INDEPTH: SMOKING
Cancer by the Carton
Martin O'Malley, CBC News Online | Updated November 19, 2003
It was not until well into the 20th century that the dangers of tobacco smoking became evident.
In the early 1900s, when cigarettes became fashionable and mass-produced, people had little idea that tobacco smoking did them any harm. More than half the population in North America and Europe were smokers. There were some naysayers - a stern aunt might have warned that cigarettes will stunt your growth, a coach might suggest you don't start smoking if you want to run the marathon - but before the 1950s smoking was pretty darn cool.
It made you a suave citizen of the adult world (chain-smoking Humphrey Bogart, James Dean's pack of 20s stuffed in his t-shirt sleeve). Tobacco was considered a diet medicine ("Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet," an ad for Lucky Strike cigarettes once advised). Tobacco had also been considered a treatment for migraines, a balm for stress, a mental stimulant, an efficient laxative, a remedy for toothache, worms, lockjaw, halitosis - even cancer.
A significant shift in society's attitude to tobacco became apparent in the 1950s. Many seminal studies of the dangers of tobacco, primarily cigarette smoking, cite an article published in 1952 in Reader's Digest titled "Cancer by the Carton." The article described the dangers of smoking, detailing the risks of lung cancer and heart disease, which led to similar reports in other magazines. The fallout from the Reader's Digest resulted the next year in the first decline in cigarette sales in more than 20 years.
The tobacco industry responded. Two years later, the major U.S. tobacco companies formed the Tobacco Industry Research Council to counter what they regarded as a serious and possibly growing threat to their business. This resulted in "safer" cigarettes, cigarettes with filters, low-tar cigarettes and ongoing research into manufacturing "healthier" cigarettes.
Then came January 11, 1964 when Dr. Luther L. Terry, the Surgeon General of the United States Public Health Service, released the landmark report on "Smoking and Health." After much study, Terry's committee said cigarette smoking causes lung and laryngeal cancer in men, probably causes lung cancer in women, and is the major cause of chronic bronchitis. The report concluded: "Cigarette smoking is a health hazard of sufficient importance in the United States to warrant appropriate remedial action."
It was big news, so big that the report was deliberately released on a Saturday morning so as not to cause apoplexy on the stock market. Officials chose a secure State Department auditorium, one President John F. Kennedy used for his press conferences (JFK had been assassinated weeks before).
But, what did "appropriate remedial action" mean?
No one was quite sure - no one is quite sure today - but as a result of the Surgeon General's warning in 1964, the U.S. Congress enacted the Federal Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act in 1965 and the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act of 1969. The legislation mandated health warnings on cigarette packages and banned cigarette advertising in the broadcasting media.
The tobacco industry immediately went into tactical denial - deny, deny, deny. And litigate, litigate, litigate. Tobacco companies had zillions of dollars in their war chests, enough to win any lawsuits they faced, or simply to outspend and outlast anyone who dared litigate against them. For 35 years the tobacco industry won some 300 lawsuits, without losing one. They also lied, cheated, harassed, bullied and spin-doctored and PR'd their way over any serious opposition.
In a 1988 lawsuit against the tobacco industry in the United States, investigators uncovered a confidential document prepared by the Philip Morris Research Center that contained the phrase, "think of the cigarette as a dispenser for a dose of nicotine." At another lawsuit trial, a confidential document from a tobacco company referred to young teenagers as "replacement smokers."
This would all change within a decade.
^TOP
|
|
 |
 MENU |
|
|
| VIEWPOINT: |
|
|
| EXTERNAL LINKS: |
|
|
| MORE: |
|
|
|
CBC does not endorse and is not responsible for the content of external sites. Links will open in new window.
