

(36:49):
need to be charging people more if they smoke, right, Like,
they're doing it for evil reasons, but it is important
research cos god' zillar exactly. So one of the chief
drivers of this is a guy named Frederick Hoffman, who
is a statician at Prudential, and Hoffman notices in nineteen
thirty one that a lot of fucking life insurance policies

(37:11):
are being filled for dead lung cancer patients. If smoking
was the cause, then again you're going to need to
restructure the way premiums work. A lot of money is
at stake, which is obviously what interests Prudential. They don't
care about the cost of human life. So the thing
that Hoffman notices is that in nineteen fifteen, the lung
cancer rate stands at about point seven people per thousand people. Right,

(37:32):
about point seven people per every thousand in the population
are likely to get lung cancer. By nineteen twenty, it's
risen to one point one per thousand. It's one point
six per thousand by nineteen twenty four, and one point
nine per thousand by nineteen twenty eight. That means in
thirteen years the rate of lung cancer has nearly tripled.
Now Hoffman is not bound by the ethical constraints of

(37:53):
a doctor, right, he doesn't have to wait until he
has really good data to be like smoking causes lung cancer.
He sees this, he puts two and two together, and
he becomes the first prominent pig figure to publish a
claim that tobacco use is associated with a heightened rate
of cancer and early death. And he's doing it again
to warn insurance companies. A new wave of studies follows,

(38:14):
and as the nineteen thirties gives away to the forties,
the tobacco industry keeps a worried, watchful eye on this
emerging science. They also start exploding their advertising budgets in
order to kind of make up for the increasing talk
in the background about maybe cigarettes aren't so great too
for us. In nineteen eleven, prior to the bust of
the American Tobacco Trust, the entire cigarette industry profited about

(38:36):
thirteen million dollars a year. By nineteen eighteen, the big
five tobacco companies were spending more than thirteen million dollars
every year just in ads. In doing so, they'd helped
create the very language of American culture. And I'm going
to quote from a write up in the Journal of
Marketing Theory and Practice by Richard Pole. Cigarette sellers were
among the most enthusiastic pioneers in the use of network

(38:57):
broadcasting for coast to coast advertising. Nineteen thirty American Tobacco,
Brown and Williamson, P. Lrillard and R. J. Reynolds were
all buying to network radio time. There has been no
greater enthusiasts for radio broadcast advertising the George W. Hill
of the ATC, whose business for the first five months
of nineteen thirty s are pasted all records. The company
sponsors the Lucky Strike Dance Orchestra in three hour broadcasts

(39:20):
each week. Lucky Strike sponsored many radio comedies and musical shows,
such as Jack Benny and the Ka Kaser College of
Music Musical Knowledge, and the best known and longest running
popular musical shows, Lucky Strike's Hit Parade. This show started
in nineteen twenty eight and ran into the nineteen fifties
on television. It featured teen idol Frank Sinatra when he
was launching his career. So popular was this show in

(39:42):
nineteen thirty eight that a sweepstakes promotion offering free cartons
of Luckies for the names of the three most popular
tunes drew nearly seven million entries per week. The Lucky
Strike Hit Parade was the first show to rank popular
music releases in an ongoing basis. This is where we
get the top forty. The entire structure of them musical
industry comes out of Lucky Strikes.

Speaker 3 (40:01):
Hit The Yeah, so they gave us all those crappy
Christmas number one singles, And it seems like podcasts.

Speaker 2 (40:07):
And podcasts we all owe a debt to Lucky Strike
every time.

Speaker 3 (40:12):
You read just saying lucky well in more ways than one,
I see listening.

Speaker 2 (40:18):
Let's let's all give the good folks at Lucky Strike
a solid go ahead and pick out a pack right
now that you don't have to smoke, and give it
to a kid you know they love to smoke. Sophie,
what I'm done with my script. I'm throwing the ads now.
I'm throwing the ads like the good men at R. J.
Reynolds and Laura Lard and the other greats of the

(40:40):
tobacco industry taught me to Sophie, I'm I'm I'm honoring
our ancestors. We're back.

Speaker 3 (40:54):
So we had a cigarette and we're ready to go.

Speaker 2 (40:56):
Cigarettes have now just invented the modern music industry.

Speaker 3 (41:02):
So Lunatic's taken over the asylum house.

Speaker 2 (41:05):
The lunatics had taken over.

Speaker 3 (41:07):
A couple of lucky strikes. They felt better and they
said a sign them.

Speaker 2 (41:11):
Yeah, that's that is a lucky strike, if you ask me.

Speaker 3 (41:14):
So.

Speaker 2 (41:14):
The need to capture smokers young, because market research had
shown that people tended to be brand loyal, also helped
to create the modern conception of ad demographics. Right, advertisers
start learning how to differentiate and split over. You know,
the idea that like the eighteen to thirty five males
is like the most valuable that comes out here, right,
And it's because like those are, that's when you got

(41:35):
to get them fucker smoking right earlier possible.

Speaker 3 (41:38):
Yeah, yeah, it's ready to keep.

Speaker 2 (41:41):
Ideally, I'll like eleven or twelve. They advertise a lot
in colleges, and they also it leads tobacco companies to
steer more and more towards funding children's entertainment. This starts
with the comics pages a syndicated weekly pop collection called
Puck is like massive for cigarette ads, but as Poli
rights and quickly expand beyond that quote. In the nineteen fifties,

(42:02):
many brands used cartoon trade characters in their advertising. The
ads on Lucky Strikes Hit Parade for a while featured
a cute animated character called Scoop, who, through the then
impressive technical feet of superimposition, appeared on a on screen
with the show's star Dorothy Collins. So that's where we
get who framed Roger Rabbit? Motherfucker's cigarettes taught us how
to do that?

Speaker 3 (42:22):
Yeah, gave us avata.

Speaker 2 (42:26):
Philip Morris's us Philip Morris's cartoons when advertising on Philip
Morris used cartoons when advertising on I Love Lucy. Laura
Lard created TV cartoon ads for Old Gold that featured
the voices of their Honeymooners stars Jackie Gleeson and Art Carney.
This presaged the Winston spots that employed the animated hit
characters from The Flintstones, a totally cartoon show they sponsored,

(42:48):
whose voices, structure, and sense of humor all imitated the Honeymooners.
And I think a lot of people are vaguely aware
that The Flintstones used to have cigarette ads. You knew that, right, No, whoa,
that's why it was created. The Flintstones were made as
a cigarette ad. And to get an idea for how
blatant this advertising was, you need to see some old

(43:10):
episodes of The Flintstones, and I think this one includes
a representative scene you should know to understand what's happening
on screen. Right at the start of this, we see
Fred and Barney kind of like hanging out in the
yard on their asses while their wives are doing like
yard work and house chores. So they're like chilling out
and watching their wives work.

Speaker 3 (43:26):
Good stuff.

Speaker 2 (43:31):
They sure work, God, don't they're them work so hard? Yeah?
Me tool and let's go around back. Well, we can't see.

Speaker 3 (43:40):
Him, do we want to do something?

Speaker 2 (43:43):
Fred? Okay, how's about taking on that? I got a
better idea.

Speaker 3 (43:48):
Let's take a Winston break.

Speaker 2 (43:52):
From the cigarette that delivers flavor twenty times a pack
makes the big taste difference, and only Winston has it
up front where it comes here ahead of the pure
white silt Winston packs, rich tobaccos, specially selected and specially Wow,

(44:13):
that's a good flavor. Room. Yeah, it's still going yeah,
like uh cigarette. Uh yeah, that is a lot of
cigarette advertising.

Speaker 3 (44:28):
Yeah. I was. At first, I was appalled by the
records of it, but then just the duration of it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (44:33):
Wow, they really were committed to selling kids cigarettes.

Speaker 3 (44:37):
Yeah. Yeah, whist and also not a great name compared
to the Camel Camel Marlborough. Yeah, just a dude called
Winston with little imagination. Yeah wow, that was amazing.

Speaker 2 (44:49):
Yeah, it's the best. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (44:51):
That is like Alex Jones here just transissued from content
to ads.

Speaker 2 (44:56):
Fucking Barney Rubble wants to get your ass into a
pack of Winston's.

Speaker 3 (45:01):
Yeah, it's going to be doing what is it, fucking
silver or whatever Alex Jokes.

Speaker 2 (45:05):
Is trying to sell you now, colloidal silver? Yes, to
see past that you can shoot up your ass.

Speaker 3 (45:10):
I don't know, yeah, nor do I care. I don't
think our listenership overlapped, so no one else knows either,
So it's fine.

Speaker 2 (45:16):
No, our listeners are buying a lot of gold now
because of those gold ads running.

Speaker 3 (45:20):
Oh yeah, well that's good to say. Success. We have
to get him back to the season.

Speaker 1 (45:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (45:24):
We love we love the gold ad people. You know,
I'm just gonna I'm gonna do a free ad. Right now,
buy gold. It's the cigarettes of currency. Well, actually that's cigarettes.
Gold's almost as valuable as cigarettes and the pinch. So
it pick some up today, smoke it. Why don't you
you know what, James, I have an idea. Why don't
we make a lot of money. We get cigarettes, grind

(45:46):
up gold into them, pour gold flakes into the cigarettes,
and then sell them to rich assholes who have taped.

Speaker 3 (45:52):
Yeah, it's definitely. There's like a thing, isn't it like
a vodka? Don't think that has got.

Speaker 2 (45:56):
Oh yeah, there's a couple of liquors that have.

Speaker 3 (46:01):
Yeah, you may, it's not necessary, Sophie, but I need to.

Speaker 1 (46:04):
Signy so many gold gold unussary gold.

Speaker 2 (46:09):
So you know how there's you know, Robert getting script
poured out some.

Speaker 3 (46:16):
Gold liquor and uh yeah right, I'm back.

Speaker 2 (46:20):
Wrap a cigarette.

Speaker 3 (46:21):
Yeah there was no gold, but I've got my glass
of lead.

Speaker 2 (46:25):
And so during the late forties to the early fifties,
the science coming out about cigarettes and cancer starts to
look worse and worse. The RJ. Reynolds Company launches a
new campaign for camel cigarettes in nineteen forty six, centered
around the slogan more doctor smoked camels than any other
cigarette six years. This is like, this is their main

(46:47):
advertising push for six years.

Speaker 3 (46:49):
Dentist and tooth brush thing with cigarettes.

Speaker 2 (46:52):
Amazing, great, Yeah, absolutely, yes, the cigarette that nine out
of ten doctors recommend. Reynolds backs up their claim that's
more stick doctors smoke camels than any other cigarette, with
surveys that they said had been conducted by quote three
leading independent research organizations. Now they don't name these organizations.

(47:12):
One representative ad claims that a survey of one hundred
and thirteen five hundred and ninety seven doctors from quote
every branch of medicine had shown that Camels were the
brand most often smoked by doctors.

Speaker 3 (47:24):
That's what you want is a cigarette that your pediatrist chooses?

Speaker 2 (47:28):
Yeah, exactly, really, yeah, I want to know. Yeah, nobody,
nobody knows what you should be smoking better than a
fucking proctologist. That that's that's that's who's got it down. Yeah,
as an obstetricians chooses Winston's. Yeah, that would be quite funny.

Speaker 1 (47:48):
Boy.

Speaker 2 (47:48):
Women seem to really want a cigarette after giving birth.
Probably good for you.

Speaker 3 (47:53):
Why don't you drink? So?

Speaker 1 (47:58):
R J.

Speaker 2 (47:58):
Reynolds assured, cutustomers that this survey, which totally existed, was
an actual fact and not a casual claim, and their
competitors were all doing the same thing. American Tobacco present
president George Washington Hill contracted the legendary ad executive Albert
Lasker and tasked him to come up with a reason
why customers should smoke his cigarettes. And I want to

(48:20):
quote now from a write up in the American Journal
of Public Health. With no real scientific evidence to back
their claims, American Tobacco insisted that the toasting process that
Lucky Strikes Tobacco underwent decreased throat irritation. In fact, Lucky
Strikes curing process did not significantly differ from that of
other brands. Related campaigns emphasized that Luckies would help consumers,

(48:41):
especially women, their new market stay trimmed since they could
reach for a Lucky instead of a suite. Along with
these persistent health claims, a typical advertisement from nineteen thirty
boldly stated that twenty six hundred and seventy nine physicians
say Luckies they're less irritating. Good Great now, James, do
you want to know how they'd gotten the information that

(49:02):
Luckies were seen as less irritating by doctors.

Speaker 3 (49:05):
Did they send them a capacut of lucky strikes? And also,
shit they did.

Speaker 2 (49:11):
Yeah. Their advertising agency, Lloyd Thomas and Logan sent cigarette
cartons to physicians in nineteen twenty six, nineteen twenty seven,
and nineteen twenty eight and then asked them to answer
our Lucky strike cigarettes less irritating to tender throats than
other cigarettes. And the doctors were like, yeah, I want
more free cigarettes.

Speaker 3 (49:27):
Sure, yeah, I what's free cigarette bolk school. I'll take
that one, great good. That's how science is done.

Speaker 2 (49:34):
That is how science is done.

Speaker 3 (49:36):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (49:37):
Now, touting the toasting process and the accompanying cover letter,
advertising executive Thomas Logan pointed out the virtues of lucky
strikes and claimed that they had quote heard from a
good many people that they could smoke lucky strikes with
perfect comfort to their throats. American Tobacco used doctor's responses
to this survey in order to push the claim that
lucky strikes are less irritating. The toasting, as they explained,

(50:00):
it is quote your throat protection against irritation against cough.
Thank god, thank god they figured out toasting, Otherwise these
cigarettes might really are hurt people.

Speaker 3 (50:09):
Yeah yeah, yeah, you got to toast them. That's how
you just popic up the cigarettes and your toast it.
Yeah yeah, no counser for you. So.

Speaker 2 (50:18):
Self reported adults smoking peaked in the early nineteen fifties
at about forty five percent of the population. Big Tobacco's
ploy to buy up doctors had worked for a while,
but in late nineteen fifty three, the first irrefutable studies
linking lung cancer to tobacco use were published, to tremendous
public interest. Major peer reviewed journal studies had tied not

(50:38):
just cancer, but cardiac disease and serious respiratory illness to smoking.
The situation was serious enough that the head executives of
the big five tobacco companies all came together in December
of nineteen fifty three to figure out how to respond
to this news. They picked the Plaza Hotel in New
York City as the place to map out their strategy,
and it is possible that no other location in the
United States, including the pentag Gone, has been used to

(51:01):
make plans that ended with a greater death toll. The
master of the moment was John W. Hill, president of
the biggest pr firm in the country. Hill and Knowlton
now John had been born in Indiana in eighteen ninety.
He'd spent most of his early career working as a journalist.
He's a journalist for eighteen years, working his way up
the ladder to become an editor and a popular columnist.

(51:22):
In nineteen twenty seven, he blazed a trail that generations
of soulless hacks would follow, and he decided to start
a PR firm. By the time nineteen fifty three year
rolled around, it was the largest PR firm on the planet.
Hill was worth the money, and in that hotel conference
room he laid out the bones of what would be
known as Plan Whitecoat. The basic idea was to create

(51:42):
an industry sponsored research entity, a think take of scientists
funded by tobacco money but ostensibly independent. This would allow
big tobacco to claim they were taking fears of lung
cancer seriously, while also providing them with disinformation to muddy
the waters by painting the existing studies is insufficient. I'm
going to quote, yeah, it's awesome, it's so good.

Speaker 3 (52:02):
No one's ever done it, since no one.

Speaker 2 (52:04):
This is not this is not the thing that's going
to end all life. On this planet. No, he'll did
not just build the apocalypse bomb.

Speaker 3 (52:11):
Yes, yeah, Jesus Christ. Yeah. Well they've given us everything
from Pokemon cars to fucking timate change.

Speaker 2 (52:17):
It's incredible. Cigarettes are amazing je.

Speaker 3 (52:20):
Yes, wow, yeah, yeah, they are something.

Speaker 2 (52:23):
One of the single most important inventions in the history
of the planet.

Speaker 3 (52:28):
Yeah. God, and people die of starvation. You don't. Here
we are. We've made a cancer steak, and we've we've
created new and exciting ways to lie about it.

Speaker 2 (52:37):
It's amazing, it's so cool.

Speaker 3 (52:39):
I'm kind of close him.

Speaker 2 (52:40):
Who could full it? God, what a great product. I'm
going to quote now from a twenty twelve article in
the American Journal of Public Health. The industry had supported
some individual research in recent years, but Hill's proposal offered
the potential of a research program that would be controlled
by the industry yet promoted as independent. This was a
public relations masters stroke. Hill stood that you're giving Yeah.

(53:02):
Hill understood that simply giving money to scientists through the
National Institutes of Health or some other entity, for example,
offered little opportunity to shape the public relations environment. However,
offering funds directly to university based scientists would enlist their
support in dependence. Moreover, it would have the added benefit
of making academic institutions partners with the tobacco industry in
its moment of crisis. Hill and his clients had no interest. Yeah.

(53:27):
In answer, Hill and his clients had no interest in
answering a scientific question. Their goal was to maintain vigorous
control over the research program to use science in the
service of public relations. Although the tobacco executives had proposed
forming a Cigarette Information Committee dedicated to defending smoking against
the medical findings, Hill argued aggressively for adding research to
the committee's title and agenda. It is believed he wrote

(53:49):
that the word research is needed in the name to
give weight and added credence to the committee's statements. Hill
understood that his clients should be viewed as embracing science
rather than dismissing it. Now again, Hill's a journalist, right,
That's part of how he's able to do this. He
understands how to communicate, He understands how people read things.
One of the first things he emphasized to the industry

(54:11):
leaders was that they had to stop competing with each
other trying to move cartons by convincing customers that their
smokes were more soothing or healthier than the others. This
was bad, right, Arguing like lucky strikes are healthier than
Marlborough's is bad for the whole industry, so we have
to stop it. The key to surviving, this Hill told them,
was collective action, and one that looked like a commitment

(54:31):
to public welfare while actually doing everything possible to harm
public welfare. The Tobacco Industry Research Committee was formed in
nineteen fifty four and announced its existence with full page
ads and more than four hundred newspapers. This ad, known
as the Frank Statement, claimed that tobacco companies were deeply
concerned about the welfare of their customers and would pursue

(54:51):
any end to get to the bottom of this whole
tobacco equals cancer thing. Quote. We accept an interest in
people's health as a basic responsibility paramount to every other
consideration in our business. We believe the products we make
are not injurious to health. We always have and always
will cooperate closely with those whose task it is to
safeguard the public health.

Speaker 3 (55:12):
That's good, great, yeah, show very honest, very straightforward.

Speaker 2 (55:17):
So despite these high minded claims, the TRC's agenda was
laid out by Hill before he consulted a single scientist.
The executive director of the organization, W. T. Hoyt, had
no scientific background. His previous job had been selling ads
for the Saturday Evening Post. Within his first few months
of operation, Hoyt and other executives of the TRC put

(55:37):
out a statement directly responding to studies that purported to
show a link between cigarettes and disease. It is an
obligation of the Tobacco Industry Research Committee at this time
to remind the public of these essential points. One, there
is no conclusive scientific proof of a link between smoking
and cancer. Two, medical research points to many possible causes
of cancer, and three, but millions of people who derive

(55:58):
pleasure and satisfaction from SMI can be reassured that every
scientific means will be used to get oh, the facts
as soon as possible.

Speaker 3 (56:06):
Great, Yeah, yeah, it's.

Speaker 2 (56:08):
Gotta go well, James, it's gonna go really well.

Speaker 3 (56:10):
Yep, I can see this anying. Well.

Speaker 1 (56:12):
So.

Speaker 2 (56:12):
The first scientific director appointed to the TRC was Clarence
Cook Little, an extremely prominent biologist and geneticists who had
become extremely prominent because he was a popular eugenicist.

Speaker 3 (56:23):
That good.

Speaker 4 (56:24):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's really funny because Cook like a
little the reason he believes that cigarettes did because he's
a He truly believes that the people who connect him
to cancer is wrong because he believes that lung cancer
is genetic, so it can't be caused by an environmental factor,
like inhaling cigarettes a year.

Speaker 2 (56:47):
It's got to be. It's gotta be something to do
with the fact that certain races are more likely to
get cancer. Oh god, it is one thing I'll have
to you got to say for a racist, this guy
probably killed more white people than any other racist. Yeah.
He does drop a lot of white folks.

Speaker 3 (57:07):
Yeah, yeah, accidentally.

Speaker 2 (57:08):
Based well he drops everyone else too. Yeah, true, maybe
not maybe unlike him, cigarettes don't discriminate.

Speaker 3 (57:16):
Yeah. Oh, dear god. They become a magnet for the
shittest things in humanity.

Speaker 2 (57:21):
It is incredible. How many terrible? Yeah, it's it's amazing.

Speaker 3 (57:25):
What's gonna happen next? They're going to like stand with
the turfs or something. Cigarettes. You just don't like queer people. Yeah,
I'm tell you. It's probably in the Harry Potter books somewhere.

Speaker 2 (57:38):
Yeah. In nineteen fifty four, the TRC's budget was around
a million dollars, nearly all of which went to Hill
and Knowlton in various ads rather than actual science. But
by nineteen sixty three the TRC was giving out close
to a million dollars in grants. These funded research, actual
scientific research, but they picked the kind of research carefully.
So we're not going to do research what causes lung cancer,

(58:01):
but we'll do research into how cancer develops over time
and how it grows in the body, and ways to
fight it and stuff, and this is important stuff. So
they can keep coming out with these studies funded by
TRC money that are real studies, but none of them
happen to look into whether or not smoking causes cancer. Right,
you can look at how genetics or virology impacts cancer rates,

(58:21):
and those are important things to study. But by picking
what gets funded specifically, they are very very.

Speaker 3 (58:27):
Purposefully putting better airbags in then no breaks Modelobo car.

Speaker 2 (58:36):
So this strategy worked for decades, distracting the public and
lawmakers from any actions that might negatively impact the rate
at which people smoked. Key to the success of this
program was Hill's understanding of how journalism worked. From that
journal of public health article. Hill understood that the success
of any public relations strategy was highly dependent on face
to face interpersonal relations with important media outlets. Each time

(58:58):
the TRC issued a press release, the Hill and Nolton
organization would initiate a personal contact. The firm systematically documented
the courtship of newspapers and magazines where it could urge
balance and fairness in the industry. In these intreaties on
behalf of the industry, the firm staffers repeated several key themes. First,
they would note that the industry completely understood its important
public responsibilities. Second, they would affirm that the industry was

(59:21):
deeply committed to investigating all of the scientific questions relevant
to resolving the controversy. Third, they urged skepticism regarding statistical studies. Finally,
they offered members of the media a long list of
independent skeptics to consult to ensure balance in their presentations.

Speaker 3 (59:37):
Great also responsible for the dozens of direct marketing emails
I guess every single day. Yeah great, right now I'm
personally agree for this MATTERFI.

Speaker 2 (59:48):
Yeah, cigarettes created everything. The primary independent skeptic, of course,
was the TRC. Is little that's the eugenics guy. Given
the pinshant of the press for controversy and it's often
naive notion of allance. These appeals were remarkably successful. Hilln
Nolton expertly broadcast their arguments, typically not based on substantive
research of any kind, of a small group of skeptics,

(01:00:09):
as if their positions represented a dominant perspective on the
medical science of the cigarette. In this sense, the public
relations campaign advantaged two critical pieces of mid century media practice. First,
journalists favored reporting on controversy. Second, by providing opposing positions
as if they were equal, they affirmed their commitment to balance. Yeah.
Oh yeah, that's right, baby, that's right baby.

Speaker 3 (01:00:31):
Fuck sake, why piss off? Uh huh, yeah, No, they've
invented both sides.

Speaker 2 (01:00:37):
They did invent both sides again. So they gave us
Donald Trump. That's what they gave us, Donald Trump. They
gave us climate change denial. They gave us a lot
of the gun industries, tactics, Barry Weiss, all of that
ship comes from big tobacco.

Speaker 3 (01:00:53):
Yeah, god, they gave us.

Speaker 2 (01:00:54):
They gave us the fucking Iraq war. All of these,
all of these strategies are the things that like we're
like they pioneered all of those strategies, and that's where
we're going to end for the day. James, Yeah, will, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:01:08):
Let's stop. So I've become enraged.

Speaker 2 (01:01:11):
We will. We will talk in more detail about the
tobacco industry later, but yeah, this is this is how they, like,
there's a bigger story in kind of how they kept
this up as it became increasingly obvious that cigarettes caused cancer,
and like how they advertised to children and like the
nineties and stuff, and Joe Cammell there's a story, and

(01:01:34):
like how they tried to destroy the lives of people
who blew the whistle on them, like former tobacco employees,
And we'll talk about all of those one day. But
this is this is the story of how tobacco invented
everything in the modern world.

Speaker 3 (01:01:47):
Yeah. Great, I feel really good about all the things
that we've got from it.

Speaker 2 (01:01:51):
It's cool that you can tie like funco pops, climate change,
denial in the Iraq War all to trying to get
people to smoke.

Speaker 3 (01:01:59):
Yes, yeah, it's really it's really great and caism and
that's nothing but good.

Speaker 2 (01:02:04):
Yeah, pokemon and medical patents all all have cigarettes to think.

Speaker 3 (01:02:10):
Yeah, god, yeah, it's just unfathomable. It's terrible, it's awful. Yeah,
it's it's the nature of the system we live in.
Maybe change it.

Speaker 2 (01:02:19):
It's the nature of the system we live in part
because of cigarettes.

Speaker 3 (01:02:22):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, very good. Maybe maybe consider a different system.

Speaker 2 (01:02:27):
Yeah, maybe consider a system in which it's not possible
to do.

Speaker 3 (01:02:30):
The good thing is Robert that none of these issues
are tied to vaping, which is fine and totally totally
normal and good, and therefore you should just get a
fruit loop vape.

Speaker 2 (01:02:41):
Yeah, get get a flavored vape, you know, buy some
of that. Uh, I don't know what else, what other
what drugs do kids like to do today? Get some
Get some of that. Get some of that flavored Fitanel
tide pods mixture, Finnel in your tide pods together kids. Yeah,
a good one.

Speaker 3 (01:02:57):
That's so turing that on taking the talk right now
from what I understand, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:03:01):
Yeah, TikTok and everything that doesn't have any further James,
is there anything you like to plug.

Speaker 3 (01:03:07):
Apart from tide pods? Yeah, I did think. Yeah, we
talked about a podcast. I've written a book. It's called
The Popular Front and the nineteen thirty six Bus owner Olympics.
You can probably find it at the library. Then you
won't be helping to create the system which gave us,
you know, Pokemon cards and everyone having cancer. And yeah,

(01:03:27):
you can find me on Twitter. It's just my name, James,
like bondst Out, like the beer. We that's all. Anarchism
is the other thing. I always like to plug on podcasts.
So maybe yeah, Recrepokin.

Speaker 1 (01:03:37):
And we're doing a it could happen here livestream virtual
show on October twenty six.

Speaker 2 (01:03:42):
Yeah, motherfuckers, yep, So pick up a pack of lucky strikes.
I want to see all of you beautiful people smoking
when we do our live show. Just just really burn
them down. Nothing raises the value of a house faster
than the smoking cigarette's Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:04:02):
Ring, go back to return to tradition by sticking two
cigarettes up your nose after smoking them that way.

Speaker 2 (01:04:07):
Yeah, smoke your cigarettes the traditional way.

Speaker 3 (01:04:09):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 2 (01:04:10):
Anyway, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:04:13):
By Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
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Bastards is now available on YouTube, new episodes every Wednesday
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(01:04:36):
At Behind the Bastards