May 6, 2020 • 31 mins
The YMCA provided American soldiers with billions of cigarettes during World War I — and smugglers and terrorists with billions of new incentives to evade the law.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
We all need a break from the constant cycle to
learn something new, to gain new perspectives. The Great Courses
Plus streaming service is an excellent resource to expand our
knowledge on a variety of subjects or pick up a
new hobby. I've been enjoying the Great Courses Plus while
researching this season of flashback lectures like Playball, the rise
of Baseball is America's pastime, History of the Supreme Court,
(00:25):
and Battlefield Europe have helped me connect the dots on
several stories from history. Right now, they're giving our listeners
a special limited time offer a free month of unlimited
access to their entire library. Sign up now through our
special U r L go to the Great Courses Plus
dot com slash Aussie. That's the Great Courses Plus dot
(00:45):
Com slash o z y The Great Courses Plus dot
Com Slash Aussi authority is in North Carolina first started
to get suspicious in that's when they noticed two odd
things near the city of Fayetteville. First, there was an
(01:09):
unusually large number of cigarettes being sold in the area,
far more than could be explained by local demand. The second,
police were stopping a number of vehicles along the local
interstate highway that were carrying cash, lots of cash. The
investigation led authorities to a plain, gray brick building. This
is where investigators say it all started. This business behind
(01:31):
me here is called free Co is listed on Google
as a candy business. But authorities say what was coming
out of here wasn't candy. It certainly wasn't what authorities
unearthened Fayetteville last year was one of the largest cigarettes
smuggling rings of its kind. Authorities seized about eight hundred
and forty tho dollars in cash, eleven vehicles, and four
hundred thousand cartons of cigarettes and five guns. More than
(01:55):
two dozen people were arrested in connection with the twelve
million dollar operation. So why is there so much money
in moving cigarettes across state borders? Why would someone in
New York even want to buy the exact same cigarettes
from North Carolina that they can buy at home, And
most importantly, how did we get in this mess in
the first place. The answer, as we shall see, involves
(02:18):
a potent combination of taxes, war, and big business. But
most of all, the rampant cigarettes smuggling in America today
is the unintended product of good intentions and if you're
looking for someone to blame, you could accuse everyone from
the smuggler to the tobacco industry to the tax collector.
But before you point any fingers, let me first tell
(02:38):
you a little story about the y m c A.
I'm Sean Braswell. Welcome to Flashback, a history podcast from Aussie.
This season, we are diving deep into some of the
most remarkable and unsettling examples of unintended consequences from history.
In this episode, we'll see how an enormous active virtue
(03:01):
by the y m c A more than a century
ago continues to lead to all manner of vice, including
that cigarette smuggling operation in Fayetteville, North Carolina. The reason
that criminal operations like the one in Fayetteville exists is
pretty simple. The federal government imposes attacks on cigarettes. That's
(03:23):
a dollar and one cent per pack. Thomas E. Hall
is an emeritus economics professor at the University of Miami,
Ohio and the author of Aftermath, The Unintended Consequences of
Public Policies. But it doesn't matter where you buy them.
In the United States, you're gonna pay the federal tax.
What differs are these state taxes and the state taxes
(03:43):
on cigarettes very a great deal. Some states are low
tax states, some like New York, are not. The state
of New York adds attacks of four dollars and thirty
five cents to a pack of cigarettes. Then the City
of New York also taxes, and they had an additional dollar.
And if he sent signed to a pack of cigarettes.
So that means if you bought a pack of cigarettes
(04:04):
in New York City, uh, there's five dollars and five
cents of taxes on a pack. Were close to sixty
dollars of tax per carton. North Carolina, on the other hand,
collect only about five dollars in tax per carton. I
may be a history buff, but even I can do
that math. Smugglers can make up to fifty five dollars
per carton selling North Carolina cigarettes in New York. And
(04:25):
if each truck of black market cigarettes carries about fifty
thou cartons, then you're talking about two point seven million
dollars in potential profit per truck. Two point seven million
dollars per truck. So you can see what's going on here.
You have this this profit opportunity. To say the least,
there's more than just an opportunity, there's an easily moved commodity.
(04:49):
Cigarettes are a product that are very easy to move
around because they're they're light, um, they're small, and they're durable.
This sort of tax arbitrage opportunity and can play out
even within a radius of a few miles. I live
in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Cincinnati, Ohio is a river town.
It's on the Ohio River, and across the river is
(05:11):
the state of Kentucky. Now, Kentucky is a tobacco grower.
There's a big crop down there, so, needless to say,
the Kentucky state legislature has an interest in keeping its
tobacco farmers happy. Now, that means that the taxes on
tobacco are not as high in Kentucky as they are
aren't Ohio. In fact, it's a difference about fifty cents
(05:31):
a pack, which means if you're a smoker in Cincinnati,
all you have to do to save fifty cents for
a pack of cigarettes or five dollars for a carton
is drive across the John A Robling suspension bridge to Kentucky.
And when you cross one of those bridges, you'll find
one liquor and tobacco store after another right there by
the river. But the real opportunity for smugglers is moving
(05:54):
cigarettes from a low tax state like North Carolina where
I live, and a high tax one like New York.
I asked Hall if I should be getting in on
the action. If you could keep the mafia off your back,
you can make one helpful lot of money moving cigarettes
up to New York. It's a dangerous business, though, I
guess I'll pass. So how did we get in this
bizarre tax situation in America? The US first started taxing
(06:18):
tobacco to help raise money for the Civil War, and
they continued to do so after the war was over.
Thomas Holligan. Essentially, what the government discovered was that this
was a great revenue raiser. By nineteen thirty, tobacco taxes
were generating about fifteen percent of the federal government's tax
collections four hundred and fifty million dollars of annual revenue
for about seven billion dollars worth today, and soon states
(06:42):
wanted in on the action. To The first state cigarette
taxes popped up in nearly nineteen twenties, and the reason
why they did was because we had a fairly bad
recession from nineteen twenty to twenty one, and during economic recessions,
revenue to governments goes down. The states were trying to
close their budget upsets, so they decided to start taxing cigarettes.
(07:04):
In nineteen one, Iowa became the first state to enact
the state level cigarette tax. By the nineteen thirties, more
than thirty other states had followed. The original cigarette taxes
were pretty low. We're just talking about a few pennies
on the pack. But that's all it took to get
the smuggling started. Because once you impost higher taxes in
(07:25):
one area than another, then you have this opera economic
consent of to buy the cigarettes in the low cost
area and try to sell them in the high cost area. Still,
there wasn't a whole lot of money in smuggling cigarettes yet,
and most smugglers were still small time criminals. Meanwhile, the
popularity of cigarettes in America continued to soar even doctors
(07:46):
recommended them. Time out for many men of medicine usually
means just long enough to enjoy a cigarette, and because
they know what a pleasure it is to smoke a mild,
good tasting cigarette, they're particular about the brand. They choose
more doctors smoke camels than any other cigarette. Yes, you
heard that right. Then in the mid nineteen sixties, a
(08:10):
landmark event occurred, one that would prompt several states to
raise their cigarette taxes even higher. The reason why was
because the famous Surgeon General's Report of nineteen sixty four
came out. This book, containing three seven carefully worded pages,
as a federal government report. It was released at noon
today and it says, in view of the continuing and
(08:32):
mounting evidence from many sources, it is the judgment of
the committee that cigarettes smoking contributes substantially to mortality from
certain specific diseases and to the overall death rate. That
is the basic conclusion. That was the study that linked
tobacco consumption to all kinds of health problems. And when
(08:52):
that study came out, then people began to say, hey,
you know, we ought to try to discourage smoking. It's
very bad for people, and how can we discourage it. Well,
one way is to raise the price of it by taxes.
The Surgeon General and states like New York had good
intentions to warn people about the harms of smoking and
to price them out of it. But the price difference
between states grew as a result. It was that wider
(09:15):
differential into prices that increase the profitability of smuggling. And
that's when the organized crime figures got into it in
a big way. And where did these smugglers see a
unique opportunity. Nope, not in North Carolina reservations. The Indian
reservations are not required by law to assess the state taxes,
(09:36):
and they govern their own territories and they are not
subject to the state laws. So a pack of cigarettes
will show up on this Indian reservation in New York
and no state tax has been paid on it. So
if if Joe consumer walks onto the reservation, they can
buy a pack of cigarettes without paying the New York
(09:57):
state tax. And so a reservation becomes a giant costco
for cigarettes. One reservation in New York is the Poospatuck
Reservation on Long Island. It's one square mile of territory,
has two hundred and seventy residents. And when somebody was
looking into this about ten years ago, they discovered that
(10:20):
they had in one year, imported one hundred million packs
of cigarettes. Overall, it's estimated that New York State loses
nearly one billion dollars in tax revenue per year because
of cigarette smuggling, and experts say that governments lose more
than forty billion dollars worldwide. But what makes it even
worse is where the money goes instead, there's a lot
(10:41):
of profits to be had here. When there's a lot
of profits to be had, illegally, um questionable characters will
get involved in it. Remember the first bombing of the
World Trade Center in New York, back the one where
terrorists plays a truck bomb in the parking garage underneath
the building. When the investigators went to the apartment of
those uh, those men who had done that dastardly deed,
(11:02):
they found phony cigarette stamps in there. They were apparently
involved in cigarette smuggling. That's just one example. The Irish
Republican Army back under hey Day was smuggling cigarettes. Saddam
Hussein was a cigarette smuggler. In fact, his son who Day,
was running the operation. It gets worse. They caught a
(11:22):
guy up in New York a few years ago. He
was smuggling cigarettes and using the proceeds to fund scholarships
at terrorist training camps in Afghani Stands. In the year
two thousand smugglers involved in another eight billion dollar ring
were arrested here in North Carolina. Where were they sending
their profits to the terrorist group has blah? So the
(11:46):
government decides to tax cigarettes. Different states tax them at
different levels, and ban smuggling. Becomes a multibillion dollar industry,
one whose proceeds can be seen everywhere from reservations to
terrorist training camps. But that's only part of the story.
The reason that cigarettes first became so popular in America
and such a prime target for taxation by different states,
(12:08):
can be traced back to World War One. That's where
this problem really starts and our story truly begins. Do
you have an interesting tale about unintended consequences from history
(12:30):
or your own life, Please share it with us by
emailing flashback at Aussie dot com. That's flashback at o
z y dot com. Cigarettes may be found by the
(12:53):
truckload on some Native American reservations, but there's one place
you don't see them nearly as much as you used to.
I remember it as a young lieutenant, you know, the
the the and and hearing the stories from some of
the older guys about how everyone pretty much smoked in
the military. This is Joel Bias, the lieutenant colonel in
the United States Air Force. He's also a professor at
(13:16):
their Air Command Staff College. And you watch the movies,
or you watch documentaries, or you think back to World
War Two, et cetera, just how different it is now.
It's hard to find, especially an officer that smokes, especially
smokes in uniform UM, whereas forty years ago, in my business,
(13:38):
it would be probably hard to find a person in
uniform that didn't smoke cigarettes. Bias wrote a book called
Smoke Him, If You Got Him, The Rising Fall of
the Military Cigarette Ration. It looks at how the history
of cigarettes in America is closely connected to the armed forces. Obviously,
tobacco has a storied history in America going back to
(13:58):
the very beginning with the Mayflower and the Pilgrims in
the early founders UM. But for most of that sev.
Eighteen hundreds, it was not manu what we call today
a manufactured cigarette. And why weren't manufactured cigarettes all that
popular in early America, Well, it's because it was seen
(14:20):
as effeminate, meaning to smoke a cigarette was seeing something
that uh, a dandy would do. It wasn't seen as
very masculine or manly to be smoking a cigarette. In fact,
prior to World War One, cigars, pipes, and chewing tobacco,
not cigarettes, were the predominant nicotine delivery devices in America.
But it wasn't just effeminate cigarette smokers that were viewed
(14:42):
differently by Americans. Soldiers were two. So when America entered
the war against Germany in nineteen seventeen and started drafting
young men to fight in it, there were lots of
American mothers worried about what sort of morally compromising behavior
their sons would encounter even before they left camp for
actual combat. And of course, the great concerns at the
(15:03):
time for these progressives is they're bringing these millions of
soldiers into camp and training them for war. Is the
scourge of alcohol, prostitution, and idleness. The same Christian progressive
temperance groups like the y m c A that would
later help get prohibition passed in America set out to
reform the business of war, and one of the great
concerns of the this movement was the the ability of
(15:29):
young men to be morally and physically healthy. And thanks
to their lobbying, the U. S. Army prohibited alcohol near
training camps, made sure that any brothels within ten miles
of a camp were shut down. Even the U S
Secretary of War Newton Baker was involved. He gives a
speech to mothers and about the draft on what's going on,
(15:50):
and says, I'm gonna give your young men invisible armor. Uh.
And you would think he might be talking about to
save them from the death, you know, casualties and calm
at shrapnel, etcetera. But now he was talking about a
moral invisible armor to protect him from the the negative
moral effects that could happen for me in the military
(16:11):
and the war. But soldiers at war needs some form
of creature, comfort or distraction. The British and French soldiers
certainly had theirs. The British soldiers had got their own
ration every day, and the French soldiers had state sponsored brothels,
where the Newton Baker in the United States government is
not gonna truck with that. But they do allow cigarettes
(16:32):
to start being sold in the post exchange. That's right.
Cigarettes smoking became The American soldiers sanctioned vice during World
War One, and the group in charge of providing the smokes,
the y m c A. You know, history is often
irony and tragedy, and that's one of the ironic things
of history. Is one of the leading edge progressive organizations
(16:56):
concerned with soldiers health, morale, you know, morality becomes one
of the leading providers of the manufactured cigarettes starting in
World War One. There were good reasons in nineteen seventeen
to believe that cigarettes were the least worst option as
far as soldiering vices, and they might even be helpful.
Smoking a cigarette has a pharmacological effect. It causes the
(17:19):
blood vessels to to constrict, and it has a bit
of you know, relaxing calming um sensation to it. They're
made to be the smooth and desirable, deeply inheld and
they give that relaxing euphoria kind of feelings. Obviously, there's
some stress involved in soldiering, especially in the type of
(17:40):
trench warfare situation that many soldiers found themselves in when
they got to Europe. You've got jittery hands, you know,
and you're on the front lines and you're trying to
shoot a rifle. Smoking a cigarette calming to hands is
something that you might want to have. And then there's
also just boredom. The y m c A dispensed around
two billion cigarettes to soldiers. Eventually the army took over
(18:01):
and included cigarettes in their standard ration. In total, around
seven billion cigarettes were distributed, and when the war ended,
the soldiers returned victorious and with a new habit. After
War one, seeing all the dough boys smoking cigarettes, coming
home with a cigarette in their mouth, um continuing to smoke,
(18:22):
it was considered manly, something that someone with very positive
character at morals UH engaged in. In fact, it was,
you know, a desirable kind of trade, you know. And
what emerges is is, hey, i can just put a
cigarette in my mouth and I'm instantly considered masculine or manly.
And so, thanks to the Y m c A, the U. S.
(18:43):
Army and others, America emerged from World War One with
millions of new and very manly nicotine addicts. And away
we go in the nineteen twenties and thirties to where,
by the time we get to World War two, manufactured
cigarette smoking is a normative behavior and it profitable industry,
very profitable, so profitable that the government decided it needed
(19:06):
to take a larger piece of the action from the
pool of addicts it had helped create. So how is
this for a tale of good intentions gone dreadfully wrong.
The y m C, a of all groups, starts to
hand out cigarettes to soldiers during the First World War.
They want to make their struggle more manageable. Instead, they
(19:26):
create an army of new addicts, addicts increasingly willing to
fork over millions of their hard earned dollars to the
tobacco companies who make cigarettes and the governments that tax them.
Once the harms of smoking become a parent, the surgeon
general and state government step in to try to discourage
the use of cigarettes. They pass even higher taxes in
some states. But what does this accomplish. They create a
(19:49):
massive opportunity for smugglers, organized crime, and terrorists, one that
continues until this day. Is there anything that can be
done about this? And have we learned our us and
about when a virtuous act can actually lead to more vice?
And what sorts of substances should we be handing out
to our armed forces? That's next. We all need a
(20:21):
break from the constant cycle to learn something new, to
gain new perspectives. The Great Courses Plus streaming service is
an excellent resource to expand our knowledge on a variety
of subjects or pick up a new hobby. I've been
enjoying the Great Courses Plus while researching this season of
flashback lectures like Playball, the Rise of Baseball is America's Pastime,
(20:43):
History of the Supreme Court, and Battlefield Europe have helped
me connect the dots on several stories from history. Right now,
they're giving our listeners a special limited time offer a
free month of unlimited access to their entire library. Sign
up now through our special U r L to the
Great Courses Plus dot Com Slash Aussie. That's the Great
(21:04):
Courses plus dot Com Slash o z Y the Great
Courses Plus dot Com slash As. According to Thomas Hall,
there's only one fool proof way to curtail the massive
cigarette smuggling we see today. If you want to take
away the smuggling, you way you do it is you
take away the profit opportunity. And to take away the
(21:25):
profit opportunity is to take away these tax differentials. You'd
get a little rid of a lot of smuggling if
every state and locality had the same cigarette tax. But
how realistic is that? Anyway? That will probably never happen
because you have totally different interest groups that work here,
the tobacco producing states do not want high cigarette taxes.
(21:48):
The tobacco consuming states are the ones who want that.
So the Virginias in the North Carolinas and the Kentucky's
and the Missouris of the world are not going to
go along with this plan to equalize cigarette taxes because
and did they know that means raising their great square
a bit. Joel Bias is also skeptical about cigarette tax reform.
We're also uh looking at a massively profitable industry that
(22:13):
makes a lot of jobs, a lot of money, and
a lot of tax receipts for local, state, and federal government.
In other words, we can't expect either big tobacco or
big government to change their stripes. But long term, says Hall,
it won't matter. Fewer and fewer Americans is a proportion
of the population eat your smoke. So it's this waning habit,
(22:36):
and as it wanes, smuggling opportunities will continue to diminish.
They won't go away, but they will diminish. The percentage
of Americans who smoke is at an all time low,
less than fift a half century ago. Before the Surgeon
General's report, that number was closer to But tobacco is
not the only harmful substance we have to worry about.
(22:58):
It's not even the only one threatening ranks of the
nation's military. Just as the Surgeon General once learned some
disturbing truths about smoking, researchers today are learning some new
ones about energy drinks. Back in Fayetteville, North Carolina, where
authorities found our cigarette smugglers, there's another operation going on
(23:22):
down the road at Fort Bragg. Just days after President
Trump ordered the killing of Iron's top military leader, about
thirty d U S Service members are now being deployed
to the Middle East, and at times like these, volunteers
and groups like the U s O spring into action. Well. Today,
hundreds of community members came together to make care packages
for military men and women. It's all part of a
(23:43):
brigade created a care for those serving overseas. Donations are
gathered and volunteers as symbol for packing parties. About four
hundred people gathered in a church gym to bring donations,
pack boxes, and write heartfelt letters. A wide variety of
items can make it in of the packages, from trail
mix and toothpaste to socks and sunblock. Another item you
(24:05):
often see energy drinks. More than five cases of donated
energy drinks were shipped off to troops in connection with
the recent deployment from Fort Bragg. It's a well intentioned gesture,
but it's one that can lead to some devastating consequences.
We were doing this study with soldiers. This is Dr
Amy Adler. She's a research psychologist with the Walter Reed
(24:26):
Army Institute of Research, and we happened to have them
in military classrooms, battalion classrooms, and they were sitting at
their desks and as we were handing out our surveys,
we noticed that at the top of almost every soldier's
desk were energy drinks. And just looking out across all
(24:47):
the soldiers, it seemed really amazing to me and to
the team that there were so many energy drinks present
in the room. And why do soldiers drink so many
energy drinks? You know, they want to perform at their
us they want to be able to function under conditions
of restricted sleep. So energy drinks really offer an opportunity
(25:09):
to kind of boost their performance when they are sleep deprived,
and energy drink makers know they have a good market
with soldiers. Even the packaging of brands like Rip It
reflects why these drinks could be popular among soldiers. One
can of camouflage, another in stars and stripes. Each can
(25:30):
of Rip It also featuring a silhouette of an American
hero on the battlefield, and it works. The energy drinks
are enormously popular among soldiers, maybe too popular, amy Addler.
More than seventy of the soldiers we surveyed reported drinking
at least one energy drink sometime in the past month
(25:50):
and said that they drink an energy drink daily. But
the even more alarming number was the percentage of soldiers
who had had two or more energy drinks per day.
And that's one in six or of the soldiers who
we surveyed, So that's a sizeable group, and that's a
lot of energy drinks and consuming that amount had some consequences.
(26:13):
So we found that for those soldiers drinking two or
more energy drinks per day, that they were more than
double at risk for reporting depression, anxiety, post traumatic stress disorder,
alcohol misuse, and aggression, even after we controlled for things
(26:34):
like rank and sleep problems. And one of the studies
most surprising findings was related to sleep drinking high levels
of energy drinks was associated actually with more fatigue and
not less fatigue. That's right, energy drinks made those who
drank them even more tired. Now, there's no evidence to
suggest that energy drinks are as harmful as cigarettes, but
(26:56):
that shouldn't stop us from taking to heart the lessons
of history. Just as their well meaning counterparts in the
Y m c. A. Distributed billions of cigarettes to soldiers
a century ago. Scores of earnest volunteers and army officials
today are sending off crate after crate of energy drinks
to soldiers, and we ought to know better than that
by now. I think if people know about the risks,
(27:17):
then they can make good decisions. And really, in terms
of what the military can do, the military can can
inform soldiers about the risk, they can inform healthcare providers
about the risk, they can inform leaders, so leaders are
armed with this kind of information. We still had time
to do something about the problem of abusing energy drinks.
We have the science and the lessons of history to
(27:38):
guide us, but we really didn't have that luxury when
we were confronted with cigarettes a century ago. You know,
as much as I want to stand and judge and
say Oh my gosh, Joel Bias. Again. We have to
judge people for their own time, you know, and people
would judge us as well a hundred or two hundred
years for for for our own time. People are products
of their time, and so I think that that's the
(28:00):
tragedy of the irony of history. What did we learn
today about the tragedy and irony of history? One? The
y m c A is responsible for more than just
your local basketball league, way more. Two. Well, the y
m c A and the U. S. Army were handing
out cigarettes to American soldiers in World War One. The
French Army was operating state sponsored brothels for its soldiers.
(28:24):
That probably explains a lot of the difference between our
two countries. Three, too many energy drinks can make you
even more tired. And finally, if you want to save
a lot of money and avoid sponsoring terrorism, don't smoke
at all unless you're a doctor of course. Flashback is
(28:48):
written and hosted by me Sean Braswell, senior writer and
executive producer at Ozzie. It was produced by Robert Coulos,
Tracy Moran, Fiorio Digiza, and Shannon Williamson. Chris Hoff injury
You at our show special thanks to the crew at
I Heart Radio podcast Networks, especially Sophie Lichtman and Jack O'Brien.
Make sure to subscribe to Flashback on the I Heart
(29:09):
Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Flashback is
the latest podcast from Ozzie, a modern media company producing
original TV series, festivals, news and podcasts for curious people.
Ozzie's unique storytelling focuses on the new and the next,
whether that's forward looking news and features, bold new perspectives
on TV or brand new ways of looking at history.
(29:32):
Here's one final thought from my lecture notes for this episode.
Saddam Hussein's firstborn son, Uday was a lot of things.
A playboy, a rapist, a brutal killer as head of
a Rocks World Cup soccer team, even tortured players who
played badly. But there was perhaps one thing Day was
beyond all others. A cigarette smuggler. During the late ninety
(29:54):
nineties and early two thousands, at a time when a
Rock was under un sanctions, he was pulling in up
to ten million dollars per year for himself and his
father's regime by trafficking in illegal cigarettes. Day and his
brother say were killed by US forces in two thousand
and three, but you can still see Uday's gold plated
assault rifle today. It's location the JFK Special Warfare Museum
(30:17):
on Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, North Carolina. To dive deeper,
head to AUSI dot com slash flashback. That's oz y
dot com slash flashback. There you can find some of
my lecture notes from today's episode, featuring extended interviews, links
(30:37):
to further reading and more information on the surprising history
of cigarettes, as well as links to other hidden stories
from history uncovered by me and other reporters at AUSSI.
We all need a break from the constant cycle to
learn something new, to gain new perspectives. The Great Courses
(31:00):
Plus streaming service is an excellent resource to expand our
knowledge on a variety of subjects or pick up a
new hobby. I've been enjoying the Great Courses Plus while
researching this season of flashback lectures like Playball, the rise
of Baseball is America's pastime, History of the Supreme Court,
and Battlefield Europe have helped me connect the dots on
several stories from history. Right now, they're giving our listeners
(31:23):
a special, limited time offer a free month of unlimited
access to their entire library. Sign Up now through our
special u r L go to the Great Courses plus
dot Com Slash Aussie. That's the Great Courses plus dot
Com slash. O z y the Great Courses plus dot
Com Slash Aussie
We all need a break from the constant cycle to
learn something new, to gain new perspectives. The Great Courses
Plus streaming service is an excellent resource to expand our
knowledge on a variety of subjects or pick up a
new hobby. I've been enjoying the Great Courses Plus while
researching this season of flashback lectures like Playball, the rise
of Baseball is America's pastime, History of the Supreme Court,
(00:25):
and Battlefield Europe have helped me connect the dots on
several stories from history. Right now, they're giving our listeners
a special limited time offer a free month of unlimited
access to their entire library. Sign up now through our
special U r L go to the Great Courses Plus
dot com slash Aussie. That's the Great Courses Plus dot
(00:45):
Com slash o z y The Great Courses Plus dot
Com Slash Aussi authority is in North Carolina first started
to get suspicious in that's when they noticed two odd
things near the city of Fayetteville. First, there was an
(01:09):
unusually large number of cigarettes being sold in the area,
far more than could be explained by local demand. The second,
police were stopping a number of vehicles along the local
interstate highway that were carrying cash, lots of cash. The
investigation led authorities to a plain, gray brick building. This
is where investigators say it all started. This business behind
(01:31):
me here is called free Co is listed on Google
as a candy business. But authorities say what was coming
out of here wasn't candy. It certainly wasn't what authorities
unearthened Fayetteville last year was one of the largest cigarettes
smuggling rings of its kind. Authorities seized about eight hundred
and forty tho dollars in cash, eleven vehicles, and four
hundred thousand cartons of cigarettes and five guns. More than
(01:55):
two dozen people were arrested in connection with the twelve
million dollar operation. So why is there so much money
in moving cigarettes across state borders? Why would someone in
New York even want to buy the exact same cigarettes
from North Carolina that they can buy at home, And
most importantly, how did we get in this mess in
the first place. The answer, as we shall see, involves
(02:18):
a potent combination of taxes, war, and big business. But
most of all, the rampant cigarettes smuggling in America today
is the unintended product of good intentions and if you're
looking for someone to blame, you could accuse everyone from
the smuggler to the tobacco industry to the tax collector.
But before you point any fingers, let me first tell
(02:38):
you a little story about the y m c A.
I'm Sean Braswell. Welcome to Flashback, a history podcast from Aussie.
This season, we are diving deep into some of the
most remarkable and unsettling examples of unintended consequences from history.
In this episode, we'll see how an enormous active virtue
(03:01):
by the y m c A more than a century
ago continues to lead to all manner of vice, including
that cigarette smuggling operation in Fayetteville, North Carolina. The reason
that criminal operations like the one in Fayetteville exists is
pretty simple. The federal government imposes attacks on cigarettes. That's
(03:23):
a dollar and one cent per pack. Thomas E. Hall
is an emeritus economics professor at the University of Miami,
Ohio and the author of Aftermath, The Unintended Consequences of
Public Policies. But it doesn't matter where you buy them.
In the United States, you're gonna pay the federal tax.
What differs are these state taxes and the state taxes
(03:43):
on cigarettes very a great deal. Some states are low
tax states, some like New York, are not. The state
of New York adds attacks of four dollars and thirty
five cents to a pack of cigarettes. Then the City
of New York also taxes, and they had an additional dollar.
And if he sent signed to a pack of cigarettes.
So that means if you bought a pack of cigarettes
(04:04):
in New York City, uh, there's five dollars and five
cents of taxes on a pack. Were close to sixty
dollars of tax per carton. North Carolina, on the other hand,
collect only about five dollars in tax per carton. I
may be a history buff, but even I can do
that math. Smugglers can make up to fifty five dollars
per carton selling North Carolina cigarettes in New York. And
(04:25):
if each truck of black market cigarettes carries about fifty
thou cartons, then you're talking about two point seven million
dollars in potential profit per truck. Two point seven million
dollars per truck. So you can see what's going on here.
You have this this profit opportunity. To say the least,
there's more than just an opportunity, there's an easily moved commodity.
(04:49):
Cigarettes are a product that are very easy to move
around because they're they're light, um, they're small, and they're durable.
This sort of tax arbitrage opportunity and can play out
even within a radius of a few miles. I live
in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Cincinnati, Ohio is a river town.
It's on the Ohio River, and across the river is
(05:11):
the state of Kentucky. Now, Kentucky is a tobacco grower.
There's a big crop down there, so, needless to say,
the Kentucky state legislature has an interest in keeping its
tobacco farmers happy. Now, that means that the taxes on
tobacco are not as high in Kentucky as they are
aren't Ohio. In fact, it's a difference about fifty cents
(05:31):
a pack, which means if you're a smoker in Cincinnati,
all you have to do to save fifty cents for
a pack of cigarettes or five dollars for a carton
is drive across the John A Robling suspension bridge to Kentucky.
And when you cross one of those bridges, you'll find
one liquor and tobacco store after another right there by
the river. But the real opportunity for smugglers is moving
(05:54):
cigarettes from a low tax state like North Carolina where
I live, and a high tax one like New York.
I asked Hall if I should be getting in on
the action. If you could keep the mafia off your back,
you can make one helpful lot of money moving cigarettes
up to New York. It's a dangerous business, though, I
guess I'll pass. So how did we get in this
bizarre tax situation in America? The US first started taxing
(06:18):
tobacco to help raise money for the Civil War, and
they continued to do so after the war was over.
Thomas Holligan. Essentially, what the government discovered was that this
was a great revenue raiser. By nineteen thirty, tobacco taxes
were generating about fifteen percent of the federal government's tax
collections four hundred and fifty million dollars of annual revenue
for about seven billion dollars worth today, and soon states
(06:42):
wanted in on the action. To The first state cigarette
taxes popped up in nearly nineteen twenties, and the reason
why they did was because we had a fairly bad
recession from nineteen twenty to twenty one, and during economic recessions,
revenue to governments goes down. The states were trying to
close their budget upsets, so they decided to start taxing cigarettes.
(07:04):
In nineteen one, Iowa became the first state to enact
the state level cigarette tax. By the nineteen thirties, more
than thirty other states had followed. The original cigarette taxes
were pretty low. We're just talking about a few pennies
on the pack. But that's all it took to get
the smuggling started. Because once you impost higher taxes in
(07:25):
one area than another, then you have this opera economic
consent of to buy the cigarettes in the low cost
area and try to sell them in the high cost area. Still,
there wasn't a whole lot of money in smuggling cigarettes yet,
and most smugglers were still small time criminals. Meanwhile, the
popularity of cigarettes in America continued to soar even doctors
(07:46):
recommended them. Time out for many men of medicine usually
means just long enough to enjoy a cigarette, and because
they know what a pleasure it is to smoke a mild,
good tasting cigarette, they're particular about the brand. They choose
more doctors smoke camels than any other cigarette. Yes, you
heard that right. Then in the mid nineteen sixties, a
(08:10):
landmark event occurred, one that would prompt several states to
raise their cigarette taxes even higher. The reason why was
because the famous Surgeon General's Report of nineteen sixty four
came out. This book, containing three seven carefully worded pages,
as a federal government report. It was released at noon
today and it says, in view of the continuing and
(08:32):
mounting evidence from many sources, it is the judgment of
the committee that cigarettes smoking contributes substantially to mortality from
certain specific diseases and to the overall death rate. That
is the basic conclusion. That was the study that linked
tobacco consumption to all kinds of health problems. And when
(08:52):
that study came out, then people began to say, hey,
you know, we ought to try to discourage smoking. It's
very bad for people, and how can we discourage it. Well,
one way is to raise the price of it by taxes.
The Surgeon General and states like New York had good
intentions to warn people about the harms of smoking and
to price them out of it. But the price difference
between states grew as a result. It was that wider
(09:15):
differential into prices that increase the profitability of smuggling. And
that's when the organized crime figures got into it in
a big way. And where did these smugglers see a
unique opportunity. Nope, not in North Carolina reservations. The Indian
reservations are not required by law to assess the state taxes,
(09:36):
and they govern their own territories and they are not
subject to the state laws. So a pack of cigarettes
will show up on this Indian reservation in New York
and no state tax has been paid on it. So
if if Joe consumer walks onto the reservation, they can
buy a pack of cigarettes without paying the New York
(09:57):
state tax. And so a reservation becomes a giant costco
for cigarettes. One reservation in New York is the Poospatuck
Reservation on Long Island. It's one square mile of territory,
has two hundred and seventy residents. And when somebody was
looking into this about ten years ago, they discovered that
(10:20):
they had in one year, imported one hundred million packs
of cigarettes. Overall, it's estimated that New York State loses
nearly one billion dollars in tax revenue per year because
of cigarette smuggling, and experts say that governments lose more
than forty billion dollars worldwide. But what makes it even
worse is where the money goes instead, there's a lot
(10:41):
of profits to be had here. When there's a lot
of profits to be had, illegally, um questionable characters will
get involved in it. Remember the first bombing of the
World Trade Center in New York, back the one where
terrorists plays a truck bomb in the parking garage underneath
the building. When the investigators went to the apartment of
those uh, those men who had done that dastardly deed,
(11:02):
they found phony cigarette stamps in there. They were apparently
involved in cigarette smuggling. That's just one example. The Irish
Republican Army back under hey Day was smuggling cigarettes. Saddam
Hussein was a cigarette smuggler. In fact, his son who Day,
was running the operation. It gets worse. They caught a
(11:22):
guy up in New York a few years ago. He
was smuggling cigarettes and using the proceeds to fund scholarships
at terrorist training camps in Afghani Stands. In the year
two thousand smugglers involved in another eight billion dollar ring
were arrested here in North Carolina. Where were they sending
their profits to the terrorist group has blah? So the
(11:46):
government decides to tax cigarettes. Different states tax them at
different levels, and ban smuggling. Becomes a multibillion dollar industry,
one whose proceeds can be seen everywhere from reservations to
terrorist training camps. But that's only part of the story.
The reason that cigarettes first became so popular in America
and such a prime target for taxation by different states,
(12:08):
can be traced back to World War One. That's where
this problem really starts and our story truly begins. Do
you have an interesting tale about unintended consequences from history
(12:30):
or your own life, Please share it with us by
emailing flashback at Aussie dot com. That's flashback at o
z y dot com. Cigarettes may be found by the
(12:53):
truckload on some Native American reservations, but there's one place
you don't see them nearly as much as you used to.
I remember it as a young lieutenant, you know, the
the the and and hearing the stories from some of
the older guys about how everyone pretty much smoked in
the military. This is Joel Bias, the lieutenant colonel in
the United States Air Force. He's also a professor at
(13:16):
their Air Command Staff College. And you watch the movies,
or you watch documentaries, or you think back to World
War Two, et cetera, just how different it is now.
It's hard to find, especially an officer that smokes, especially
smokes in uniform UM, whereas forty years ago, in my business,
(13:38):
it would be probably hard to find a person in
uniform that didn't smoke cigarettes. Bias wrote a book called
Smoke Him, If You Got Him, The Rising Fall of
the Military Cigarette Ration. It looks at how the history
of cigarettes in America is closely connected to the armed forces. Obviously,
tobacco has a storied history in America going back to
(13:58):
the very beginning with the Mayflower and the Pilgrims in
the early founders UM. But for most of that sev.
Eighteen hundreds, it was not manu what we call today
a manufactured cigarette. And why weren't manufactured cigarettes all that
popular in early America, Well, it's because it was seen
(14:20):
as effeminate, meaning to smoke a cigarette was seeing something
that uh, a dandy would do. It wasn't seen as
very masculine or manly to be smoking a cigarette. In fact,
prior to World War One, cigars, pipes, and chewing tobacco,
not cigarettes, were the predominant nicotine delivery devices in America.
But it wasn't just effeminate cigarette smokers that were viewed
(14:42):
differently by Americans. Soldiers were two. So when America entered
the war against Germany in nineteen seventeen and started drafting
young men to fight in it, there were lots of
American mothers worried about what sort of morally compromising behavior
their sons would encounter even before they left camp for
actual combat. And of course, the great concerns at the
(15:03):
time for these progressives is they're bringing these millions of
soldiers into camp and training them for war. Is the
scourge of alcohol, prostitution, and idleness. The same Christian progressive
temperance groups like the y m c A that would
later help get prohibition passed in America set out to
reform the business of war, and one of the great
concerns of the this movement was the the ability of
(15:29):
young men to be morally and physically healthy. And thanks
to their lobbying, the U. S. Army prohibited alcohol near
training camps, made sure that any brothels within ten miles
of a camp were shut down. Even the U S
Secretary of War Newton Baker was involved. He gives a
speech to mothers and about the draft on what's going on,
(15:50):
and says, I'm gonna give your young men invisible armor. Uh.
And you would think he might be talking about to
save them from the death, you know, casualties and calm
at shrapnel, etcetera. But now he was talking about a
moral invisible armor to protect him from the the negative
moral effects that could happen for me in the military
(16:11):
and the war. But soldiers at war needs some form
of creature, comfort or distraction. The British and French soldiers
certainly had theirs. The British soldiers had got their own
ration every day, and the French soldiers had state sponsored brothels,
where the Newton Baker in the United States government is
not gonna truck with that. But they do allow cigarettes
(16:32):
to start being sold in the post exchange. That's right.
Cigarettes smoking became The American soldiers sanctioned vice during World
War One, and the group in charge of providing the smokes,
the y m c A. You know, history is often
irony and tragedy, and that's one of the ironic things
of history. Is one of the leading edge progressive organizations
(16:56):
concerned with soldiers health, morale, you know, morality becomes one
of the leading providers of the manufactured cigarettes starting in
World War One. There were good reasons in nineteen seventeen
to believe that cigarettes were the least worst option as
far as soldiering vices, and they might even be helpful.
Smoking a cigarette has a pharmacological effect. It causes the
(17:19):
blood vessels to to constrict, and it has a bit
of you know, relaxing calming um sensation to it. They're
made to be the smooth and desirable, deeply inheld and
they give that relaxing euphoria kind of feelings. Obviously, there's
some stress involved in soldiering, especially in the type of
(17:40):
trench warfare situation that many soldiers found themselves in when
they got to Europe. You've got jittery hands, you know,
and you're on the front lines and you're trying to
shoot a rifle. Smoking a cigarette calming to hands is
something that you might want to have. And then there's
also just boredom. The y m c A dispensed around
two billion cigarettes to soldiers. Eventually the army took over
(18:01):
and included cigarettes in their standard ration. In total, around
seven billion cigarettes were distributed, and when the war ended,
the soldiers returned victorious and with a new habit. After
War one, seeing all the dough boys smoking cigarettes, coming
home with a cigarette in their mouth, um continuing to smoke,
(18:22):
it was considered manly, something that someone with very positive
character at morals UH engaged in. In fact, it was,
you know, a desirable kind of trade, you know. And
what emerges is is, hey, i can just put a
cigarette in my mouth and I'm instantly considered masculine or manly.
And so, thanks to the Y m c A, the U. S.
(18:43):
Army and others, America emerged from World War One with
millions of new and very manly nicotine addicts. And away
we go in the nineteen twenties and thirties to where,
by the time we get to World War two, manufactured
cigarette smoking is a normative behavior and it profitable industry,
very profitable, so profitable that the government decided it needed
(19:06):
to take a larger piece of the action from the
pool of addicts it had helped create. So how is
this for a tale of good intentions gone dreadfully wrong.
The y m C, a of all groups, starts to
hand out cigarettes to soldiers during the First World War.
They want to make their struggle more manageable. Instead, they
(19:26):
create an army of new addicts, addicts increasingly willing to
fork over millions of their hard earned dollars to the
tobacco companies who make cigarettes and the governments that tax them.
Once the harms of smoking become a parent, the surgeon
general and state government step in to try to discourage
the use of cigarettes. They pass even higher taxes in
some states. But what does this accomplish. They create a
(19:49):
massive opportunity for smugglers, organized crime, and terrorists, one that
continues until this day. Is there anything that can be
done about this? And have we learned our us and
about when a virtuous act can actually lead to more vice?
And what sorts of substances should we be handing out
to our armed forces? That's next. We all need a
(20:21):
break from the constant cycle to learn something new, to
gain new perspectives. The Great Courses Plus streaming service is
an excellent resource to expand our knowledge on a variety
of subjects or pick up a new hobby. I've been
enjoying the Great Courses Plus while researching this season of
flashback lectures like Playball, the Rise of Baseball is America's Pastime,
(20:43):
History of the Supreme Court, and Battlefield Europe have helped
me connect the dots on several stories from history. Right now,
they're giving our listeners a special limited time offer a
free month of unlimited access to their entire library. Sign
up now through our special U r L to the
Great Courses Plus dot Com Slash Aussie. That's the Great
(21:04):
Courses plus dot Com Slash o z Y the Great
Courses Plus dot Com slash As. According to Thomas Hall,
there's only one fool proof way to curtail the massive
cigarette smuggling we see today. If you want to take
away the smuggling, you way you do it is you
take away the profit opportunity. And to take away the
(21:25):
profit opportunity is to take away these tax differentials. You'd
get a little rid of a lot of smuggling if
every state and locality had the same cigarette tax. But
how realistic is that? Anyway? That will probably never happen
because you have totally different interest groups that work here,
the tobacco producing states do not want high cigarette taxes.
(21:48):
The tobacco consuming states are the ones who want that.
So the Virginias in the North Carolinas and the Kentucky's
and the Missouris of the world are not going to
go along with this plan to equalize cigarette taxes because
and did they know that means raising their great square
a bit. Joel Bias is also skeptical about cigarette tax reform.
We're also uh looking at a massively profitable industry that
(22:13):
makes a lot of jobs, a lot of money, and
a lot of tax receipts for local, state, and federal government.
In other words, we can't expect either big tobacco or
big government to change their stripes. But long term, says Hall,
it won't matter. Fewer and fewer Americans is a proportion
of the population eat your smoke. So it's this waning habit,
(22:36):
and as it wanes, smuggling opportunities will continue to diminish.
They won't go away, but they will diminish. The percentage
of Americans who smoke is at an all time low,
less than fift a half century ago. Before the Surgeon
General's report, that number was closer to But tobacco is
not the only harmful substance we have to worry about.
(22:58):
It's not even the only one threatening ranks of the
nation's military. Just as the Surgeon General once learned some
disturbing truths about smoking, researchers today are learning some new
ones about energy drinks. Back in Fayetteville, North Carolina, where
authorities found our cigarette smugglers, there's another operation going on
(23:22):
down the road at Fort Bragg. Just days after President
Trump ordered the killing of Iron's top military leader, about
thirty d U S Service members are now being deployed
to the Middle East, and at times like these, volunteers
and groups like the U s O spring into action. Well. Today,
hundreds of community members came together to make care packages
for military men and women. It's all part of a
(23:43):
brigade created a care for those serving overseas. Donations are
gathered and volunteers as symbol for packing parties. About four
hundred people gathered in a church gym to bring donations,
pack boxes, and write heartfelt letters. A wide variety of
items can make it in of the packages, from trail
mix and toothpaste to socks and sunblock. Another item you
(24:05):
often see energy drinks. More than five cases of donated
energy drinks were shipped off to troops in connection with
the recent deployment from Fort Bragg. It's a well intentioned gesture,
but it's one that can lead to some devastating consequences.
We were doing this study with soldiers. This is Dr
Amy Adler. She's a research psychologist with the Walter Reed
(24:26):
Army Institute of Research, and we happened to have them
in military classrooms, battalion classrooms, and they were sitting at
their desks and as we were handing out our surveys,
we noticed that at the top of almost every soldier's
desk were energy drinks. And just looking out across all
(24:47):
the soldiers, it seemed really amazing to me and to
the team that there were so many energy drinks present
in the room. And why do soldiers drink so many
energy drinks? You know, they want to perform at their
us they want to be able to function under conditions
of restricted sleep. So energy drinks really offer an opportunity
(25:09):
to kind of boost their performance when they are sleep deprived,
and energy drink makers know they have a good market
with soldiers. Even the packaging of brands like Rip It
reflects why these drinks could be popular among soldiers. One
can of camouflage, another in stars and stripes. Each can
(25:30):
of Rip It also featuring a silhouette of an American
hero on the battlefield, and it works. The energy drinks
are enormously popular among soldiers, maybe too popular, amy Addler.
More than seventy of the soldiers we surveyed reported drinking
at least one energy drink sometime in the past month
(25:50):
and said that they drink an energy drink daily. But
the even more alarming number was the percentage of soldiers
who had had two or more energy drinks per day.
And that's one in six or of the soldiers who
we surveyed, So that's a sizeable group, and that's a
lot of energy drinks and consuming that amount had some consequences.
(26:13):
So we found that for those soldiers drinking two or
more energy drinks per day, that they were more than
double at risk for reporting depression, anxiety, post traumatic stress disorder,
alcohol misuse, and aggression, even after we controlled for things
(26:34):
like rank and sleep problems. And one of the studies
most surprising findings was related to sleep drinking high levels
of energy drinks was associated actually with more fatigue and
not less fatigue. That's right, energy drinks made those who
drank them even more tired. Now, there's no evidence to
suggest that energy drinks are as harmful as cigarettes, but
(26:56):
that shouldn't stop us from taking to heart the lessons
of history. Just as their well meaning counterparts in the
Y m c. A. Distributed billions of cigarettes to soldiers
a century ago. Scores of earnest volunteers and army officials
today are sending off crate after crate of energy drinks
to soldiers, and we ought to know better than that
by now. I think if people know about the risks,
(27:17):
then they can make good decisions. And really, in terms
of what the military can do, the military can can
inform soldiers about the risk, they can inform healthcare providers
about the risk, they can inform leaders, so leaders are
armed with this kind of information. We still had time
to do something about the problem of abusing energy drinks.
We have the science and the lessons of history to
(27:38):
guide us, but we really didn't have that luxury when
we were confronted with cigarettes a century ago. You know,
as much as I want to stand and judge and
say Oh my gosh, Joel Bias. Again. We have to
judge people for their own time, you know, and people
would judge us as well a hundred or two hundred
years for for for our own time. People are products
of their time, and so I think that that's the
(28:00):
tragedy of the irony of history. What did we learn
today about the tragedy and irony of history? One? The
y m c A is responsible for more than just
your local basketball league, way more. Two. Well, the y
m c A and the U. S. Army were handing
out cigarettes to American soldiers in World War One. The
French Army was operating state sponsored brothels for its soldiers.
(28:24):
That probably explains a lot of the difference between our
two countries. Three, too many energy drinks can make you
even more tired. And finally, if you want to save
a lot of money and avoid sponsoring terrorism, don't smoke
at all unless you're a doctor of course. Flashback is
(28:48):
written and hosted by me Sean Braswell, senior writer and
executive producer at Ozzie. It was produced by Robert Coulos,
Tracy Moran, Fiorio Digiza, and Shannon Williamson. Chris Hoff injury
You at our show special thanks to the crew at
I Heart Radio podcast Networks, especially Sophie Lichtman and Jack O'Brien.
Make sure to subscribe to Flashback on the I Heart
(29:09):
Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Flashback is
the latest podcast from Ozzie, a modern media company producing
original TV series, festivals, news and podcasts for curious people.
Ozzie's unique storytelling focuses on the new and the next,
whether that's forward looking news and features, bold new perspectives
on TV or brand new ways of looking at history.
(29:32):
Here's one final thought from my lecture notes for this episode.
Saddam Hussein's firstborn son, Uday was a lot of things.
A playboy, a rapist, a brutal killer as head of
a Rocks World Cup soccer team, even tortured players who
played badly. But there was perhaps one thing Day was
beyond all others. A cigarette smuggler. During the late ninety
(29:54):
nineties and early two thousands, at a time when a
Rock was under un sanctions, he was pulling in up
to ten million dollars per year for himself and his
father's regime by trafficking in illegal cigarettes. Day and his
brother say were killed by US forces in two thousand
and three, but you can still see Uday's gold plated
assault rifle today. It's location the JFK Special Warfare Museum
(30:17):
on Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, North Carolina. To dive deeper,
head to AUSI dot com slash flashback. That's oz y
dot com slash flashback. There you can find some of
my lecture notes from today's episode, featuring extended interviews, links
(30:37):
to further reading and more information on the surprising history
of cigarettes, as well as links to other hidden stories
from history uncovered by me and other reporters at AUSSI.
We all need a break from the constant cycle to
learn something new, to gain new perspectives. The Great Courses
(31:00):
Plus streaming service is an excellent resource to expand our
knowledge on a variety of subjects or pick up a
new hobby. I've been enjoying the Great Courses Plus while
researching this season of flashback lectures like Playball, the rise
of Baseball is America's pastime, History of the Supreme Court,
and Battlefield Europe have helped me connect the dots on
several stories from history. Right now, they're giving our listeners
(31:23):
a special, limited time offer a free month of unlimited
access to their entire library. Sign Up now through our
special u r L go to the Great Courses plus
dot Com Slash Aussie. That's the Great Courses plus dot
Com slash. O z y the Great Courses plus dot
Com Slash Aussie
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