Part Two: How Cigarettes Invented Everything

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Uh, should really get that checked out. Cut me blowing
my nose, but keep the yell, keep the yell. It
sounds like a wounded elephant. I feel like a wounded elephant.
A pollen counting Oregon right now is unbelievable. Um, I

(00:23):
just went outside during the break between episode recordings and
emptied a magazine from an A R fifteen into a tree.
But it does not appear to have solved the problem.
So now you gotta gotta get heavier than that many.
I should have used the three O eight. You know,
that's why they went. That's that's why the armies, the Cali.

(00:44):
Yeah you want to up a tree? Yeah, you really
want You really want to move close to that thirty
caliber range exported to you by six point eight tree
killer buster. Yeah, that's three thirty eight lap of a baby.

(01:05):
When I was a young man, times like this, right
around near the end of the year, my friends and
I would go out into the woods and we would
shoot down a tree in order to have a bonfire
around it. And um, that doesn't really relate to the
subject of the episode, but we often smoked cigarettes while
doing it. Not interesting, It's kind of like shooting down
a tree, isn't it, Because if you're active consumer base,

(01:30):
it's a bit like shooting shooting down a tree. Yeah,
you just have to hope that they can grow up
faster than you can shoot them, which I mean, and
it's also what they say about the human race, because
one thing you got to give it to us is
we bred slightly faster than cigarettes were able to kill us.
Once again a win for humanity. Yeah, the Titanic dub

(01:52):
so cigarettes did not get to have their real moment
in the sun until a few years after the dissolution
of American Too Bad Echo, which again the Supreme Court
knocks it out in nineteen eleven. Probably somewhere under ten
percent of a merit of smokers, and a much smaller
portion of the US population um actually smoked cigarettes. So

(02:14):
a pretty small fraction of the US adult population is
smoking still, even even as successful as our old buddy
Duke wasn't getting people to smoke um. But the thing
that's going to actually start to change this and and
really turn around cigarettes fortunes is the First World War. Now, James,

(02:34):
you've been a trench. Yeah, I mean I've been in
the company trenches, So that's non professional reasons. Yeah, they're
they're trenches are not the cleanest places in the world,
especially if it's raining and their muddy. H You wouldn't
want to have a pipe in a trench necessarily, Like
you could smoke a pipe in a trench, but stuff's

(02:54):
gonna get in it. That's kind of gross, right, that's
not ideal. And when you know, if you're doing trench stuff,
you probably don't have time to sit down and really
smoke a cigar. You know, they take a while. Cigarettes
are depends on what rank you're at, doesn't it once
you write, right, if you're sitting yeah, yeah, yeah, you
get up to the field grade officers, they have plenty

(03:16):
of time for cigars, and they have clean enough areas
for cigarettes, for for pipes. But if you're a working
man in the trenches, the best way you have to
smoke in between getting murdered by German machine guns is
a cigarette. And that's that's really what causes a shipload
of people to start adopting cigarettes. That that's what actually

(03:37):
makes it a mainstream thing. Is World War One. Now death,
it does go well with death, James. Cigarette adoption had
crept up only gradually prior to this and it had
been met by this a really active anti smoking campaign
the whole time. It's kind of noting that the first
twenty years of of like the twentieth century, basically from

(03:59):
like the late eighteen nineties to like nineteen seventeen nineteen eighteen,
there's a very active anti smoking campaign in the United States,
and it's powered by a lot of the same voices
who are also fighting for prohibition. There were even bands
on the public consumption of tobacco in some states. In
nineteen ten, a doctor named Charles Peace founded the Non
Smokers Protective League, advocating for a public smoking ban in

(04:21):
America's largest city. In nineteen thirteen, The New York Times
published an op ed opposing the establishment of smoking cars
in the subway. Now, these people we now know are right,
you know, like cigarettes bad, public smoking bad. But they're not.
They're not. Again, there's not strong evidence that proves cigarettes

(04:42):
cause cancer at this point. There's not really good scientific
studies at this point. These people are just busybodies, right, yeah, yeah, right,
they can be right for the wrong reasons. Well, what
are the arguments that they Well, I don't like it, yeah,
let me let me yet. Chief among the voices of
small of non smokers is our old friend of the pod,

(05:03):
John Harvey Kellogg, America's. Kellogg's complaint was quote, smoking has
become so nearly universal among men, smokers are practically ignored
their rights trampled upon. Now that that means that, like,
by being around cigarette smoke, you're having your rights trampled upon.
And yes, we now know second hand smoke is seriously
bad for you at the time we did it. And also,

(05:27):
let's be honest here nineteen seventeen, walking around a city
that's still filled with horseshit and now leaded gasoline fumes
from all of the cars rolling around and industrial smoke
from all of the different fucking coal factories and stuff.
Cigarettes are not your number one health risk, Yeah, the
end of the thing. Number one trampling on your right side. Yeah,

(05:48):
it's just not the biggest problem. Look, John Harvey Kellogg,
don't give him credit. Yeah, do not give him credit
for being on the right side of history with this one. Um,
so non smokers. Also, it was not again because there's
not greats there are some of these people do are
are ahead of their time and are saying like, hey,

(06:09):
this stuff is has to be bad for you, and
we're going to figure out like the way in which
it's killing people later. A lot of them are just
angry because they think it's gross, and a huge chunk
of them are angry because cigarettes are popular with women,
right because women start smoking. That's a big part of
the anti smoking campaign. In nineteen o four, New York
State passes a law that makes it a crime for

(06:31):
women to quote endanger the morals of children by smoking
in their presence. A woman named Jenny Lasher was charged
and sentenced to jail for violating it. In nineteen o eight,
New York City aldermen passed an ordinance restricting public smoking
by women. From the Washington Post quote. The Sullivan Ordinance
made it illegal for restaurant and bar owners to permit
women to smoke in their establishments. The stated rationale from

(06:53):
bowty moralist and political chieftain Tim Sullivan was that proper
ladies were offended by women smoking, and it certainly wasn't
any it's kind of attempt by a man to control
women's behavior. Despite the ordinance of short duration, it lasted
only two weeks, the sentiment underlying it was held by
others as well. Women smoking was viewed by many as taboo,
associated with what Amanda Amos and Margarita Haglund have termed

(07:15):
lucian libidinous moral behavior. So it is a good band name,
and it's it's interesting. One of the things that cigarettes
do is they make it. They are a big part
of why it starts to become okay for men and
women to socialize together who are unmarried, right in a
lot of ways. So one of the things that is

(07:35):
common prior to cigarettes becoming mainstream, after you have like
a big dinner, if you if you have a fancy potty,
then after dinner, the men will go to smoke cigars
and the women will, you know, go clean up or something.
And increasingly in the early twenties, what starts, or in
the early nineteen nine hundreds, what starts to happen is
after dinner everybody has a cigarette. And women didn't smoke cigars,

(07:58):
but cigarettes are new, and so it's not really that
weird to a lot of modern people that women would
smoke them. And also there's not women's cigarettes, so everyone's
smoking the same cigarettes, and increasingly they start doing it
in the same places together, unmarried men and women just
hanging out and having a smoke and talking. This is
a big part of this is kind of in the

(08:19):
background of the of the suffrage movement, but it like
cigarettes do play a significant role in the increasing acceptance
of social equality for women because men and women spend
time together to smoke. Yeah, it makes not a non factor. Yeah,
definite time period when there's generally is changing gender roles,
right with women working in the First World War, and like,

(08:42):
well that's yeah, that's another part of it, right, is
like women are taking on men's jobs, why wouldn't they
be able to smoke? And you know, it's a it's
a whole thing. So smokers also started to organize to
establish more public smoking places. Tobacco dealers would often back
and on local efforts to lobby for smoking cars on

(09:02):
trains or to allow the smoking of cigarettes on the
rear platform of street cars. Within the military, there were
strenuous debates as to whether or not tobacco should be
legal for soldiers. In nineteen o seven, the Surgeon General
of the Navy had recommended that sailors under twenty one
be banned from smoking cigarettes. This was outrageous to the
actual men of the Navy, and one enlisted man wrote

(09:23):
this in response. If this cigarette recommendation has made the
rule and such a thing as ordered, it's gonna put
all us young fellows who like them on the beam.
It's all right to talk about your cigars and your pipes,
but cigarettes are cigarettes. And when and when you once
get to liking the little sticks, there's nothing that can
take their place, then don't forget that. Life on the
ocean with none of your women, folks, your girlfriends around
to break the monotony is a lot different from life ashore.

(09:45):
And I tell you those dreamsticks help you pass away
many and dreary and homestick our just a bunch of
navy boys, no women around, sucking down dreamsticks. Dream stakes. Yeah.
Direct quote from Jerbine's speech pardnering people with marijuana for dreamsticks.

(10:05):
In an unrelated note, I saw a picture of Joe
Biden with a quantum computer the other day and it
just struck me as the most wrong thing. It's like
looking at Winston Churchill with a game boy, Like, No,
those aren't supposed to be in the same photograph. Joe
Biden should never have lived to see a quantum computer,
like seeing a diplodocus tamagotchi hanging out. Yeah, yeah, that's

(10:27):
not okay, that's not okay. Um. So opposition to cigarettes
in the military disappeared overnight once the United States got
into World War One. Much of this had to do
with black Jack Pershing, the leader of the American Expeditionary Force, who,
when asked what Americans could do to support their soldiers
going overseas, gave this reply. You asked me what we

(10:48):
need to win this war, I answered, tobacco as much
as bullets. Great it is. Yeah, yeah, we've spoken about
this before. But the universal true of conflict journalism. If
you need something you're not sure that someone's gonna give
it to you, you can probably get it by giving
someone enough cigarettes. I keep packs on me every time

(11:09):
I'm anywhere near because, like, and it's not always just
getting something. Some of that is like you meet people
and their stand offish because like, I don't know, they're
fucking soldiers in a war zone whose daily life involves
dealing with horrible trauma, and they don't know you. And
then you like bust out some Marboroughs and you sit
and smoke for like twenty minutes together, and then they
just start talking you know, like that's a thing. They're useful,

(11:31):
they're they're a great tool for journalism. Well, they're also
in terms of how they're being used. That's not unhealthy
by the military because cigarettes spoilers make you worse at
everything that is important for soldiers, almost everything. Right, today,
US soldiers who smoke score an average of thirty five
points lower on PT tests. Cigarette smoking harms your night vision,

(11:54):
like it's bad for your performance. Yes, they are bad
for your performance in combat. In addition to like people
get shot smoking cigarettes cherries. Right, But one thing they
do is they are a stress reliever. And we can
debate in the long term it's not a great coping strategy,
but if your daily job is to get shot at repeatedly,

(12:14):
you don't care about the long term. You just would
like a moment where things feel okay. Yeah, there is
not a long term for a lot of people. No, no,
especially not. And the other thing that they do is,
as we just talked about, people bond while smoking. It's
a part of why men and women. It's a way
in which men and women start to bond socially in
a way they had not in a long time in

(12:35):
Western society and soldiers in the trenches, bond sharing smokes.
It is a thing that you do with each other,
and you can't Number one, this is a thing I
don't think the tobacco industry could have anticipated because it's
just a very human thing. And it's also you can't
fight this like, there's not there's no nothing to do
about it. It's just a thing that people have adopted

(12:57):
for themselves in a difficult time. Um. And so this
is ah, this is a problem for the anti smoking people. Um.
Obviously smoking again very bad, uh for everything else that
makes you be a soldier. But soldiers are not thinking
about that in the times when they're smoking them. Uh.
And in a lot of military planners cases like they're

(13:20):
also it's hard to argue even though you've got people
who are in the medical profession for the military being
like these probably aren't good for people. It's hard to
argue that like a guy who you're asking to run
in a machine gun nest doesn't deserve to have like
a cigarette. Yeah. Um, And you know, if you know America,
you know that love for our military is basically the

(13:40):
not so secret control level lever for the American mind.
So cigarettes had been controversial prior to World War One,
but once we start sending men in the field and
pershings like we need cigarettes. Organizations that had previously lobbied
nationwide for smoking, bands like the y m c A
prior to World War One. The y m c A
is a massive part of trying to ban public smoking.

(14:01):
As soon as the war starts, they start shipping palettes
of cigarettes battle fields. It's it's great truth. For so
long you can just put the put this support. The
troops stank on anything, and people will love it. Here.
It's it's interesting. In the cigarette century, Alan Brandt writes,
volunteers organized smoke funds to collect donations to assure that

(14:23):
the troops had adequate supplies of cigarettes. The Sun Fund
amassed a hundred and thirty seven million cigarettes in a
two month period. Tobacco may not be a necessity of
life in the ordinary sense of the term, explained The
New York Times, but it certainly lightens the inevitable hardships
of war as nothing else can do. The National Cigarette
Service Committee collected the names of soldiers without families to

(14:44):
make sure they received cigarettes. Volunteers prepared packages for shipment
to the troops under the auspices of groups such as
the Army Girls Transport Tobacco Fund. Just that's sweet, Um, yeah, amazing.
I'm sure these people are like, we're also like dying
of trench foot and would have really appreciated like a

(15:04):
new pair of songs. Yes, socks probably also would have
gone over well yeah, I don't know. I mean, I
assume the military was already attempting to provide those things,
Like it is knew that you would provide cigarettes as
the military, so in the early days of the war, uh,
the US war effort. I should say, the fact that
most aid organizations in Europe provided cigarettes to soldiers for

(15:27):
a fee, often substantial, regularly made the news back home.
Soldiers are like, we're paying as much for a cigarette
at the front as we have to pay back at home,
Like that's kind of fucked up. Now, donated cigarettes were
only able to solve a small portion of this problem.
D nine million cigarettes is not a lot, um, if
you if you know anything about cigarettes, that's not very many.

(15:49):
Sounds like a lot. It is not. Um. A fucking
army in the field will smoke through a hundred and
thirty nine million cigarettes quicker than they'll go through that
many bullets uh donated cigarettes only yet solved a small
number of the problems, So the War Department had to
make the decision to issue tobacco rations to soldiers starting

(16:09):
in May of nineteen eighteen. The New York Times wrote
of the decision, quote, a wave of joy swept through
the American army today. Uh So it war fever means
a temporary end to the anti smoking movement. Many men
who had hated cigarettes prior to the war had become addicts.
While overseas, right they they you know, they're they're they're

(16:30):
big hygiene guys before and then they get shot at
and they have a smoke in the fucking trench with
their buddy, and then you know, for the rest of
their lives they think kindly of cigarettes. Um. And also
the fact that the cigarette is now associated with a
hard bitten trench fighter means that you can't attack the
moral character of smokers. The anti smoking women. They're only
smoked by criminals and and and not white people, right,

(16:51):
and now they're like, they're they're part of the icon
of the heroic soldier. Right. So when in nineteen hundred, again,
barely five percent of the country smoked or like nineteen
o four something like that. By nineteen forty and again sorry,
but in like the start of the nineteen hundreds, about
five percent of the country who smokes tobacco smokes. Right,

(17:12):
by nineteen forty of the United States adult population smokes
on a daily base. Yeah, it is a huge increase. Yeah,
that is crazy. Average per consumer consumption escalated to In
nineteen hundred, Americans consumed about fifty four cigarettes per person

(17:32):
per year. Right, that's the average for the whole population.
In nineteen sixty three, Americans consume forty three hundred cigarettes
perch is not expecting that that is so many cigarettes.
Forty three hundred Jesus Christ, that's quite a few cigarettes. Yeah, yeah,

(17:52):
you're ready opting the intake Pokemon car collections now, oh yeah, no, no,
a lot of kids are getting a lot of baseball cards. Um.
You know, those numbers are drive driven up by all
of the eleven year old smoking twelve thousand cigarettes cigarettes
at once, just burning through an entire carton in a day.

(18:18):
Uh So, this new wave of smokers brought with it
changes in American smoking habits, largely driven by R. J. Reynolds,
President of the Reynolds Tobacco Company. Richard Joshua Reynolds had
been born on July eighteen fifty in Patrick County, Virginia.
His father was a tobacco farmer, and as a young man,
Reynolds worked for his dad's plantation, which absolutely included a

(18:39):
funckload of enslaved people. R J was just fifteen when
the Civil War ended, bringing with it the first tiny
surgeon cigarette usage. He quickly fell in love with the things,
and he turned his father's company into an industry leading producer.
And R. J. Reynolds is different from Duke and that
Duke when he smoked smoked cigars. Right. He wants to
sell cigarettes. He thinks they're a good business. He doesn't

(19:00):
understand them, right. He understands how to get people to
want to buy something. He's a good marketer. He doesn't
really get what people like in a cigarette. There is
nothing that R. J. Reynolds loves more than cigarettes. This
man like you have never loved a human being in
your life the way this man loves the concept of
a cigarette. Uh he is. He is such a cigarette

(19:22):
lover that he attempts to avoid getting into Duke's tobacco trust. Right,
He has his own way he wants to do things.
He doesn't want to get involved in this trust. He
wants to sell his cigarettes the way he wants to um.
He actually gets forced by Duke into the trust because
Duke uses shady methods to buy two thirds of Reynolds
tobacco stock to force the company into American Tobacco. And

(19:43):
despite this, R. J. Reynolds refuses to work with Duke,
and he even secretly helps the US government build an
antitrust case against American Tobacco. When the Supreme Court broke
the trust. Reynolds had one goal to funck over buck
Duke in his company. In nineteen thirteen, he created a
new cigarette which featured a mix of American and Turkish
tobacco to create a blended cigarette. He called this new

(20:05):
cigarette the Camel. Oh there it is camel cigarettes. Why
did he choose camel because it's Turkish tobacco. Yeah, you know,
Turkey camels, two things that are famous, constantly associated with
each other. Just imagine how it's better be if he
just called it the Turkey the Turkey right, His angry

(20:30):
Turkish nationalists love love the fact of those two things
that they sound the same I mean he should have
called it the Greek and then had just a drawing
of the Anatolian Peninsula on it. They'd be banned there
to this day. It would have been more war than
twenty century Europe. I'm gonna quote now from the cigarette century.

(20:53):
To help distinguish it from its competition, Reynolds offered no promotions.
Smokers realized that the value was in the cigarettes, and
do not expect promotions or coupons, he explained. Against Duke's
earlier advertising devoted to these now traditional promotional devices, Reynolds
went modern. Reynolds committed unprecedented advertising money to promote this
single product, creating a national campaign to make the camel

(21:15):
cigarette a truly national brand. In nineteen fourteen, newspapers throughout
the country ran add several days in succession that announced simply,
the camels are coming. They were followed by a second
wave of ads proclaiming tomorrow there will be more in
this town than all of Asia and Africa combined. Creating
such expectations and their fulfillment would become a central technique
of modern consumer advertising. The third ad portraying the camel

(21:38):
cigarette package read camel cigarettes are here. This advertising campaign,
and here the term campaign appropriately reflects the strategic technique
met with unprecedented success. Look at that. Yeahah, smart man. Yeah,
it's like an iconic brand, Okay, cigarettes, Like I know,
there are many brands that seem to be as icon

(22:00):
a cigarette brands, and it's global and yeah, and this
is the start of that part of it, right, because
cigarettes have started to go viral in this but not
necessarily on a brand basis. Right, you do have kind
of some of these early brands, but they all like
every tobacco company has a bunch of different brands and
they sell different ones of different regions. Reynolds is the
first guy to be like, no, not only do I

(22:20):
want my company to be the biggest, I want this
one specific kind of cigarette to be everywhere. So when
World War One ended, Campbell accounted for more than thirty
pc of the U. S. Cigarette market. Campbell's came into
vogue just as a new generation of female smokers came
onto the scene. These women had traditionally taken male job
had taken traditionally male jobs from men who had left

(22:40):
to fight, and after helping to save the U. S. Economy,
they didn't take well to the argument that them enjoying
a smoke with some sort of sin against femininity from
the Washington Post. Cigarette advertising companies, which at the time
primarily employed Mabel advertising executives, quickly co opted the ideas
of independence that women began to assert at the polls
and in the workplace. They targeted women, conveying the notions

(23:01):
that women who smoked were independent, attractive, and even athletic.
Lucky Strikes nine marketing pitch to women told them to
reach for our lucky instead of a suite. The message
smoke and you'll be thin. Oh great, there is. Yeah,
it's pretty fun Yeah minded how long that would take?
And this is number one. One thing that starts to
happen in this is a whole new generation of extremely

(23:24):
skinny female models starts to become popular because of this
Lucky Strike ad campaign they helped to create. Like that
that great thing, that whole trend. Yeah image. Now this
there's a backlash to this, and there's kind of a
war between cigarettes and the candy industry. Um, and it's

(23:44):
it's very funny that one of the cigarettes that will
come on the market at this time, I think it
might be Marlborough's. Uh, they're advertising campaign is to like
push back at cammebll by being like, no, cigarettes and
candy are both good for you. You You should have your
cigarette and your chocolate. They're a healthy treat. But no,
the candy industry has to be like the funk are
you saying about people not eating candy? Come on, we're

(24:07):
not trying to shoot on cigarettes here too. Nice just
when they start making candy cigarettes and well, yeah, this
is that in this period. One of the interesting things
about candy cigarettes when they first get made, they're all
made with the brands of real cigarettes. So there will

(24:28):
be Camels now not legally, they're all illegal. They're all
candy companies using a brand illegally. The cigarette industry makes
a concerted decision to never pursue charges over it, to
never go after them, because they're like, well, if kids
get used to picking up a pack of Camels, that's
a win for us. Yeah, Like, there's no downside to

(24:50):
us letting them do this. Yeah, it's a wind for everyone. Great. Yeah. Now,
one thing that does happen in the post war period
is that female smokers are an easier target for anti
smoking advocates than soldiers, who are you know, heroic and stuff.
When the Eighteenth Amendment gets past banning the sale of alcohol,
moral crusaders like evangelist Billy Sunday turned their attention to tobacco,

(25:13):
saying in one speech, prohibition is one now for tobacco.
The Women's Christian Temperance Union and SHOED issued a pamphlet
titled Smoking Next. The first success in this wave of
the anti smoking movement came in Utah, which banned the sale,
giving away, or other exchange of cigarettes. The bill's advocates
included the w C t U and and the Mormon Church,

(25:33):
both of which emphasized the moral risks of letting women
be seen smoking. Senator Edward Southwick, who wrote the bill,
quoted US Surgeon General Hugh Cumming, which was his real name,
as saying, if American women generally contract the habit as
reports now indicate they are doing, the entire American nation
will suffer. The physical tone of the whole nation will

(25:54):
be lowered. This is one of the most evil influences
in American life today. The habit harms a woman more
than it as a man. Great, thanks you yeah. Intellects
yeah yeah, real real smart guy, real comer. Hugh Yeah,
there were the names he could have been cursed with,
which could have been his first name, could have been worse.

(26:15):
But yeah, yeah, but we but you know what will
make you come, James, Uh, please in lighten me the
sponsors of our podcasts, not their products, which are a
sexual but the actual people who run in a stock
in the companies. Anytime you ask for it, that's good

(26:36):
to know. That's that's a promise. Yeah, I don't play
that in the old context. But ah, we're back. We're
talking about come. You know, every time I talk about
come on this show, somebody gets up in the subreddit
and they're like, I wish they wouldn't make juvenile jokes aboutcome.

(26:57):
It's not very funny. It's exactly be funny to make. Yeah. Look,
I am never going to stop making cup jokes aboutcome,
and I'm never gonna stop telling people that when Mitch
McConnell comes, all that exits his penis is a mix
of dry scabs and spider legs. That that well, no juvenile,
is still funny. It is. It's funny and true. It's

(27:19):
it's actually funny. Yeah, it's true, and he can suss over.
We'll take him to court. Shows show us the evidence, Mitch, Yeah,
show us the evidence, Mitch, show us the evidence that
when you come the dry scabs exiting year Urethra don't
make a sound exactly like crabs scuttling on a soap
stone bed. Prove it to me. Prove it to me, Mitch.

(27:42):
I'm now physically unwell. Would you like a cigarette? Yeah?
I think I've been traumatized and level of this girl.
I'd like to shorten my life. Yes, well, why don't
you reach for a lucky instead of a suite? That
will help these day maintain my good as physique. So

(28:04):
as we've just come back, the Surgeon General has been like,
this is going to lower the moral tone of women.
And again, I just so that I'm not mistaken. Cigarettes
are bad. Don't smoke them. These people are technically in
the right, but they're in the right for the wrong
reasons usually, so fuck them. Um. I'm gonna quote again
from Alan Brandt here, another supporter of the legislation, noted

(28:26):
that the fingers of our girls are being varnished with
the stains of those harmful little instruments of destruction, just
as earlier opponents of the cigarette had done. Senator Southwick
argued that the use of the cigarette violated the liberties
of non smokers, which is fair, offended moral sensibilities, which
is unfair, and polluted public space, which is we'll call
that one mixed. We cannot bring our wives and daughters

(28:47):
to the city, he wrote, and cannot come along without
encountering tobacco smoke everywhere. Is it that saturates our clothing
and nauseates us personal liberty? Ours is as inviolate or
as or should be as theirs? Amazing? Like yeah, when
like industry is ripping children's arms off that body. Yeah no,
And people are just burning pure petroleum jelly in the

(29:08):
back of a fucking model t Yeah yeah, just pouring
some lead into the reserve lead tank. Yeah again, fucking
nineteen twenty two. Your your worst encounter is not going
to be with tobacco smoke in the streets of the city.
The call burning colonialism. Factory isn't a problem. It's women
smoking we need to worry about. Now. By nine sixteen

(29:29):
states had banned to restricted cigarette sales and promotion, but
none of these restrictions lasted long. The disaster that was
prohibition and the growing number of tobacco addicts made the
anti smoking cause untenable. A chief issue with the fight
to restrict smoking was the fact that it rested mostly
on moral panic grounds. Right again, if all of these
people are saying smoking is horrible for your health, and

(29:50):
sure we shouldn't be doing it, that's one thing. But
a lot of them are being like, well, women shouldn't
be smoking. It's bad for kids to see it. It's
gonna stay in their hands. They don't have at this point,
they don't have widely agreed upon medical evidence that smoking
is bad for you, And in fact, a lot of
doctors will argue that smoking is if not healthy, then

(30:11):
not a serious harm. It was not as common in
this period for to have doctors be like, smoking clear
as your lungs, But most of them tended to be like, well,
it's not that bad for you, right, It's you know,
it's like it's like it is like eating candy, right,
That's that's what They's not like eating candy. Please. I'm
not saying that someone's gonna get really angry at me.
I'm just saying, if you're a doctor in the twenties,

(30:32):
odds are rather than saying smoking is bad for you,
saying like, well, it's probably okay to have the occasional
cigarette as part of a balanced diet or whatever you know. Right,
and again, doctors are heavily debating as the thirties dawn
whether or not smoking causes cancer. There were studies by
this point that showed a correlation between self reported smoking

(30:52):
habits and lung cancer, and by the nineteen twenties rates
of lung cancer had started to soar. Given all of this,
it might seem easy to of a link between cigarettes
and lung cancer, but it's not all. All you've got
in the twenties is that there's a correlation between the two.
But obviously cigarettes aren't the only thing that's been introduced
to modern life in in the early part of the

(31:13):
twentieth century. Right, there's cars Now Suddenly people are getting
a whole bunch of different medications that didn't used to exist.
All sorts of ship is around that just wasn't before.
So how do you know, how do you know think
about this? How can you prove if you're just a
dude and nineteen twenty two, that the thing causing lung
cancer and your friends is the cigarette and not the

(31:35):
car or the fucking fluorescent light bulbs, right, like, you
don't know, there's not there's not evidence at this point
you know of this industrial identity, And again, yeah, a
lot has changed really quickly. Um, and there's actually there's
some surprisingly logical reasons to question the early science. One
doctor in critic over fears of cigarette use, one of

(31:56):
the guys who's arguing against the people saying that lung
cancer and smoking are correlated. One of the things he
says is that, like, well, when we get lung cancer patients,
they have a lung and one they have a tumor
and one lung or the other. Very few of them
have tumors in both lungs. But when you smoke, the
smoke is drawn into both lungs equally. So if smoking
is causing lung cancer, why wouldn't it be causing it
in both lungs at the same time. Obviously we know

(32:19):
that just that's just the way cancer works, right, Like,
but again, based on the knowledge at the time, that's
not a bad point to make, right, he's wrong, But
you can see how a person who is not like
in the pocket of big tobacco could make that mistake. Yeah, Um,
his reasoning is not inherently unsound. Right, he's wrong, but
but not because he's like again, later all the scientists

(32:41):
on the other side of this will be doing something
fundamentally dishonest. These are just people trying to understand the
human body in a period in which we don't have
that much information about it. Um Other scientists would argue
that the rise in lung cancer was attributed to the
fact that life expectancy had risen a lot in the
first quarter of the twentieth century. People were getting more
weird cancers, they argued, because people were living longer. Maybe

(33:03):
lung cancer has always been normal once you hit a
certain age, and we just didn't have that many people
reaching it. You know, again, these are not inherently illogical arguments. Now.
There were, however, doctors early on who were who figured
out what was happening, who knew and who put together
that there was a link between smoking and lung cancer,
But it took data a long time to catch up

(33:26):
with that. For one thing, epidemiology is in its infancy
in this period of time, the first small batch studies,
and by the late twenties we have studies that show
a correlation between smoking and lung cancer, but there's no
control group, so all they show it, So there's no
group of people who don't smoke to see what their
lung cancer rates are, because that's not a normal part
of medical science. Yet they're starting to do that. They're

(33:48):
figuring out like, oh, yeah, you should have fucking control
groups in your medical studies. But it's not the thing
that you just do de rigor. At this point in time,
it becomes it partly partly as a result of this research,
and in fact there's a night teen twenty article in
the New England Journal of Medicine in which this that
points out, like um, it shows a link between smoking
and lung cancer. But it also points out that their

(34:10):
study and other similar studies are of little value without
similar studies on individuals without cancer without control groups. Right.
So part of why that becomes more common in this
period is scientists trying to figure out if there's a
link between smoking and lung cancer. The scientists who write
that nine study, Herbert Lombard and parl During, carried out
their own small two persons study with a control group,

(34:32):
and this is the first good quality study we have
that shows lung cancer. Is it shows a bunch of things.
Number One, I shouldn't say shows It suggests a bunch
of things. Number One, it suggests that lung cancer is
not a contagious disease, which how would you have known that?
You know, without psich you don't know that people aren't
giving it to each other. Right, But it's not some
weird thing that people got when they started walking in

(34:53):
the Amazon or whatever. Right, how would you know? Um,
they know, they find they or at least the data
suggests that it's. Also there's not a correlation between lung
cancer and low quality housing, which was another thing people
didn't know. It's something about the way we insulate our homes,
you know. Uh. They also find out that it's not
associated with constipation, which was a thing that some doctor
And again we can laugh about that, but how would

(35:15):
you know if you didn't do the study? Um? One
of the primary like damning thing the study finds is
that self reported heavy smokers are twenty seven percent likelier
to get lung cancer. This is the first scientifically solid
evidence linking cigarettes to lung cancer. Now, two person study
with a two person control group. That's not definitive, Right,

(35:36):
that's enough to justify further research. Sure, but that's not
a huge study. The nineteen thirties are where we're going
to see the first attempts on a large scale to
document the relationship between cigarettes and cancer. The impetus to this,
the impetus for this research actually comes from one of
the few industries that can rifle big tobacco for sheer evil,
the insurance industry. They are the people who are going

(35:57):
to bring because they see this early research in like,
wait a second, we're paying a shipload of money out
on all these fuckers die in a lung cancer. If
cigarettes cause it, we need to be charging people more
if they smoke, right, like, they're doing it for evil reasons,
but it is important research exactly. So. One of the
chief drivers of this is a guy named Frederick Hoffman,

(36:20):
who is a student a statician at Prudential, and Hoffman
notices in nineteen thirty one that a lot of fucking
life insurance policies are being filled for dead lung cancer patients.
If smoking was the cause, then again, you're gonna need
to restructure the way premiums work. A lot of money
is at stake, which is obviously what interest Prudential. They
don't care about the cost of human life. So the

(36:41):
thing that Hoffman notices is that in nineteen fifteen, the
lung cancer rate stands at about point seven people per
thousand people, right about point seven people per every thousand
and the population are likely to get lung cancer. By
nineteen twenty, it's risen to one point one per thousand.
It's one point six per thousand by nineteen twenty four,
and one point nine per thousand by nineteen twenty eight.

(37:02):
That means in thirteen years the rate of lung cancer
has nearly tripled. Now Hoffman is not bound by the
ethical constraints of a doctor, right, he doesn't have to
wait until he has really good data to be like
smoking causes lung cancer. He sees this, he puts two
and two together, and he becomes the first prominent pig
figure to publish a claim that tobacco uses associated with

(37:23):
a heightened rate of cancer and early death. And he's
doing it again to Warren insurance companies. A new wave
of studies follows, and as the nineteen thirties gives away
to the forties, the tobacco industry keeps a worried, watchful
eye on this emerging science. They also start exploding their
advertising budgets in order to kind of make up for
the increasing talk in the background about maybe cigarettes aren't

(37:44):
so great to look for us. In nineteen eleven, prior
to the bust of the American Tobacco Trust, the entire
cigarette industry profited about thirteen million dollars a year. By
nineteen eighteen, the big five tobacco companies were spending more
than thirteen million dollars every year justin ads. In doing so,
they helped create the very language of American culture. And
I'm gonna quote from a write up in the Journal

(38:05):
of Marketing Theory and Practice by Richard Poley. Cigarette sellers
were among the most enthusiastic pioneers in the use of
network broadcasting for coast to coast advertising. By nineteen thirty
American Tobacco, Brown and Williamson, P. Lourellard, and R. J.
Reynolds were all buying to network radio time. There has
been no greater enthusiast for radio advert broadcast advertising the

(38:26):
George W. Hill of the A t C, whose business
for the first five months of nineteen thirties surpassed all records.
The company sponsors the Lucky Strike Dance Orchestra. In three
hour broadcasts each week week. Lucky Strikes sponsored many radio
comedies and musical shows, such as Jack Benny and the
Kay Kayser College of Music Musical Knowledge, and the best
known and longest of running popular musical shows, Lucky Strikes

(38:48):
Hit Parade. This show started in nineteen twenty eight and
ran into the nineteen fifties on television. It featured teen
idol Frank Sinatra when he was launching his career. So
popular was this show in nineteen thirty eight that a
Sweeps Aches promotion offering free cartoons of Lucky's for the
names of the three most popular tunes drew nearly seven
million entries per week. The Lucky Strike Hit Parade was

(39:08):
the first show to rank popular music releases in an
ongoing basis. This is where we get the top forty.
The entire structure of the musical industry comes out of
Lucky Strikes hit points. Yeah, there's crappy Christmas number one singles,
and it seems like podcasts and podcasts we all owe
a debt to Lucky Strike every time you mean dick

(39:29):
advert just saying well in more ways than what let's
let's all give the good folks at lucky strike, a
solid go and pick out a pack right now that
you don't have to smoke, and give it to a kid.
You know they love to smoke. Um, Sophie, what I'm
done with my script throwing two ads? Now? I'm throwing

(39:50):
two adds Like the good men at R. J. Reynolds
and Laura Lard and the other grates of the tobacco
industry taught me too, Sophie. I'm i'm I'm to ring
our ancestors. We're back to cigarette and we're ready to go.

(40:12):
Cigarettes have now just invented the modern music industry. It's
lunatics taken over, the asygnum taken over. They felt better
and they yeah, that's that is a lucky strike, if
you ask me. So. The need to capture smokers young,

(40:32):
because market research has shown that people tended to be
brand loyal, also helped to create the modern conception of
ad demographics. Right, advertisers start learning how to differentiate and
split over. You know, the idea that like the eighteen
to thirty five males is like the most valuable at
that comes out here, right, And it's because like those
that's when you gotta get them smoking right earlier possible,

(40:54):
yea ideally I like eleven or twelve. They advertise a
lot in colleges, and they also it leads tobacco companies
to steer more and more towards funding children's entertainment. This
starts with the comics pages a syndicated weekly pop collection
called Puck is like massive for cigarette ads, but as
Pole writes, it quickly expanded beyond that quote. In the

(41:17):
nineteen fifties, many brands used cartoon trade characters in their advertising.
The ads on Lucky Strikes Hit Parade for a while
featured a cute animated character called Scoop, who, through the
then impressive technical feat of superimposition, appeared on a screened
with the show's star Dorothy Collins. So that's where we
get who framed Roger Rabbit? Motherfucker's cigarettes taught us how
to do that? Philip Morris's US car, Philip Morris's cartoons

(41:45):
when advertising on Philip Morris used cartoons when advertising on
I Love Lucy. Laura Lard created TV cartoon ads for
Old Gold that featured the voices of their Honeymooners stars
Jackie Gleason and Art Carney. This presage to the Winston
spots that employed the animated hit characters from The flint Stones,
a totally cartoon show they sponsored, whose voices, structure, and

(42:06):
sense of humor all imitated The Honeymooners. And I think
a lot of people are vaguely aware that The flint
Stones used to have cigarette ads. You do that right? No? Oh,
that's why it was created. The flint Stones were made
as a cigarette ad. Uh. And to get an idea
for how blatant this advertising was, you need to see
some old episodes of The flint Stones, And I think

(42:28):
this one includes a representative scene you should know to
understand what's happening on the screen. Right at the start
of this, we see Fred and Barney kind of like
hanging out in the yard on their asses while their
wives are doing like yard work and house chores. So
they're like chilling out watching their wives work. Good stuff. Yeah, yeah,

(42:54):
let's go around back. Well we can't see him. Do
we want to do something? Friends? Okay, I was about
taking on that. I got a better idea. Let's take
a Winston break from the cigarette that delivers flavored twenty
times a pack. The plan mix the big taste difference,

(43:19):
and only Winston has it up front where it comes
here ahead of the pure white filter. Winston pacts rich tobaccos,
specially selected and specially that's a good flavor roil. Yeah,
they're still going like cigarette. Uh yeah, that is a

(43:41):
lot of cigarette advertising. Yeah. I was at first, I
was called by the records of it, but then just
a duration of it. Yeah. Wow, they really were committed
to selling kids cigarettes. Yeah yeah. Winston also not a
great name compared to the Camel Camel marborro ye. Just
a dude called Winston with little imagination. Yeah wow, that

(44:04):
was amazing. Yeah, it's the best. Yeah, that is like
Alex Jones here just transition content ads. Fucking Barney Rubble
wants to get your ass into a pack of Winston's. Yeah,
it's gonna be doing what is it, sucking silver or whatever.
Alex Jons just trying to tell, you know, like colloidal
silver to see paste that you can shoot up your ass.

(44:26):
I don't know, Yeah, nor do I care. I don't
think our listener ship over laps, so no one else
knows either. So it's fine. No, our listeners are buying
a lot of gold now because of those gold ads running.
Oh yeah, well that's good. It's been a success. We
have to get him back from the next season. Yeah,
we love we love the gold ad people. You know,
I'm just gonna I'm gonna do a free ad right now.
By gold, it's the cigarettes of currency. Well, actually that's cigarettes.

(44:49):
Gold's almost as valuable as cigarettes in a pinch, So
pick some up today, smoke it. Why don't you you
know what James had an idea, why don't we make
a lot of We get cigarettes, grind up gold into them,
pour gold flakes into the cigarettes, and then sell them
to rich assholes who have taken Yeah, it's definitely this

(45:09):
like a thing, isn't it like a vodka rols? Don't
think that hash. Yeah, there's a couple of liquors that
have it. Yeah, you may not necessarily, but I need
to sign so many gold gold unnecessary gold. So you
know how there's you know, pour out some gold liquor

(45:32):
and uh, yeah, I'm back rapid cigarette. There was no gold,
but I've got my glass of lead and I'm good.
So during the late forties to the early fifties, the
science coming out about cigarettes and cancer starts to look
worse and worse. The R. J. Reynolds company launches a

(45:53):
new campaign for camel cigarettes and nineteen six centered around
the slogan more doctor smoke camels than you have a cigarette.
Six years. This is like, this is their main advertising
push for six years and dentist and twoth busting which
cigarettes amazing? Great? Yeah, absolutely, yes, the cigarette that nine
out of ten doctors recommend. Reynolds backs up their claim

(46:16):
that's more stick doctors smoke camels than any other cigarette,
with surveys that they said had been conducted by quote
three leading independent research organizations. Now they don't name these organizations.
One representative ad claims that a survey of a hundred
and thirteen thousand, five hundred ninety seven doctors from quote
every branch of medicine had shown that camels were the

(46:37):
brand most often smoked by doctors. That's what you want?
Is that the cigarette that your dietrist chooses? Yeah, exactly, Yeah,
I want to know. Yeah, No, nobody, nobody knows what
you should be smoking better than a fucking proctologist. That
that's that. That's that's who's got it down. Yeah, as
an obstetrician, my you religious chooses Winston's. Yeah, that would

(47:03):
be quite funny, boy, Women seemed to really want a
cigarette after giving birth? Probably good for you? Uh so?
R J. Reynolds assured customers that this survey, which totally existed,
was an actual fact and not a casual claim, and

(47:23):
their competitors were all doing the same thing. American Tobacco
President President George Washington Hill contracted the legendary ad executive
Albert Lasker and tasked him to come up with a
reason why customers should smoke his cigarettes. And I want
to quote now from a write up in the American
Journal of Public Health. With no real scientific evidence to
back their claims, American Tobacco insisted that the toasting process

(47:45):
that Lucky Strikes Tobacco underwent decreased throat irritation. In fact,
Lucky Strikes curing process did not significantly differ from that
of other brands. Related campaigns emphasized that Lucky's would help consumers,
especially women, their new market stay trimmed since they could
reach for a Lucky instead of a suite. Along with
these persistent health claims, a typical advertisement from nineteen thirty

(48:06):
boldly stated that twenty thousand, six hundred and seventy nine
physicians say Lucky They're less irritating. Great now, James, do
you want to know how they've gotten the information that
Lucky's were seen as less irritating by doctors, They send
them a packet of lucky strikes and also did yeah,

(48:27):
they're advertising agency Lloyd Thomas and Logan sent cigarette cartons
to physicians in nineteen, nineteen seven and ninety eight and
then asked them to answer our Lucky strikes cigarettes less
irritating the tender throats than other cigarettes, and the doctors
were like, yeah, I want more free cigarettes. Sure, yeah,
why do I watch this pretty cigarette bok school. I'll
take that one, great good. That's how science is done.

(48:50):
That is how science is done. Now, touting the toasting
process and the accompanying cover letter, advertising executive Thomas Logan
pointed out the virtues of lucky strikes and claimed that
they had quote heard from a good many people that
they could smoke lucky strikes with perfect comfort to their throats.
American Tobacco used doctors responses to this survey in order
to like push the claim that lucky strikes are less irritating.

(49:13):
Um the toasting, as they explained as quote, your throat
protection against irritation against coaugh. Thank god, Thank god they
figured out toasting, otherwise these cigarettes might really hurt people. Yeah, yeah,
you got toast him. That's how he public up the cigarettes,
and your toast it. Yeah and yeah, no kinds of
for you. Some self self reported adults smoking peaked in

(49:37):
the early nineteen fifties at about forty five percent of
the population. Big Tobacco's ploy to buy up doctors had
worked for a while, but in late nineteen fifty three,
the first irrefutable studies linking lung cancer to tobacco use
were published. Two tremendous public interest, major peer reviewed journal
studies had tied not just cancer, but cardiac disease and
serious respiratory illness to smoking. The situation was serious enough

(50:00):
that the head executives of the Big five tobacco companies
all came together in December of nineteen fifty three to
figure out how to respond to this news. They picked
the Plaza Hotel in New York City as the place
to map out their strategy, and it is possible that
no other location in the United States, including the Pentagon,
has been used to make plans that ended with a
greater death toll. The master of the moment was John W. Hill,

(50:22):
president of the biggest PR firm in the country. Hill
and Nolton Now. John had been born in Indiana in
eighteen ninety. He'd spent most of his early career working
as a journalist. He's a journalist for eighteen years, working
his way up the ladder to become an editor and
a popular columnist. In nineteen twenty seven, he blazed a
trail that generations of soulless hacks would follow, and he
decided to start a PR firm. By the time nineteen

(50:45):
fifty three rolled around, it was the largest PR firm
on the planet. Hill was worth the money, and in
that hotel conference room he laid out the bones of
what would be known as Plan White Coat. The basic
idea was to create an industry sponsored research into a
think take of scientists, funded by tobacco money but ostensibly independent.
This would allow big Tobacco to claim they were taking

(51:07):
fears of lung cancer seriously, while also providing them with
disinformation to muddy the waters by painting the existing studies
is insufficient. I'm going to quote, yeah, it's awesome. It's
it's so good, no one's ever done. It's it's it's
no one, this is not this is not the thing
that's going to end all life on this planet. No,
Hell did not just build the apocalypse bomb. Yes, yeah,

(51:28):
Jesus Christ. Yeah. Well, they've given us everything from Pokemon
cards to time It change. It's incredible. Cigarettes are amazing. Yes, wow, Yeah,
something one of the single most important inventions in the
history of the planet. Yeah. God, and people die of starvation,
you know. And here we are. We've made a cancer stick,

(51:49):
and we've we've created new and exciting ways to lie
about it. It's amazing. It's so cool. Kind of him. Who, God,
what a great product. I'm a quote now from a
two thousand twelve article in the American Journal of Public Health.
The industry had supported some individual research in recent years,
but Hill's proposal offered the potential of a research program
that would be controlled by the industry yet promoted as independent.

(52:13):
This was a public relations master stroke. Hill understood that
simply giving Yeah. Hill understood that simply giving money to
scientists through the National Institutes of Health or some other entity,
for example, offered little opportunity to shape the public relations environment. However,
offering funds directly to university based scientists would enlist their
support independence. Moreover, it would have the added benefit of

(52:34):
making academic institutions and partners with the tobacco industry in
its moment of crisis. Hill and his clients had no
interest yeah in a Hill and his clients had no
interest in answering a scientific question. Their goal was to
maintain vigorous control over the research program to use science
in the service of public relations. Although the tobacco executives

(52:54):
had proposed forming a Cigarette Information Committee dedicated to defending
smoking against the medical findings, He'll argued aggressively for adding
research to the committee's title and agenda. It is believed
he wrote that the word research is needed in the
name to give weight and added credence to the committee's statements.
Hill understood that his clients should be viewed as embracing
science rather than dismissing it. Now again, Hill's a journalist, right,

(53:18):
That's part of how he's able to do this. He
understands how to communicat he understands how people read things. Um.
One of the first things he emphasized to the industry
leaders was that they had to stop competing with each
other trying to move cartons by convincing customers that their
smokes were more soothing or healthier than the others. This
was bad, right, Arguing like Lucky strikes are healthier than

(53:38):
Marlborough's is bad for the whole industry, so we have
to stop it. The key to surviving, this Hill told them,
was collective action, and one that looked like a commitment
to public welfare while actually doing everything possible to harm
public welfare. The Tobacco Industry Research Committee was formed in
nineteen fifty four and announced its existence with full page
ads and more than four hundred newspapers. This ad, known

(54:01):
as the Frank Statement, claimed that tobacco companies were deeply
concerned about the welfare of their customers and would pursue
any in to get to the bottom of this whole
tobacco equals cancer thing. Quote. We accept an interest in
people's health as a basic responsibility paramount to every other
consideration in our business. We believe the products we make
are not injurious to health. We always have and always

(54:22):
will cooperate closely with those whose task it is to
safeguard the public health. That's good, great, yeah, sure, very honest,
very straightforward. So despite these high minded claims. The t
i r c's agenda was laid out by Hill before
he consulted a single scientist. The executive director of the organization, W. T. Hoyt,

(54:43):
had no scientific background. His previous job had been selling
ads for the Saturday Evening Post. Within his first few
months of operation, Hot and other executives of the t
i r C put out a statement directly responding to
studies that purported to show a link between cigarettes and disease.
It is an obligation of the Tobacco Industry Research Committee
at this time to remind the public of these essential points. One,

(55:05):
there is no conclusive scientific proof of a link between
smoking and cancer. To medical research points to many possible
causes of cancer. And three, the millions of people who
derive pleasure and satisfaction from smoking can be reassured that
every scientific means will be used to get all the
facts as soon as possible. Great, Yeah, it's gonna go well, James,
it's gonna go really well. Yeah, I can see this anying. Well. So.

(55:28):
The first scientific director appointed to the t i r
C was Clarence cook Little, an extremely prominent biologist and
geneticists who had become extremely prominent because he was a
popular eugenicist. Yeah. Yeah, it's really funny because cook like

(55:48):
a little The reason he believes that cigarettes because he's
a He truly believes that the people who connected to
cancer is wrong because he believes that lung cancer is genetic,
so it can't be caused by an environment factor, like
in healing cigarettes a year. It's gotta be. It's gotta
be something to do with the fact that certain races
are more likely to get cancer. Oh god, it is

(56:12):
one thing I'll have to you gotta say for a racist,
this guy probably killed more white people than any other racist. Yeah,
he does drop a lot of white folks accidentally, based well,
he drops everyone else too. Yeah, unlike him, cigarettes don't discriminate, yea.

(56:33):
Oh god, they would never become a magnet for the
shittiest things in humanity. It is incredible, how many terrible Yeah,
it's it's amazing. What's gonna happen next? They're gonna like
stand with the turfs or something. Cigarettes. We just don't
like queer people. I tell you. It's probably in the
Harry Potter book somewhere. Yeah. In nineteen fifty four, the

(56:56):
T I R. C S budget was around a million dollars,
nearly all of which to Hill and Nolton in various
ads rather than actual science. B By nineteen sixty three,
the t I r C was giving out close to
a million dollars in grants. These funded research, actual scientific research,
but they picked the kind of research carefully. So we're
not going to do research into what causes lung cancer,

(57:17):
but we'll do research into how cancer develops over time
and how it grows in the body, and ways to
fight it and stuff, um, and this is important stuff.
So they can keep coming out with these studies funded
by TRC money that are real studies, but none of
them happened to look into whether or not smoking causes cancer. Right,
we can look at how genetics are virology impacts cancer rates,

(57:37):
and those are important things to study. But by picking
what gets funded specifically, they are very very purposefully putting
better air bags and then no brakes model. Yeah. So
this strategy worked for decades, distracting the public and lawmakers
from any actions that might negatively impact the rate at

(57:58):
which people smoked. Key to the success of this program
was hills understanding of how journalism worked. From that Journal
of Public Health article. Hill understood that the success of
any public relations CAN strategy was highly dependent on face
to face interpersonal relations with important media outlets. Each time
the t i r C issued a press release, the
Hill and Nolton organization would initiate a personal contact. The

(58:19):
firm systematically documented the courtship of newspapers and magazines where
it could urge balance and fairness in the industry. In
these entreaties on behalf of the industry, the firm staffers
repeated several key themes. First, they would note that the
industry completely understood its important public responsibilities. Second, they would
affirm that the industry was deeply committed to investigating all
of the scientific questions relevant to resolving the controversy. Third,

(58:42):
they urged skepticism regarding statistical studies. Finally, they offered members
of the media a long list of independent skeptics to
consult to ensure balance in their presentations. Responsible for the
dozens of direct marketing emails, I guess three single days, Yeah,
yea great, right now, I'm personally agree for this. Motphone

(59:04):
cigarettes created everything. The primary independent skeptic, of course, was
the t I r C. S Little that's the eugenics guy.
Given the penchant of the press for controversy and it's
often naive notion of balance, these appeals were remarkably successful.
Hilla Nolton expertly broadcast their arguments, typically not based on
substantial research of any kind, of a small group of skeptics,

(59:25):
as if their positions represented a dominant perspective on the
medical science of the cigarette. In this sense, the public
relations campaign advantaged two critical pieces of mid century media practice. First,
journalists favored reporting on controversy. Second, by providing opposing positions
as if they were equal, they affirmed their commitment to balance. Yeah, yeah,
that's right, baby, that's right baby. Why pace off? Uh

(59:51):
huh yeah, No, they've invented both sides. They did invent
both sides of it. So they gave us Donald Trump.
It's what they gave us, Donald Trump. They gave us
climate change denial. Uh. They gave us a lot of
the gun industries, tactics, Barry Wise, all of that ship
comes from big tobacco, they gave us. They gave us

(01:00:11):
the fucking Iraq war. All of these, all of these
strategies are the things that like we're pie like they
pioneered all of those strategies and that's where we're going
to end for the day. James, Um, yeah, there's yeah,
let's stop. So I've become enraged. We will we will
talk in more detail about the tobacco industry later. Um,

(01:00:32):
but yeah, this is this is how they like, there's
a bigger story and kind of how they kept this
up as it became increasingly obvious that cigarettes caused cancer,
and like how they advertised to children and like the
nineties and stuff and Joe Campbell. There's a story, and
like how they tried to destroy the lives of people
who blew the whistle on them, like former tobacco employees. Um,

(01:00:57):
we'll talk about all of those one day, but this
is this is the story of how tobacco invented everything
in the modern world. Yeah. Great, I feel really good
about all the things that we've got from it. It's
cool that you can tie like Funko pops, climate change, denial,
and the Iraq War all to try and to get
people to smoke. Yes, yeah, it's really it's really great.

(01:01:18):
And capitism and that's nothing but good. Yeah, pokemon and
medical patents all all have cigarettes to think. Yeah, god, yeah,
it's just unfathomable. It's terrible, it's freaking awful. Yeah, it's
it's the nature of the system we live in. Maybe
change it. It's the nature of the system we live
in part because of cigarettes. Yeah, very good. Maybe maybe

(01:01:41):
consider a different system. Yeah, maybe consider a system in
which it's not possible to do. The good thing is
Robert that none of these issues are tied to vaping,
which is fine and totally totally normal and good, and
therefore you should just get a fruit loop vight. Yeah,
get get a flavored vape um, you know, buy some
of that. Uh, I don't know what else? What other

(01:02:04):
what drugs do kids like to do today? Get some
of Get some of that, Get some of that flavored finnel,
tide pods mixture fitnel and your tide pods together, kids
have a good one that's doing that on taking the
talk right now from what I understand, Yeah, TikTok and
everything that. Any further, is there anything like to plug
apart from tide pods? Yeah, again, we talked about a podcast.

(01:02:29):
I've written a book. It's called The Popular Front and
the ninety six plus Owner Olympics. You can probably find
it at the library. Then you won't be helping to
create the system which gave us, you know, Pokemon cards
and everyone having cancer. Uh and yeah, you can find
me on Twitter. It's just my name James, like Bob Stet,
like the Beers. Anarchism is the other thing I always

(01:02:50):
like to plug on podcasts. So maybe yeah, read poking
and we're doing going nickot happen here at livestream virtual
show on October. Yeah, motherfucker's yep. So pick up a
pack of Lucky strikes. I want to see all of
you beautiful people smoking when we do our live show.
Just just really burn them down. Nothing raises the value

(01:03:10):
of a house faster than smoking cigarettes and bring go
back to your return to tradition by sticking to cigarettes,
you know, smoking them that way. Yeah, smoke your cigarettes
the traditional way anyway. Yeah. Buying Behind the Bastards is

(01:03:32):
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