Something "wonderful" happens! Big Tobacco pushed blatant lies on the public for decades, but this is one of the worst I've ever seen. You'll "feel better" when you switch to Philip Morris! Then they list all the dreadful health effects of smoking, raw throat, burning sinuses, terrible taste and, worst of all, "that smoked-out feeling" - and ALL of these things are instantly erased! Vanished! Gone forever!
See, folks? Smoking is only uncomfortable (meaning: DANGEROUS) when you smoke the wrong brand - that other guy's brand. Then there comes the predictable image of a doctor holding up a pack of Philip Morris to recommend them to their patients who smoke, presumably because they're SO much safer.
Lies and more lies, and yet it went on well into the 1980s when restaurants still had "smoking sections". I will never forget watching a documentary on Big Tobacco and hearing a former executive tell us all that there is NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BRANDS. None. Tobacco is tobacco is tobacco. NOBODY smokes for the "flavor", they smoke because they are addicted to nicotene and can't stop, and nobody "feels better" just because they switched their brand. And why did smoking make people feel so bad in the first place? Can you guess?
One of the reasons I spend so much time on YouTube (OK, the COVID apocalypse is right now the main reason) is to scan the comments, particularly regarding a video which has been up for several years. Sometimes I even see one of my own comments from, say, eight years ago, and it gives me a funny time-machine feeling. The following was a comment on a three-hour documentary (the kind A & E used to produce before their content slid into the sewer) recounting the history of Big Tobacco and their successful coverup of the lethal nature of nicotene addiction.
This had to be one of the strangest comments I've ever seen on ANY topic, and I want to pick it apart here because it rang a lot of bells for me - not as a smoker, which I've never been, but as a sober alcoholic who nearly drowned in her addiction to alcohol. In other words, I know the dynamics of addiction pretty well, I've lived it through my own heart and liver and brain, and I see all the earmarks of an addict in these strangely defensive, yet rhapsodic remarks about the now socially-taboo habit of smoking.
"I've been a smoker for about a year and a half, smoking about three cigarettes a week with additive free rolling tobacco and its probably one of the most enjoyable habits I've ever taken up in my life. Here are 5 Thoughts on Why I Smoke Cigarettes:
1. If you are not willing to even give me the time of day because I have a pinch of dried leaves rolled into a tiny cylinder of paper and lit on fire between my fingers, and that's your only reason to not talk to me, then thank you for removing yourself from the equation and not wasting my time.
2. There is something zen and meditative about sitting down with a bag of tobacco and rolling your own cigarettes. The mechanical muscle memory of making something relieves you of having to focus on other things.
3. Almost everything seems better with a cigarette. Long drives in the car. Pulling an all-nighter. Coffee. Sex. Taking a poop. The only thing I can think of that it makes worse is a stuffy nose and a sore throat from a cold, and god dammit if I just don't soldier through that.
4. There's something beautiful about the way that smoke curls through the air, interacts with sunlight, and vanishes like it never existed. It really makes me want to capture it in a photograph or draw it on a pad of paper.
5. As far as addictions go, smoking cigarettes is probably the least harmful one that I have. Friendships will come and go. Relationships will start and end. People are born and then we die. But I can always go to a gas station and buy a new pack of cigarettes."
OK, so let me analyze these baffling comments one at a time.
I've been a smoker for about a year and a half, smoking about three cigarettes a week with additive free rolling tobacco and its probably one of the most enjoyable habits I've ever taken up in my life. Here are 5 Thoughts on Why I Smoke Cigarettes:
This guy hits the ground running in what I would call the art of minimizing/rationalizing. "About three cigarettes a week" is kind of like saying you pee three times a week. As far as I know from talking to hundreds of smokers in AA, it just doesn't happen. Even if he's correct in telling us how moderate his habit is, his description of "additive free rolling tobacco" somehow makes it all sound a lot more wholesome, organic, and just plain safer than smoking those awful tubes with the filters in them. "Taken up" gives a sense of starting a new hobby, or a new religion perhaps, and certainly embracing the habit of his own free will.
1. If you are not willing to even give me the time of day because I have a pinch of dried leaves rolled into a tiny cylinder of paper and lit on fire between my fingers, and that's your only reason to not talk to me, then thank you for removing yourself from the equation and not wasting my time.
WHOA! Settle down, fella! Nobody's out to get you here, so why the sudden cobra-strike before anyone has even said anything? I saw no direct criticisms of anything he had said in the comments. But that wasn't the issue. He was defensive, surly, even hostile before the conversation even started. It was: hello, I love smoking, and go to hell, you're wasting my time. Anyone who disagrees with him is dismissed with contempt before they even get to make their point. If these are five "thoughts", I'd like to see what he calls "insults". The description of an innocuous "pinch of dried leaves" is probably the most extreme example of minimizing I've ever seen. Hell, I used to drink a clear liquid that might have looked like an ordinary glass of water, except that it said Smirnoff on the label.
2. There is something zen and meditative about sitting down with a bag of tobacco and rolling your own cigarettes. The mechanical muscle memory of making something relieves you of having to focus on other things.
This is one of the most far-fetched (if poetic) defenses of smoking I've ever seen. I doubt very much that someone HAS to resort to rolling their own cigarettes to attain a meditative state. If it's muscle memory and the comfort of repetitive actions that provides so much comfort, peeling carrots might do the same thing. If you have the desire to "make something", take up carpentry or cooking or painting or sculpture. It's a lot more constructive way to use your hands, and you won't end up with rotting lungs or a stopped heart. I also wonder exactly what those "other things" are - never spelled out as either positive or negative, but definitely things he would rather not focus on.
3. Almost everything seems better with a cigarette. Long drives in the car. Pulling an all-nighter. Coffee. Sex. Taking a poop. The only thing I can think of that it makes worse is a stuffy nose and a sore throat from a cold, and god dammit if I just don't soldier through that.
Let me get this straight. You smoke "about three cigarettes A WEEK". So you tell me. Then suddenly everything you do seems to require a cigarette: driving, staying up late, drinking coffee, having sex, even taking a shit! This sounds like the classic smoker's pattern: get up in the morning, have a cigarette. Drink some coffee, have a cigarette. Drive to work, have a. . . or walk the dog, or pee, or whatever-the-hell-it-is you happen to be doing. Smoking doesn't "make it better" either. It's just a reflex based on addictive craving. ANY excuse will do. One of the reasons it's so hard to quit is that you associate every single activity of your day with lighting up. If you truly smoke only three cigarettes a week, you must take very few long drives in the car (and a long drive - hey, wouldn't that maybe require MORE THAN ONE cigarette?). The George S. Patton-type stoicism about sore throats and colds is just a way to flaunt his immunity to such mortal weakness.
4. There's something beautiful about the way that smoke curls through the air, interacts with sunlight, and vanishes like it never existed. It really makes me want to capture it in a photograph or draw it on a pad of paper.
You could light your fireplace, if you have one, or make a bonfire in your back yard. You could even burn incense (that would be even better, and would smell good rather than toxic and foul). There are ways you can watch smoke curling through the air, having a little dance with the sun rays, etc., without lighting one of your roll-your-owns made with tobacco out of your little drawstring bag. It just isn't poetic to lose a lung or die gasping for air in the COPD ward. It's even worse for your family to have to watch, knowing how preventable it was. You don't get much artwork done if you're dead.
5. As far as addictions go, smoking cigarettes is probably the least harmful one that I have. Friendships will come and go. Relationships will start and end. People are born and then we die. But I can always go to a gas station and buy a new pack of cigarettes.
Here is an admission in plain type that this guy DOES have an addiction to smoking. He calls it "the least harmful one that I have", making me wonder just how many addictions he DOES have. In a sense, all addictions are the same - it's what goes on in the brain that is such a disaster, the dopamine rush and surge of artificial wellbeing - and the substance, such as "that a pinch of dried leaves rolled into a tiny cylinder of paper and lit on fire between my fingers", is just the delivery device.
But it's what he says after that which truly horrifies me. Friendships will come and go, relationships will start and end. . . This echoes very closely the MANY statements made in the original documentary by long-term smokers (many of them in the terminal stages) who actually cherished their habit, saw cigarettes as their "friend", and even saw mere human relationships as comparatively disposable. The tone of his "you live, you die" comments is harsh and feels dismissive of life itself, but then comes the topper: "But I can always go to a gas station and buy a new pack of cigarettes."
Go to a gas station? Buy a new pack. . . But wait. Whatever happened to your little drawstring bag, the wholesome loose tobacco with no harmful additives, the three hand-rolled cigarettes a week? There's nothing very meditative about stopping at a Shell station and furtively purchasing a pack of Marlboros along with your Snickers bar and a bag of Cheetos. It's sad, because it's pretty plain to me that he is basically lying, and posting the elaborate comment publicly out of some need to defend something that he knows is clearly harmful to him. This guy is very likely a full-on smoker, someone who takes denial to the level of an art form, with one of the most elaborate smokescreens I have ever encountered. He deserves the Old Gold "Treat Instead of a Treatment" Addiction Denial Award of the Week.
This is an example of the way smoking was viewed "back then": not only elegant and sophisticated, but downright sexy. Bette Davis exemplified this weird behaviour (at least, that's how we see it now), but it did not stand out as unusual back then. Now people must smoke in back alleys, but I find the idea of it, let alone the foul stink, too dire for me to feel much sympathy.
Hell, I know all about addiction and battled it for years. BTW, just as an aside, I have 30 years of sobriety this month, but spent 15 years doing AA meetings almost daily, sometimes several a day. I'd be doing them now if any of them were "on". So I fully appreciate the harrowing nature of addiction and how ruthlessly it kills people. I am doing even more YouTube than usual during the pandemic, and one channel I watch is The Life and Sad Ending (cheery topic), capsule bios of celebrities who died young. Most don't make it much past 50, and most were of that sexy-cigarette generation and smoked three or four packs a day. Heart attack, stroke, COPD, many types of cancer. . .
We know better now, supposedly, but smoking didn't disappear from Western society. It transformed itself into vaping, which is still delivering nicotene to your lungs and ultimately will do every bit as much harm. Big Tobacco is doing better than ever, though - the Third World relies on cigarettes as a way of making life bearable in dire conditions, and the tobacco companies are delighted to supply them. I don't know if people try to stock up when they're over there - not unlike the pedophile tourism in Thailand and other places, in which people stock up on child abuse. But I digress. I made this little animation just for the heck of it.
"Yes, it's irritating to listen to that constant, tuneless humming - and more than that, the humming is a sign of jangled nerves.
If you notice any of those telltale nervous habits in yourself - if you whistle through your teeth - juggle your keys - drum on the table - then it's time to start taking care of yourself.
Get enough sleep - fresh air - recreation - and watch your smoking. . . Remember, you can smoke as many Camels as you want. Their costlier tobaccos never jangle your nerves."
While mushing my way through a ton of bizarre vintage ads to post, this one jumped out at me, causing me utter disbelief. The text said: "Taste isn't the only reason I smoke. People are always telling me that smoking causes low birth weight. Talk about a win-win-win! An easy labor, a slim baby, and the Full Flavor of Winstons!" Below her cheery comment was the slogan, "Winston - when you're smoking for two".This ad seemed to be saying that back in the bad old days, mothers deliberately smoked to have smaller babies which would be easier to pop out. The idea was so extreme that I wondered if the ad had been tampered with, if it was satirical, or a blistering comment on something-or-other.
BUT. . . then I saw this. Mothers-to-be smoking for smaller babies
Some women keep smoking through pregnancy just because they want to give birth to a smaller baby, according to British researchers. By Stephen Adams, Medical Correspondent 3:22PM BST 07 Jul 2011 Even though most women now understand there is “overwhelming evidence” that smoking during pregnancy is harmful to the developing child, they continue to do so, said Professor Nick Macklon of Southampton University.
He told the annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) in Stockholm: “It is important that people who believe that a smaller baby means an easier birth take into account the increased risk of complicated deliveries in smokers, as well as the risk of disease later in life which goes with low birth weight.”
"Smoking during pregnancy is not just bad for the mother and baby, but for the adult it will grow into." He and a team at the university’s department of obstetrics and gynaecology have now produced what he called the first “hard evidence” that women who stopped smoking upon discovery they were pregnant, could protect their unborn children from harm. The study looked at over 50,000 pregnancies in the Southampton area, analysing the birth weight of the babies and comparing this to self-reported smoking behaviour.
Those who continued to smoke through pregnancy had lower weight babies. The more women smoked the lighter their babies were: those who smoked more than 10 a day had babies weighing some 11oz (300g) less than the average birth weight from a non-smoking mother, of about 7lb 10oz (3.45kg). However, those who ceased smoking at about the time they conceived were just as likely to give birth to a normal weight baby as those who had never smoked.
He said: “We can now give couples hard evidence that making the effort to stop smoking in the periconceptional will be beneficial for their baby. “Stopping smoking can ameliorate these detrimental effects.” This could help change behaviour among smoking mothers, which he said had hardly changed in Britain over the last decade.
Prof Macklon explained that smoking during pregnancy “affects the transportation of nutrients, especially oxygen, across the placenta”.
It was also “reasonable to assume” that some of the 4,000 or so toxins in cigarettes were harmful to foetuses.
Note that in spite of the provocative headline, this article does not come right out and directly state that mothers smoke because they want to have smaller babies: “It is important that people who believe that a smaller baby means an easier birth take into account the increased risk of complicated deliveries in smokers." The message is in there somewhere, of course, but it's politically incorrect (or something - or violates civil rights) to spell it out.
If this is true, then the world is in more trouble than I thought. Next women will guzzle alcohol during pregnancy to deliberately cause fetal alcohol syndrome, because a dumb child is easier to handle than a smart one, won't be so expensive to educate, and won't sass you back.
This Camels ad is particularly insidious. It shows a woman wearing a veil, white gloves and a sort of Jackie Kennedy flared jacket, delicately implying pregnancy. On the opposite page is the usual garbage about "what cigarette do you smoke, Doctor?" The juxtaposition of the ladylike woman "in the family way" with a doctor earnestly pushing his cancer sticks jams these two elements together in people's minds: Doc loves to smoke, particularly Camels, meaning it must be OK; so for the pregnant woman, facing coyly in the other direction, it must also be OK, and for her baby too. Doctors were gods then, and it didn't matter what sort of bilge they promoted or defended.
My scanner is busted, or I'd post another photo of a pregnant woman from The Family of Man, a very tony and pretentious photographic exhibit from the 1950s. I am sure there was no irony or censure in the fact that she very obviously held a cigarette, right out in front of her swollen abdomen, in a way which people probably thought was darling. She had a sort of dreamy, oh-I'm-just-waiting-for-it posture, "but while I'm waiting, I'll just have a smoke". Most of these "candid" shots seem very posed to me, so let's hope she did not subject her baby to second-hand smoke, on top of whatever horrors crossed her placenta from puffing on Camels.
The above ad looks like it should be for Johnson and Johnson or Gerber or Pet Milk, but it's not. Disgusting of Big Tobacco to claim they take just as much pride in their lung-rotting lethal weapon as you do in your newborn infant. It's all the same to them. Birth. Death. Note also (in the text below) how in a hundred-word ad, the brand name appears FOUR times, as does the term "gentle/gentleness" - and what the FUCK does that have to do with a cigarette?
Born gentle Proud mothers, please forgive us if we too feel something of the pride of a new parent. For new Philip Morris, today's Philip Morris, is delighting smokers everywhere. Enjoy the gentle pleasure, the fresh unfiltered flavor, of this new cigarette, born gentle, then refined to special gentleness in the making. Ask for new Philip Morris in the smart new package. NEW Philip Morris. . . gentle for modern tastes
BLOGGER'S UPDATE. I got my scanner working, and though this is a bad representation of that photo from The Family of Man, you can see what I mean. The subject's expectant dreaminess is completely wrecked by that cigarette, though I doubt if it had much impact back then, except to make people think: "Lucky her. She'll have an easy labor, a "slim" (read: premature) baby, and her Winstons too. Win-win-win!"
Old ads for products that now, somehow, don't seem like such a good idea are a staple of this blog. This one just jumped out at me as wrong on so many levels, I can't even count them all. Those vape things, e-cigarettes (the gadgets that are supposed to help you stop smoking) keep exploding in people's pockets, reminding me of that classic rhyme which begins, "Liar, liar. . . ". But the potential for disaster here seems infinitely magnified.
I can't begin to transcribe all the flyspeck type on this thing, but the bottom sums it up:
Delivers A Lighted Cigarette - - Instantly. Every smoker wants this new magic invention. Look what happens at the touch of the magic button. A cigarette slips out automatically toward your lips - you hear a click - and there's a flame burning right at the end of the cigarette. A touch - a puff - and that's enough! A life saver to car drivers. You puff, and with the lighted cigarette between your lips, you draw it from the case. Then there is another click. The magic case is closed, the flame is out, and the next cigarette automatically jumps into position for the next smoke. Think of getting such amazing results.
I can just make out the part about A Life Saver To Car Drivers. You don't have to take your eyes off the road any more, and both hands off the wheel, to light a cigarette. Avoid the danger of life and property loss by using a Magic Case. Travel 60 miles an hour if you wish and light a cigarette withiout removing your vision from the road for an instant, or both hands from the wheel. All it takes is a touch, a puff. . . and you're smoking. . . SAFELY! The Magic Case is INDISPENSIBLE to car drivers.
I'm still trying to figure out the sequence of events here, involving clicks, puffs, lighted cigarettes and steering wheels, not to mention the potential danger of driving an incredible 60 miles per hour (the origin of the dusty phrase, "going like sixty"). But if you dropped this sucker while it was incendiary, might it not burn a hole in your pants, if not your scrotum? If there were some papers rustling around at your feet, or - oh, say, an oily rag or two - . But this is mere conjecture. Going on and on about "smoking safely" feels like an oxymoron in itself. Open flames, that close to your face - and just what is it that fuels these flames? At what sort of Lilliputian service station would you refill this thing? And the flint - or whatever - the sulphur - it doesn't bear thinking about.
Looking on Google images, I see hundreds of cigarette cases, and to me it's like looking at Star Trek phasers or remote controls for Doomsday. It just does not apply, it has nothing to do with me. So they all look exotic and deadly. Do some of them automatically ignite your cigarette before it even touches your lips? I have no idea. It's possible, I guess. The world of smoking repulses me more than I can say. But in this ad, it's a given, just something everybody does, and having your cigarette lighted for you is seen as the ultimate in convenience. It would have changed so much. Now, Voyager would have been ruined, because Paul Henreid wouldn't have done that business with lighting the two cigarettes and giving one to Bette Davis. Ernie Kovacs might have survived, however, if they had made a Magic Case for cigars. He was barrelling along a tortuous, unfamiliar road at midnight, in torrential rain, in a defective and unfamiliar car, when he decided that now might be a nice time to enjoy a cigar. He could light cigars with one hand, cleverly igniting the match with his thumbnail, but in this case he took his hand off the wheel at exactly the wrong time and ended up in twisted, smoking wreckage. He never would have used one of these anyway because they are so goddamn stupid. And I can't find anything more about them anywhere, so probably they didn't even catch on.
There was a time (think Mad Men) when smoking was so entrenched in culture as to be expected, even required. A non-smoker was a social pariah, an oddball who lived on wheat germ and drank only celery tonic. Maybe he belonged to the Oddfellows (whatever that is). Old movies abound with cigarette symbolism, usually sexual in nature. It's all part of the art of seduction. Think Bette Davis and Paul Henreid blowing smoke in each other's faces.
Nobody mentions coughing your lungs out in a cancer ward.
The following little slice of post-war wisdom came from one of those oddity sites, so I felt free to borrow it. No doubt they did, too. Let's zero in on it some more. . .
Even without reading the text, we can already see that hand position is paramount, even if the meaning isn't crystal-clear. The middle position is kind of baffling to me. I've never in my life seen anyone hold a cigarette like that. It's positively weaponlike. Is it meant as a sort of ash catapult, or an enemy smoke-wafter?
All of these photos remind me of Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca, for some reason. He was constantly smoking in that one, just as EVERYONE was constantly smoking (and drinking). In every picture he made, the cigarette was his signature. But we all know how it ended. One might say that it cost him a lot.
Here the good doctor goes into detail about how smoking style reveals a man's personality. Man's. Not woman's:
OK then. So where do I start? For one thing, that Dr. Neutra thing is suspicious to me. I think of Mr. Neutron in Monty Python. . .
. . . and of course the words neutral and neuter. And a nutria, which is a kind of large beaverlike rodent made into coats (and other things).
But the reason women's smoking gestures aren't considered significant is obvious to Dr. Neutron (or whoever he is): "Women are so affected naturally in their regular posture that they're more often than not too conscious of how they hold a cigarette, and therefore useless as subjects for this experiment."
Useless? Affected? I can think of something to do with my cigarette. Dr. Neutron: sit on this and rotate!
But there's more of this shit to trudge through:
Note that the descriptions of women are devastating, even abusive, whereas he goes fairly easy on the men. If they put on airs, they're not "affected" but "sort of the Texas millionaire type". It's obvious the vast majority of the adjectives to describe men are positive (intellectual, brainy, contemplative, direct, straight-forward, hail fellow well-met, daring, calculating, dreamer, replete with business caution). As for women, any analysis is "just a guess" because they are so "affected": "insecure, afraid to lose that cigarette" (? They come in packs, don't they?). "She probably holds on to her man like glue." Greedy, graspy, possessive! But the next one is worse: "Typical grasp of a female bored with her date. She has to concentrate on the tip to keep from yawning." One has to wonder if this Dr. Neutron has a filthy Freudian mind and sees prick-symbols everywhere he looks.
Is this whole thing a joke, a bit of satire to send up people's smoking habits? I think not! I believe it's drenched with misogyny and contempt for women, and trivializes everything about them.
So what is the conclusion? While you're busy rotting your lungs and throat with terminal cancer, boys, make sure you hold your cigarette in the proper way. Cultivate it for a good impression. Grasp it properly so that the tip is sticking straight up. And good luck in the heart-and-lung ward.
In the past I've spilled quite a lot of ink on Milky. Well, not literally, or his suit would be all splotchy. The Milkster was the creature who haunted my childhood from his roost on Detroit TV during the early 1960s. Everyone was supposed to love Milky, and the thing is, we did, no matter how freakish he looked. Clowns weren't viewed as creepy then, nor were dolls or puppets, which explains a lot about children's Christmas programming back then.
I hesitated on doing one of these giffer things about Milky, because all my photos of him were so shitty. Some of them were about the size of a postage stamp, but that's all I had. A few were gi-normous scans of ads that look like they appeared in newspapers, since they have that yellowed, crumbling look. So I had to try to scale those down to fit.
Everything IN this montage is yellowed, when it isn't red, the waxy red of Twin Pines milk cartons. The stylized cartoon version of Milky is even more nightmarish than the original. Then there is the Milky merchandizing, which makes up most of this tribute because it's all I have. God, but it was awful. Those tshirts look like they're rotten, the wall clock is the color of a bad urine sample, that game is a shitty piece of plastic - but none of them can hold a candle to the ultimate piece of Milky memorabilia:
Yes. It's the Milky the Clown ash tray.
BONUS FIND! Who knows how I get into these nightmarish things. I just found an ad for a complete set of brand new, unopened, unused, pristine drinking glasses WITH MILKY ON THEM. You heard me. God knows how much they want for these things, because they are up for auction somewhere in the States. Compared to the plastic tumbler, they're pretty impressive:
One wonders, however, who would buy a set of these and just put them away somewhere. A time traveller, perhaps. Someone from the future who could see how valuable these were going to be. But I have never understood time travel. What if you met yourself? What if you gave yourself all sorts of advice about things NOT to do, so you would end up not having any of the learning experiences of your life and would end up a complete idiot? How could there be two of you at one time? But there would have to be, wouldn't there? Yet, my Einsteinian husband says time travel is theoretically possible. The whole thing makes me want to go to bed and stay there.
One of the better YouTube docs about cigarettes and the way Big Tobacco fought the truth (and won, for a very long time: "A treat instead of a treatment!").
By the way, this was produced by A & E. I used to watch Biography every day, then it trickled down to three times a week, then one, then it was on another network - then it disappeared, to be replaced by "reality" dreck. A & E no longer exists as a producer of quality documentaries.
Here is another of my gif /slidehows of old ads. I've wanted to do one of cigarette ads for a while now, but once I started researching, I was inundated. There are just thousands of these things out there. I found whole sites devoted to them. They had all been neatly archived according to date and type. The fascination with these things continues, so full of jaunty lies.
Cigarettes were so normalized, so much a part of culture. They were associated with sophistication (long gloves and cigarette holder), rugged masculinity ("Come to where the flavour is!"), femininity (a bride throwing a bouquet after stubbing out her Lucky), and certain psychological benefits - lifting you up or calming you down, depending on which direction you needed to be levelled. And of course, there was smoking as social ritual, a harmless and fun form of recreation.
These ads exhort you to "be happy - go Lucky!" They depict adorable babies posing questions to their Moms and Dads about their smoking habits. Doctors exhort their patients to smoke Camels, because that's what THEY smoke. More than one ad asks "do you inhale?" Women are bursting with athletic health and glee, never getting fat because they smoke rather than eat.
Did all this shit work? I mean, did people actually buy them because of this propaganda?
Must have. Took a long, long time for the public to catch on. Mad Men was actually about the tobacco boondoggle and its eventual defeat, though the show then had to go on to other things (like foreign cars that wouldn't start, thus defeating carbon monoxide suicide attempts).
I saw a documentary about all this - hair-raising, it was, because by the end of it, it turned out Big Tobacco was doing better than ever, shipping their lethal substance overseas to the Third World where smoking makes the horrors of life just bearable. This is where you see pictures of three-year-old kids smoking.
Let's look at a few of these things in detail.
Babies abound in these things, and it's puzzling. Of course they're cute, but are the ads somehow, obliquely, telling women that it's OK to smoke while they're pregnant? They DID tell women that. Also that it was OK to smoke around them. Everyone did anyway. But I find this association especially creepy because it makes no logical sense.
One of the more chilling Lucky Strike slogans was "Smoke a Lucky to feel your LEVEL best!" This usually depicted a widely grinning young woman - in this case getting married and throwing her bouquet. But it's the fine print that makes my stomach drop: "Luckies' fine tobacco picks you up when you're low. . . calms you down when you're tense - puts you on the Lucky level." Level seems to be the operative term here, the desirable thing. Cigarettes are being used as a drug to regulate mood. Did it work? Look at the explosion of antidepressant use today. Maybe we should bring back the Leveller?
No. No! Not one. NOT ONE SINGLE CASE OF THROAT IRRITATION due to smoking CAMELS! Now I know why we're asked not to use all-caps on the internet because it makes you seem to be shouting. In this case, an official-looking man in a white coat, presumably a doctor, is displaying case studies of people who have gone and smoked their brains out for months, and STILL do not display ONE SINGLE CASE of throat irritation. "Start your own 30-Day Camel MILDNESS Test Today!" Mildness is a term you see in a lot of these ads, along with flavour. To me, sucking smoke into my lungs via my mouth and tongue just wouldn't taste very good. But I may be wrong. I can see why it might put you off food, which in these ads is considered a good thing.
Let me just transcribe the text below the photo: "A really mild, flavorful smoke that enters your mouth pleasantly cool and filtered. Embassy's extra length of fine, mellow tobaccos provides extra enjoyment plus an extra margin of protection. Try Embassy! Inhale to your heart's content!"
This is completely chilling in light of what we now know about the value of filters in protecting people from cancer. They did absolutely doodlysquat, but for decades the public was told over and over again that they filtered out "tar" and other unwanted things. This was an obvious attempt to assuage public anxiety about all those silly things the Surgeon General had been telling them, that their lungs would rot and they would end their days coughing up blood in a cancer ward.
This is another aspect of the cigarette ad: gorgeousness. Some of these are just so beautiful to look at! How could anything so sophisticated and artful be bad for you? But soft! What lie through yonder advertisement breaks? Could it be - more reassuring text?
DO YOU INHALE? Luckies "makes no bones" about this vital question. "Keep that under your hat," said the cigarette trade when first we raised the question - "Do you inhale?" But silence is golden only when it's unwise to speak. Let others explain their striking avoidance of this subject. Lucky Strike makes its position crystal clear. . . for certainly, inhaling is most important to every smoker. For everybody inhales - whether they realize it or not. . . every smoker breathes in some part of the smoke he or she draws out of a cigarette. Do you inhale? Lucky Strike "makes no bones" about this vital question, because certain impurities concealed in even the finest, mildest tobacco are removed by Luckies' famous purifying process. Luckies created that process. Only Luckies have it! "It's toasted"
"Toasted" seems to imply that the tobacco has somehow been purified of carcinogens (a word that might not even have been coined back then). Someone in the tobacco industry waved a magic wand over it, rendering it harmless. Surely the good folks at Lucky Strike, the LSMFT people ("Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco") would know best, and would never do anything to harm the public. But those ads seem to bespeak certain nameless jitters among the general population, not to mention the tobacco industry itself.
Was it the fact that 90% of heavy smokers were pulling a Humphrey Bogart or an Edward R. Murrow in their final days and gasping their last in the cancer ward? Did no one put the pieces together? But if they tried to, Lucky reassured them: pish-tosh! WE don't mind discussing the matter even though everyone else is being needlessly coy about it. WE are honest about the fact that smokers inhale. But our product is so magically-produced, with shamans sitting out in the tobacco fields moaning incantations over it day and night, that those delicate throat membranes surely won't start to ulcerate, bleed, fester, bubble, blister and turn black.
A FRANK DISCUSSION AT LAST on a subject that has long been "taboo" "Let sleeping dogs lie!" So said the cigarette trade when first we raised the subject of inhaling. But dodging an important issue is not Lucky Strike's policy! Do you inhale? That question is vitally important. . . for every smoker inhales - knowingly or unknowingly. Every smoker breathes in some part of the smoke he or she draws out of a cigarette! And the delicate membranes of your throat demand that your smoke be pure, clean - free of certain impurities! No wonder Lucky Strike dares to raise this vital question! For Luckies bring you the protection you want - because Luckies' famous purifying process removes certain impurities concealed in every tobacco leaf. Luckies created that process. Only Luckies have it! So, whether you inhale knowingly or unknowingly, safeguard those delicate membranes! "It's toasted"
(Blogger's note. I am not kidding. This piece ran word-for-broken-word in the Albany Daily Star. Perhaps they meant New Delhi. It has all the earmarks of my favorite thing: a very bad translation.)
March 25, 2016 4:21 pm
1. DAY
Type the root causes of smoking cessation in a list. Hang everywhere, this list will catch your eye; bathroom mirror, on the fridge or television. If you feel that a copy with you in your move will weaken again read disconnect it from your pocket.
Take your whole pack of cigarettes.
Only one pack of cigarettes and take you dislike most. So effortlessly you can not get the pleasure of smoking and you will not get what you expect when you drink. Normally you choose a brand that contains less nicotine and tar that allows the interior to adapt more easily to the days of nicotine in your body.
Paste Inside that package on your list showing the amount of cigarettes. Do not forget to save it before you burn every cigarette you drink and numbering. So soon you will have an idea of how many days you smoked. “1” number one cigarette, smoking it you can not drink it, “2”, but not unbearably so much smoke you want first, and “3” of cigarette smoking is also where you can have it before drinking. The next time smoking and drinking, type in the situation you are in it. For example, the bus or while waiting for an important phone call or when you are distressed and anxious as a. When you want to drink Can any cigarettes, do not forget to complete this list to fill the job. Do not clean your ashtray. After a while you see with your eyes the disgusting ashtray picture emerges when filled to the brim.
2. DAYS
Today “3” No. smoking and drinking you will cheat yourself by enumerating errors.
Smoking, occupies the mouth of the smoker. It’s also another way to sugar-free chewing gum. With always keep gum. Instead of candy, and you can drink the water and eat fruit. Many people say that quitting smoking for fear of gaining weight. If you eat a balanced and planned to. If you have a cigarette burn your food habits developed over time by the exit for a short walk and 5 minutes from the table. Smoke filled your lungs instead will help you better enjoy the fresh air dining.
3 DAYS
“3” of torture to smoke too bad matters worse numbers. Today, perhaps “2” number can even drink it. Remember to save your cigarettes you drink list. Each cigarette before yourself, “Do I really want a cigarette? “The question of questions.
deep breathing smoke rather than try to exercise. Relax, give it two or three times to take a deep breath. You will feel really better. This exercise will support your decision to smoke.
Set a specific time you can stop the smoke. For example, the maximum period of days that can withstand up to measure how much smoke without smoking. The delay of the first day cigarette smoking as possible. If you are too addicted at least an hour, the average smoker If you are one to two hours and less than half a day smoker, try not to smoke. Please note that as the bus or the theater can judge for yourself in places where smoking is prohibited.
It’s time to change your brand of cigarettes. Now take a cigarette containing lower tar and nicotine in tobacco can further reduce the damage to your body.
4 DAYS
Today “2” you quit smoking. Be realistic. Only really need a “1” number one cigarette is really for a time as you need.
We relax a bit now. If you really go and eat what you like. Your money steak, pineapple, to spend on things like shrimp. Eat plenty of food especially a favorite. If you have a weight problem but be a little careful about the desserts.
Generally, select a media that you smoke. never smoke while you are at a cocktail party or a meeting room overwhelmed with cigarette smoke and the environment. If you set yourself your own limits, it would also have to comply with them.
Throw away your lighters and matches. Non-fire to burn you need to look for, you have to do what you think you will make it easier for many smokers.
5 DAYS
Now buying cigarettes. Carry with you the list you drink and cigarettes continue recording. Today, only “1” number of smokers will not forget.
Tell your friends that you quit smoking today. They will see great support, especially from non-smokers. Do not open your mind you know this decision ensures more.
We ask you do not shed your ashtray. Now it’s time to use them. All ashes and butts in your ashtray add a little water on to fill a jar. Keep this jar is always at your fingertips and you can smell a bit of smoke when we wanted to open the door. Can you still do want to smoke?
Remove ashtrays this evening to wash your closet on the top shelf. Tomorrow there would be no need for them will never smoke.
6 DAYS
24 hours no smoking.
Go to places where smoking is prohibited. Visit museums or your non-smoker friends, go to movies, watch movies in a row.
Stay away from alcoholic beverages. Alcohol and cigarettes go well together. Alcohol also weakens your willpower and strength.
7 DAYS
24 hours, more smoke.
Open your own money this week in a special savings account that the rest of the cigarette smoke. Pay the same amount in this account every week for a year. I will guess at the end of the year will see a lot more money is accumulated. whether this be something you can not get much money.
If you feel depression or physical symptoms associated with giving up smoking to seek help by contacting your doctor.
Do not forget that you are human. If you are a smoker you will be broken, do not succumb to despair immediately. Reread your reasons for quitting smoking and add any new reasons. Your experience will find your most effective technique on you. Continue to practice techniques that you find. Return to the program of the day when you feel forced. Go on. You can and you will leave.
