CZM Rewind: Part Two: How Cigarettes Invented Everything

Summary

Behind the Bastards: “Part Two: How Cigarettes Invented Everything”

Podcast: Behind the Bastards (Cool Zone Media & iHeartPodcasts)
Release Date: January 8, 2026
Hosts: Robert Evans, James Stout

---

Overview

This episode continues the deep dive into the surprising and horrifying ways cigarettes helped shape the modern world—not just through public health, but by influencing gender roles, advertising, media, corporate power, and even how we think about science and truth. Moving from the early 1900s through the post-WWII era, Robert and James explore how tobacco companies engineered mass addiction, co-opted social movements, and literally invented the playbook for modern PR, denial, and media manipulation.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Cigarettes and the Mainstreaming of Smoking in America

• Early 20th-century smoking rates were quite low; only 5-10% of adults smoked cigarettes pre-WWI.
• WWI as the Tipping Point: Cigarettes became essential in the trenches—quick, shareable, and stress-relieving ("the best way you have to smoke in between getting murdered by German machine guns is a cigarette" – Robert, 04:34).
  • "You ask me what we need to win this war. I answer, tobacco as much as bullets." – Gen. Blackjack Pershing, quoted by Robert (12:12)
• After WWI: Smoking exploded in popularity—by 1940, 40% of U.S. adults smoked daily (18:37).

2. Early Anti-Smoking Campaigns and Gender Anxiety

• Early anti-smoking crusaders were often also involved in Prohibition, featured moralistic and sexist arguments ("a crime for women to...endanger the morals of children by smoking in their presence" – Robert, 08:34).
• Smoking becomes entangled with changing gender norms: cigarettes helped facilitate mixed-gender socializing and symbolized new freedoms for women in the workforce and public sphere.
  • "Cigarettes do play a significant role in the increasing acceptance of social equality for women." – Robert (09:32)

3. Cigarettes & Advertising: Birth of the Modern Consumer and Media Culture

• R.J. Reynolds launches Camel in 1913, prioritizes national advertising. First viral brand campaign: “The Camels Are Coming.” (22:04)
• Companies target women directly, linking cigarettes to slimness, independence, and sex appeal ("Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet" campaign; helped birth the skinny model ideal – 24:34).
• Candy cigarettes: Big Tobacco encouraged the use of real brands for sugar cigarettes sold to kids, declining to prosecute for IP infringement because "If kids get used to picking up a pack of Camels, that's a win for us." – Robert (26:07)

4. Cigarettes, Social Science, and the Rise of Corporate Denial

• Early scientific links between smoking and cancer were limited by small sample sizes and the infancy of epidemiology.
• The first control group studies in 1928 found heavy smokers were 27% likelier to get lung cancer (36:38).
• Insurance Industry Triggers Research: As lung cancer rates triple (1915-1928), insurance companies push for research to justify charging higher premiums for smokers (37:32).
• Industry Response: As evidence mounts, the tobacco industry pioneers massive, modern PR—network radio ads, Lucky Strike Hit Parade (the origin of the music "Top 40" format).

5. Big Tobacco’s Playbook: Disinformation, Front Groups, & ‘Both Sides’ Journalism

• 1953: The Plaza Hotel PR Summit: Industry meets with PR titan John W. Hill, who designs "Plan White Coat"—the first full-fledged corporate disinformation campaign (52:16).
• TIRC (Tobacco Industry Research Committee): Purports to fund independent research, but cherry-picks projects to sow doubt/avoid linking smoking and disease (58:03).
• Big Tobacco systematically manipulates media:
  • “First, journalists favored reporting on controversy. Second, by providing opposing positions as if they were equal, they affirmed their commitment to balance.” – Robert, quoting academic review (61:06)
  • The tactic of industry-funded “skeptics” in the media is born—used in everything from climate change denial to war on science.

6. Notable Consequences and Legacies

• Advertising to Children: Brands build loyalty early—targeting 11-18 year-olds, funding children’s entertainment (42:13).
  • “Cigarettes taught us how to do that [cartoon-soaked advertising],” linking tobacco-sponsored programming to everything from The Flintstones to modern marketing (43:00).
• Medical Endorsements: Infamous Camel campaign, “more doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette,” built on sending doctors boxes of cigarettes for free and “surveying” their preferences (47:24, 49:30).
• The Culture of Denial: TIRC’s statements (“no conclusive proof... many possible causes of cancer... millions derive pleasure...”) are echoed for decades in other industries (56:41).
  • "They invented both sides-ism. They gave us Donald Trump, climate change denial, the gun industry's tactics... all of those strategies pioneered by big tobacco." – Robert (61:14)
  • “Cigarettes created everything.” – James (60:25)

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Surge in Smoking:
  "By 1940, 40% of the United States adult population smokes on a daily basis."
  – Robert (18:37)

• On Gendered Double Standards:
  "It's interesting: cigarettes do play a significant role in the increasing acceptance of social equality for women. Because men and women spend time together to smoke."
  – Robert (09:32)

• On Ad Tactics:
  "The Camels are coming... There will be more in this town than all of Asia and Africa combined."
  – Quoting Camel’s first national campaign (22:04)

• On Candy Cigarettes:
  “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.”
  – Robert (26:07)

• On Early Science Skepticism:
  "His reasoning is not inherently unsound. Right. He's wrong, but... these are just people trying to understand the human body in a period in which we don't have that much information about it."
  – Robert on scientists in the 1920s/30s (33:05)

• On Doctor Endorsements:
  "This is their main advertising push for six years... more doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette."
  – Robert (47:24)

• On Media Manipulation:
  "Hill understood that his client should be viewed as embracing science rather than dismissing it."
  – Quoting from Am. Journal of Public Health (54:46)

• On Modern Legacies:
  “They gave us Donald Trump, they gave us climate change denial, they gave us the Iraq war... they pioneered all those strategies.”
  – Robert (61:17)

• Comedic Moment:
  "I am never gonna stop making jokes about cum 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."
  – Robert (28:21)

---

Timestamps for Key Segments

| Timestamp | Topic / Quote | |-----------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 03:10 | Cigarettes’ rise post-1911, pre-WWI; WWI as engine of mainstream adoption | | 06:10 | Early anti-smoking campaigns, moralism, and women's smoking laws | | 09:32 | Cigarettes and shifting gender roles/social mixing | | 12:12 | Cigarettes as "necessity of war" – General Pershing | | 18:37 | Dramatic jump in US smoking rates through WWII era | | 22:04 | Launch of Camel cigarettes, first modern ad campaign | | 24:34 | "Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet"—cigarettes invade female marketing | | 26:07 | Candy cigarettes and deliberate exposure of children to tobacco marketing | | 33:05 | Early debate on smoking and cancer, limits of 1920s-30s science | | 37:32 | Insurance companies' role in cancer research | | 42:13 | The need to "capture smokers young"—marketing to children/ad demographics | | 43:00 | Cigarettes, cartoons, and children's TV—Flintstones/Winston ad example | | 47:24 | "Doctors smoke Camels" campaign; manufactured health endorsements | | 54:46 | John W. Hill's PR strategy—birth of the manufactured "controversy" in science | | 60:25 | Cigarettes “created everything”—modern media, both-sideism, PR manipulation | | 61:14 | “They gave us Donald Trump... all those strategies.” (climate denial, etc.) | | 62:22 | Closing thoughts: tobacco’s legacy in capitalism and modern media |

---

Conclusion

Robert and James reveal how cigarettes weren’t just a product that destroyed millions of lives—they invented entire structures of persuasion, PR, denial, and consumer culture. From manipulating gender norms and inventing the music chart, to systematically attacking science and shaping political/media discourse, cigarettes are, in the hosts’ words, “one of the single most important inventions in the history of the planet” for all the wrong reasons.

---

Further Reading/Listening:

• The Cigarette Century by Allan Brandt (frequently cited throughout)
• American Journal of Public Health articles on tobacco PR

---

Tone & Style: Sarcastic, darkly comedic, bitterly insightful—true to Behind the Bastards’ critical, irreverent voice.

Transcript

[Robert]

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human. WSECU isn't just one of Washington's best credit unions. We're the only credit union to be on the Forbes Best in state list five years running.

[James]

Why?

[Robert]

Because we put you first. Lower fees, early paydays, financial guidance and service second to none. As a member owned cooperative, we love Washington as much as you do. From the Olympic mountains to the rolling Palouse. Join us and discover how much we care about your financial well being. Because what we really do best is invest in you. Stop by, say hi wsecu. Let's credit union media. Hey everybody. Robert here. Just introducing. We've got another rerun. This is the first time we've done two weeks in a row. Normally we just do one week at the end of the year, but all of the other shows on our network and most of the other shows that I know in podcasting take off two weeks. And Sophie was like, hey Robert, why don't you actually take off two weeks instead of cramming during your vacation to write another podcast so that we don't fall behind? And I was like, you know what, Sophie? That's a pretty good idea. So anyway, that's what we're doing. Enjoy this episode on how cigarettes invented everything. Ah, should really get that checked out. Cut me blowing my nose, but keep the yell, keep the yell.

[James]

It sounded like a wounded elephant.

[Robert]

I feel like a wounded elephant. The pollen count in Oregon right now is unbelievable. I just went outside during the break between episode recordings and emptied a magazine from an AR15 into a tree. But it does not appear to have solve the problem.

[James]

So now you gotta, gotta get heavier than that, man. You gotta.

[Robert]

Yeah, I should have used the.308, you know, that's why they went. Yeah, that's why the armies upgraded the caliber.

[James]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Robert]

You want to fuck up a tree? Yeah. You really want, you really want to move closer to that.30 caliber range?

[James]

Yep. This episode spoiled to you by 6.8 tree killer. The end Buster.

[Robert]

Yeah, that's.338 Lapua, baby.

[James]

Yeah, that'll fuck up sapling.

[Robert]

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

[James]

Not interesting. And it's kind of like shooting down.

[Robert]

A tree, isn't it?

[James]

Because if you're actively consumer base, it's a bit like shooting down a tree.

[Robert]

Yeah. You just have to hope that they can grow up faster than you can. Shoot them.

[James]

Shoot them. Yeah.

[Robert]

That's what they say about humans and it's also what they say about the human race. Because one thing you gotta give it to us is we bred slightly faster than cigarettes were able to kill us.

[James]

Once again, a win for humanity.

[Robert]

Yeah, the Titanic dub. So cigarettes did not get to have their real moment in the sun until a few years after the dissolution of American tobacco, which again, the Supreme Court knocks it out. In 1911. Probably somewhere under 10% of smokers and a much smaller portion of the US population actually smoked cigarettes. So a pretty small fraction of the US adult population is smoking still. Even, even as successful as our old buddy Duke was at getting people to smoke. But the thing that's gonna actually start to change this and really turn around cigarette's fortunes is the First World War. Now, James, you've been in a trench.

[James]

Yeah, I've been in a couple of trenches, yeah. Personal and professional reasons.

[Robert]

Yeah. Trenches are not the cleanest places in the world. Especially if it's like raining and they're muddy. You wouldn't want to have a pipe in a trench necessarily. Like you could smoke a pipe in a trench, but stuff's going to get in it. That's kind of gross. Right? That's not ideal.

[James]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Robert]

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 the.

[James]

Depends on what rank you're at, doesn't it? Once you.

[Robert]

Right, right. If you're sitting.

[James]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You get up to the, you know, the feel grade offices, you find with.

[Robert]

A cigar they have plenty of time for cigars and they have clean enough areas for cigarette or for pipes. But if you're a working man in the trenches, the best way you have to smoke in between getting murdered by German machine guns is a cigarette. And that's, that's really what causes a shitload of people to start adopting cigarettes. That's what actually makes it a mainstream thing is World War I now goes well with 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 worth noting that the first 20 years of, of like the 20th century, basically, from like the late 1890s to like 1917, 1918, 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 bans on the public consumption of tobacco in some states. In 1910, a doctor named Charles Peace founded the Non Smokers Protective League, advocating for a public smoking ban in America's largest city. In 1913, 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 cause cancer at this point. There's not really good scientific studies at this point. These people are just busy bodies, right?

[James]

Yeah. Yeah, right. They can be right for the wrong reasons. What are their arguments? That they don't like it.

[Robert]

Yeah. Let me tell you. Chief among the voices of non smokers is our old friend of the pod, John Harvey Kellogg. America's come doctor.

[James]

Oh, good. Yeah.

[Robert]

Kellogg's complaint was, quote, smoking has become so nearly universal among men that few non smokers are practically ignored and their rights trampled upon. Now, that means that, like, by being around cigarette smoke, you're having your rights trampled upon. And yes, we now know secondhand smoke is seriously bad for you. At the time, we. And also, let's be honest here, 1917, 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.

[James]

Yeah. They're not the thing, number one, trampling on your right side of 1917.

[Robert]

Yeah. It's just not the biggest problem. Look, John Harvey Kellogg, well, he has credit. Yeah. Do not give him credit for being on the right side of history with this one. So nonsmokers also. It was not again, because there's not great. There are. Some of these people are ahead of their time and are saying, like, hey, this stuff has to be bad for you. And we're gonna figure out, like the way in which it's killing people later. A lot of them are just angry cause 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 1904, New York State passes a law that makes it a crime for 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 1908, New York City Alderman passed an ordinance restricting public smoking by women. From the Washington Post, quote, the Sullivan ordinance made it illegal for restaurants and bar owners to permit women to smoke in their establishments. The stated rationale from Bowery moralist and political chieftain Tim Sullivan was that proper ladies were offended by women smoking. And it certainly wasn't any kind of attempt by a man to control women's behavior. Despite the ordinance's short duration, it lasted only two weeks. The sentiment underlying it was held by others as well. Women's smoking was viewed by many as taboo, associated with what Amanda Amos and Margaretha Haglund have termed louche and libidinous moral behavior. It is a good band name and it's interesting. One of the things that cigarettes do is they make it. They are a big part of why it starts to become okay for men and women to socialize together who are unmarried. Right. In a lot of ways. So one of the things that is common prior to cigarettes becoming mainstream, after you have a big dinner, 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 20s, what starts. Or in the early 1900s, what starts to happen is after dinner, everybody has a cigarette and women didn't smoke cigars. But cigarettes are new, and so it's not really that weird to a lot of modern people that women would smoke them. And also there's not women's cigarettes. So everyone's smoking the same cigarettes. And increasingly they start doing it in the same places together. Unmarried men and women just hanging out and having a smoke and talking. This is a big part of. This is kind of in the 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.

[James]

Yeah.

[Robert]

It makes. Not an on factor. Yeah, yeah.

[James]

It's definitely a time period when there's generally this change in gender roles. Right. With women working in the first World War and like.

[Robert]

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 whole thing. So smokers also started to organize to establish more public smoking places. Tobacco dealers would often back and fund local efforts to lobby for smoking cars on trains or to allow the smoking of cigarettes on the rear platform of streetcars within the Military. There were strenuous debates as to whether or not tobacco should be legal for soldiers. In 1907, the Surgeon General of the Navy had recommended that sailors under 21 be banned from smoking cigarettes. This was outrageous to the actual men of the Navy, and one enlisted man wrote this in response. If this cigarette recommendation has made the rule and such a thing is ordered, it's gonna put all us young fellows who like them on the beam. It's all right to talk about your cigars and your pipes, but cigarettes are cigarettes. And when you once get to liking the little sticks, there's nothing that can take their place. Then don't forget that life on the ocean with none of your women folks or girlfriends around to break the monotony is a lot different from life, Ash. And I tell you, those dream sticks help you pass away. Many a dreary and homestick hour. Just a bunch of Navy boys, no women around, sucking down dreamsticks.

[James]

Dreamsticks?

[Robert]

Yeah.

[James]

Direct quote from Joe Biden's speech about pardoning people with marijuana.

[Robert]

People for dream sticks. In an unrelated note, I saw a picture of Joe Biden with a quantum computer the other day, and it just struck me as the most wrong thing. It's like looking at Winston Churchill with a Game Boy. Like, no, those aren't supposed to be in the same photograph. Joe Biden should never have lived to see a quantum computer.

[James]

It's like seeing a diplodocus or a Tamagotchi hanging out.

[Robert]

Yeah, no, that's not okay. That's not okay. So opposition to cigarettes in the military disappeared overnight once the United States got into World War I. Much of this had to do with Blackjack Pershing, the leader of the American Expeditionary Force, who, in what Americans could do to support their soldiers going overseas, gave this reply. You ask me what we need to win this war. I answer, tobacco as much as bullets.

[James]

Oh, great. It's so true.

[Robert]

It is. Yeah.

[James]

Yeah. We've spoken about this before. But the universal truth of conflict journalism, if you need something and you're not sure that someone's gonna give it to you, you can probably get it by giving someone enough cigarettes.

[Robert]

I keep packs on me every time I'm anywhere near. Cause, like. And it's not always just getting something. Some of it is, like, you meet people and they're standoffish 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 Marlboros and you sit and smoke for like 20 minutes together and then they just start talking, you know, like that's a thing. They're useful, they're, they work.

[James]

Yeah. They're a great tool for journalism.

[Robert]

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 35 points lower on PT tests. Cigarette smoking harms your night vision. 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. I forced to see the cherries. Right.

[James]

That happens for sure.

[Robert]

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

[James]

Yeah. There is not a long term for a lot of people in World War I.

[Robert]

No, no, no, especially not. And the other thing that they do is, as we just talked about, people bond while smoking. It's a part of why men and women. It's a way in which men and women start to bond socially in a way they had not in a long time in western society. And soldiers in the trenches bond sharing smokes. 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 nothing to do about it. It's just a thing that people have adopted for themselves in a different time. And so this is a, this is a problem for the anti smoking people. Obviously smoking, again, very bad for everything else that makes you be a soldier. But soldiers are not thinking about that in the times when they're smoking them. And in a lot of military planners, cases like they're also. It's hard to argue even though you've got people who are in the medical profession, for the military being like these probably aren't good for people. It's hard to argue that like a guy who you're asking to run in a machine gun nest doesn't deserve to have like a cigarette. Yes. And you know, if you know America, you know that love for our military is basically the not so secret Control level lever for the American mind. So cigarettes had been controversial prior to World War I, but once we start sending men in the field and Pershing's like, we need cigarettes. Organizations that had previously lobbied nationwide for smoking bans, like the YMCA prior to World War I. The YMCA is a massive part of trying to ban public smoking. As soon as the war starts, they start shipping pallets of cigarettes to the battlefields.

[James]

It's great. It's a truth for so long you can just put the support. The troops stank on anything and people will love it here.

[Robert]

It's interesting. In the Cigarette Century, Alan Brandt writes, volunteers organized smoke funds to collect donations to assure that the troops had adequate supplies of cigarettes. The sun fund amassed 137 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 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.

[James]

Just great.

[Robert]

That's sweet. Yeah.

[James]

Yeah, amazing. I'm sure these people were also dying of trench foot and would have really appreciated a new pair of socks.

[Robert]

Yeah, socks probably also would have gone over well.

[James]

Yeah. Coat.

[Robert]

I mean, I assume the military was already attempting to provide those things. It is new that you would provide cigarettes as the military.

[James]

Yeah.

[Robert]

So in the early days of the war, the US war effort, I should say the fact that most aid organizations in Europe provided cigarettes to soldiers for a fee, often substantial, regularly made the news back home. Soldiers are like, we're paying as much for a cigarette at the front as we have to pay back at home. Like, that's kind of fucked up. Now. Donated cigarettes were only able to solve a small portion of this problem. 139 million cigarettes is not a lot. If you know anything about cigarettes, that's not very many. Sounds like a lot. It is not. A fucking army in the field will smoke through 139 million cigarettes quicker than they'll go through that many bullets.

[James]

Yeah, that is true.

[Robert]

Donated cigarettes only. Yeah. Solved a small number of the problem. So the War Department had to make the decision to issue tobacco rations to soldiers starting in May of 1918. The New York Times wrote of the decision, quote, a wave of joy swept through the American army today. Great.

[James]

And let him have it.

[Robert]

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're big hygiene guys before and then they get shot at and they have a smoke in the fucking trench with their buddy and then, you know, for the rest of their lives they think kindly of cigarettes. Yeah. And also the fact that the cigarette is now associated with the hard bitten trench fighter means that you can't attack the moral character of smokers. The anti smoking movement. They're only smoked by criminals and not white people. Right. And now they're like, they're part of the icon of the heroic soldier. Right.

[James]

Yeah.

[Robert]

So in 1900, again, barely 5% of the country smoked or like 1904, something like that. By 1940 and again, sorry, in like the start of the 1900s, about 5% of the country who smokes tobacco smokes. Right. By 1940, 40% of the United States adult population smokes on a daily basis.

[James]

Whoa.

[Robert]

Yeah. Yeah. It is a huge increase. Yeah. That is crazy. Average per consumer consumption escalated to. In 1900, Americans consumed about 54 cigarettes per person per year. Right. That's the average for the whole population in 1960, Americans consume 4,300 cigarettes per year. Jesus Christ.

[James]

I was not expecting that.

[Robert]

That is so many cigarettes. Yeah, 4,300 per. Jesus Christ. That's quite a few cigarettes.

[James]

Yeah, yeah. You're really upping the intake there though. They're going to get through those Pokemon card collections now.

[Robert]

Oh, yeah, no, no. A lot of kids are getting a lot of baseball cards.

[James]

Yep.

[Robert]

You know those numbers are driven up by all of the 11 year old smoking 12,000 cigarettes.

[James]

Smoking four cigarettes at once.

[Robert]

Just burning through an entire carton in a day.

[James]

Yeah.

[Robert]

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 20, 1850 in Patrick County, Virginia. His father was a tobacco. And as a young man, Reynolds worked for his dad's plantation, which absolutely included a fuckload of enslaved people. RJ was just 15 when the civil War ended, bringing with it the first tiny surge in cigarette usage. He quickly fell in love with the things and he turned his father's company into an industry leading producer. And R.J. reynolds is different from Duke in that Duke, when he smokes, smokes cigars. Right. He wants to sell cigarettes. He thinks they're a good business. He doesn't understand them. Right. He understands how to get people to want to buy something. He's a good market, really get what people like in a Cigarette. There is nothing that RJ 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. He. He is. He is such a cigarette 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. He actually gets forced by Duke into the trust because Duke uses shady methods to buy two thirds of Reynolds Tobacco stock to force the company into American Tobacco. And despite this, RJ 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 fuck over Buck Duke and his company. In 1913, he created a new cigarette which featured a mix of American and Turkish tobacco to create a blended cigarette. He called this new cigarette the Camel.

[James]

Oh, there it is. Camel cigarette. Why did he choose Camel?

[Robert]

Because it's Turkish tobacco.

[James]

Oh, I see. Yeah, yeah.

[Robert]

You know, Turkey, Camels, two things that are famous, constantly associated with each other.

[James]

Just imagine how much better it would be if he just called it the Turkey.

[Robert]

The Turkey, Right, Yeah.

[James]

Because angry Turkish nationalists love, love the fact that those two things are sort of. They sound the same, but I.

[Robert]

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.

[James]

Yeah. There would have been more wars in 20th Century Europe.

[Robert]

I'm gonna quote now from the Cigarette century. To help distinguish it from its competition, Reynolds offered no promotions. Smokers realized that the value was in the cigarettes and do not expect promotions or coupons, he explained, against Duke's earlier advertising devoted to these now traditional promotional dev. Reynolds went modern. Reynolds committed unprecedented advertising money to promote this single product, creating a national campaign to make the Camel cigarette a truly national brand. In 1914, newspapers throughout the country ran ads several days in succession that announced simply, the Camels are coming. They were followed by a second wave of ads proclaiming, tomorrow there will be more in this town than all of Asia and Africa combined. Creating such expectations and their fulfillment would become a central technique of modern consumer advertising. The third ad portraying the Camel cigarette package read, camel cigarettes are here this advertising campaign. And here the term campaign appropriately reflects the strategic technique met with unprecedented success.

[James]

Look at that. Yeah, yeah.

[Robert]

Smart man.

[James]

Yeah. It is like an iconic brand. Like, I think cigarettes. Like, I know there are many brands that seem to like be as iconic as cigarette brands. And it's global and it's.

[Robert]

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, 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 in different regions. Reynolds is the first guy to be like, no, no. Not only do I want my company to be the biggest, I want this one specific kind of cigarette to be everywhere.

[James]

Yeah.

[Robert]

So When World War I ended, Camel accounted for more than 30% of the US cigarette market. Market. Camels 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'd left to fight. And after helping to save the US Economy, they didn't take well to the argument that them enjoying a smoke was some sort of sin against femininity. From the Washington Post. Cigarette advertising companies, which at the time primarily employed male advertising executives, quickly co opted the ideas of independence that women began to assert at the polls and in the workplace. They targeted women, conveying the notions that women who smoked were independent, attracted, and even athletic. Lucky Strike's 1925 marketing pitch to women told them to reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet. The message, smoke and you'll be thin.

[James]

Oh, great. There it is.

[Robert]

Yeah, it's pretty fun. Yeah.

[James]

Wondered how long that would take.

[Robert]

And this is number one. One thing that starts to happen in this is a whole new generation of extremely skinny female models starts to become popular because of this Lucky Strike ad campaign. They help to create, like, that whole thing, that whole trend. Yeah, yeah.

[James]

Distorted body image.

[Robert]

Now this. There's a backlash to this and there's kind of a war between cigarettes and the candy industry. And it's very funny that one of the cigarettes that'll come on the market at this time, I think it might be Marbro's. Their advertising campaign is to, like, push back at Camel by being like, no, cigarettes and candy are both good for you. You should have your cigarette and your chocolate. They're a healthy treat. But no, the candy industry has to be like, the fuck are you saying about people not eating candy? Come on, we're not trying to shit on cigarettes here.

[James]

Yeah, they're just too nice. Witty. Wonka can't bring himself just when they start making candy cigarettes and really.

[Robert]

Well, yeah, this is that. And in this period, one of the interesting things about candy cigarettes, when they first get made. They're all made with the brands of real cigarettes. So there'll be Campbells now. Not legally. They're all illegally. 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.

[James]

Yeah.

[Robert]

Like there's no downside to us letting them do this.

[James]

Yeah. It's a win for everyone. Great.

[Robert]

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 18th amendment gets passed banning the sale of alcohol, moral crusaders like evangelist Billy Sunday turned their attention to tobacco, saying in one speech, prohibition is won. Now for tobacco, the Women's Christian Temperance Union 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. Cigarettes. The bill's advocates included the WCTU and, and the Mormon Church, both of which emphasized the moral risks of letting women be seen smoking. Senator Edward Southwick, who wrote the bill, quoted U.S. surgeon General Hugh Cumming, which was his real name, as saying, if American women generally contract the habit, as reports now indicate they are doing, the entire American nation will suffer. The physical tone of the whole nation will be lower. This is one of the most evil influences in American life today. The habit harms a woman more than it does a man.

[James]

Great. Thanks, Hugh.

[Robert]

Yeah, Hugh.

[James]

Coming for name and intellect.

[Robert]

Yeah, yeah, real, real smart guy, real comer, Hugh.

[James]

Yeah. There were other names he could have been cursed with, which could have been his first name. Could have been worse.

[Robert]

But yeah, yeah, there we are. But you know what will make you come, James?

[James]

Please enlighten me.

[Robert]

The sponsors of our podcasts. Not their products, which are asexual, but the actual people who run and own stock in the companies anytime you ask for it. That's good to know. That's a promise.

[James]

Yeah, I'll put that in the old context, but.

[Robert]

Ah, we're back. We're talking about cum. You know, every time I talk about cum on this show, somebody gets up in the subreddit and they're like, I wish they wouldn't make juvenile jokes about cum. It's not very funny.

[James]

It's exceptionally funny to make juvenile jokes.

[Robert]

Yeah. Look, I am never gonna stop making jokes about cum 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.

[James]

That, while not juvenile, is still funny.

[Robert]

It's funny and true, James.

[James]

Exceptionally funny. Yeah, it's true. And he can sue us over it. We'll take him to court. Show us the evidence, Mitch.

[Robert]

Yeah, show us the evidence, Mitch. Show us the evidence that when you come the dry scabs exiting your urethra don't make a sound exactly like crabs scuttling on a soapstone bed. Prove it to me. Prove it to me, Mitch.

[James]

I'm now physically unwell.

[Robert]

Would you like a cigarette?

[James]

Yeah. I think I've been traumatized on a level that's similar to somebody who's justified to. I'd like to shorten my life.

[Robert]

Yes, well, why don't you reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet?

[James]

That will help me stay maintain my girlish physique.

[Robert]

So, as we've just come back, the Surgeon General has been like, this is going to lower the moral tone of women. And again, just so that, if I'm not mistaken, cigarettes are bad. Don't smoke them. These people are technically in the right, but they're in the right for the wrong reasons usually. So fuck them. I'm gonna quote again from Alan Brandt here. Another supporter of the legislation noted that the fingers of our girls are being varnished with the stains of those harmful little instruments of destruction, just as earlier opponents of the cigarette had done. Senator 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, public space, which is. We'll call that one mixed. We cannot bring our wives and daughters to the city, he wrote, and cannot come along without encountering tobacco smoke everywhere, as that saturates our clothing and nauseates us. Personal liberty, ours is as inviolate, or should be as theirs.

[James]

Amazing. Like, at a time when, like, industry is ripping children's arms off their bodies.

[Robert]

Oh, yeah. No, people are just burning pure petroleum jelly in the back of a fucking Model T. Yeah, yeah.

[James]

Just pouring some lead into the reserve lead tank.

[Robert]

Yeah. Again, fucking 1922. Your worst encounter is not gonna be with tobacco smoke in the streets of a city.

[James]

The coal burning colonialism factory isn't a problem. It's women smoking that we need to worry about now.

[Robert]

By 1922, 16 states had banned or 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 pan grounds. Right. Again, if all of these people are saying smoking is horrible for your health and so 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 stain their hands. They don't have, at this point, they don't have widely agreed upon medical evidence that smoking is bad for you. And in fact, a lot of doctors will argue that smoking is, if not healthy, then not a serious harm. It was not as common in this period to have doctors be like smoking, but most of them tended to be like, well, it's not that bad for you, right? It's a, you know, it's like, it's like. It is like eating candy, right? That's what they. It's not like eating candy, please. I'm not saying that someone's gonna get really angry at me. I'm just saying if you're a doctor in the twenties, odds are, rather than saying smoking is bad for you, you're saying like, well, it's probably okay to have the occasional cigarette as part of a balanced diet or whatever, you know.

[James]

Right.

[Robert]

And again, doctors are heavily debating as the 30s dawn whether or not smoking causes cancer. There were studies that showed a correlation between self reported smoking habits and lung cancer. And by the 1920s, rates of lung cancer had started to soar. Given all of this, it might seem easy to prove a link between cigarettes and lung cancer, but it's not. All you've got in the 20s is that there's a correlation between the two. But obviously cigarettes aren't the only thing that's been introduced to modern life in the early part of the 20th century, right? There's cars now. Suddenly people are getting a whole bunch of different medications that didn't used to exist. All sorts is around that just wasn't before. So how do you know? How do you know? Think about this. How can you prove if you're just a dude in 1920 fucking two that the thing causing lung cancer in your friends is the cigarette and not the car or the fucking fluorescent light bulbs, Right? Like you don't know. There's not evidence at this point, you know.

[James]

Yeah, they're just part of this industrial modernity.

[Robert]

Yeah. A lot has changed really quickly. And there's actually, there's some surprisingly logical reasons to question the early stuff. Science. One doctor and critic over fears of cigarette use. One of the guys who's arguing against the people saying that lung cancer and smoking are correlated. One of the things he says is that, like, well, when we get lung cancer patients, they have a lung in one, they have a tumor in 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 that's just the way cancer works. Right. But again, based on the knowledge at the time, that's not a bad point to make. Right, he's wrong, but you can see how a person who is not like in the pocket of big tobacco could make that mistake. Yeah. His reasoning is not inherently unsound. Right. He's wrong, but not because he's like. Again, later, all the scientists on the other side of this will be doing something fundamentally dishonest. These are just people trying to understand the human body in a period in which we don't have that much information about it. Other scientists would argue that the rise in lung cancer was attributed to the fact that life expectancy had risen a lot in the first quarter of the 20th century. People were getting more weird cancers, they argued, because people were living longer, maybe lung cancer has always been normal once you hit a certain age, and we just didn't have that many people reaching it, you know?

[James]

Yeah, makes sense.

[Robert]

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. A link between smoking and lung cancer. But it took data a long time to catch up with that. For one thing, epidemiology is in its infancy in this period of time. The first small batch studies, and by the late 20s, 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 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 rigueur at this point in time. It becomes it partly as a result of this research. And in fact, there's a 1928 article in the New England Journal of Medicine in which that points out, like it shows A link between smoking and lung cancer. But it also points out that their study and other similar studies are of little value without similar studies on individuals without cancer, without control groups. Right. So part of why that becomes more 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 1928 study, Herbert Lombard and Carl Durring carried out their own small 200 person study with a control group. And this is the first good quality study we have that shows lung cancer. Is it shows a bunch of things. Number one, I shouldn't 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 without scientific data? You don't know that people aren't giving it to each other. Right. That it's not some weird thing that people got when they started walking in the Amazon or whatever. Right. How would you know they know? They find they. Or at least the data suggests that it's also, there's not a correlation between lung cancer and low quality housing, which was another thing people didn't know. Is it something about the way we insulate our homes? You know they also find out that it's not associated with constipation, which was a thing that some doc. And again we can laugh about that. But how would you know if you didn't do the study?

[James]

Right. Yeah.

[Robert]

One of the primary like damning thing the study finds is that self reported heavy smokers are 27% likelier to get lung cancer. This is the first scientifically solid evidence linking cigarettes to lung cancer. Now 200 person study with a 200 person control group, that's not definitive. Right? That's enough to justify further research. Sure. But that's not a huge study. The 1930s are where we're going to see the first attempts on a large scale to document the relationship between cigarettes and cancer. The impetus for this research actually comes from one of the few industries that can rival big tobacco for sheer evil, the insurance industry. They are the people who are gonna. Because they see this early research and they're like wait a second, we're paying a shitload of money out on all these fuckers dying of 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.

[James]

King Kong versus Godzilla.

[Robert]

Exactly. So one of the chief drivers of this is a guy named Frederick who is a statistician at Prudential and hoffman notices in 1931 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 interests Prudential. They don't care about the cost of human life. So the thing that Hoffman notices is that in 1915 the lung cancer rate stands at about 0.7 people per thousand people, right? About 0.7 people per every thousand in the population are likely to get lung cancer. By 1920, it's risen to 1.1 per thousand. It's 1.6 per thousand by 1924 and 1.9 per thousand by 1928. That means in 13 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 that this, he puts two and two together and he becomes the first prominent figure to publish a claim that tobacco use is associated with a heightened rate of cancer and early death. And he's doing it again to warn insurance companies. A new wave of studies follows. And as the 1930s gives away to the 40s, the tobacco industry keeps a worried watchful eye on this emerging science. They also start exploding their advertising budgets in order to kind of make up for the increasing talk in the background about maybe cigarettes aren't so great to us, for us. In 1911, prior to the bust of the American Tobacco Trust, the entire cigarette industry profited about $13 million a year. By 1918, the Big Five tobacco companies were spending more than $13 million every year just in ads. In doing so, they'd helped create the very language of American culture. And I'm going to quote from a write up in the Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice by Richard Polay. Cigarette sellers were among the most enthusiastic pioneers in the use of network broadcasting for coast to coast advertising. By 1930, American Tobac, Brown & Williamson, P. Lorillard and R.J. reynolds were all buying network radio Time. There has been no greater enthusiast for radio advertise broadcast advertising than George W. Hill of the ATC, whose business for the first five months of 1930 surpassed all records. The company sponsors the Lucky Strike Dance Orchestra in three hour broadcasts each week. Lucky Strike 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 Strike's Hit Parade. This show started in 1928 and ran into the 1950s on television. It featured teen idol Frank Sinatra when he was launching his career. So popular was this show in 1938 that a sweepstakes promotion offering free cartons of Lucky's for the names of the three most popular tunes drew nearly 7 million entries per week. The Lucky Strike Hit Parade was the first show to rank popular music releases in an ongoing basis. This is where we get the top 40. The entire structure of the musical industry comes out of Lucky Strike's Hit.

[James]

Parade. Excellent. Yep. So they gave us all those crappy Christmas number one singles, and it.

[Robert]

Seems like podcasts more or less and podcasts, we all owe a debt to Lucky Strike.

[James]

Yeah. Every time you read a dick pill advert, just think lucky. Well, in more ways than one, actually. That's an unfortunate.

[Robert]

Coincidence. Let's all give the good folks at Lucky Strike a solid. Go out and pick out a pack right now that you don't have to smoke it. Give it to a kid. You know, they love to smoke. Sophie.

[James]

What?

[Robert]

What? I'm done with my script. I'm throwing to ads now. I'm throwing to ads like the good men at RJ Reynolds and Laura Lard and the other greats of the tobacco industry taught me to. Sophie, I'm. I'm. I'm honoring our ancestors. We're.

[James]

Back. We all had a cigarette, and we're ready to.

[Robert]

Go. Cigarettes have now just invented the modern music.

[James]

Industry. The lunatics taken over the.

[Robert]

Asylum. Now, James, do not encourage.

[James]

Me. They had a couple of Lucky Strikes, they felt better, and they took over the.

[Robert]

Asylum. Yeah. That is a Lucky Strike, if you ask me. So the need to capture smokers young because market research had shown that people tended to be brand loyal also helped to create the modern conception of ad demographics. Right. Advertisers start learning how to differentiate and split and go. You know the idea that, like, the 18 to 35 males is, like, the most valuable that comes out here. Right. Oh, wow. And it's because, like, that's when you got to get them fuckers smoking. Right. Earlier, if.

[James]

Possible. Yeah, yeah. 11 to 18 is really the.

[Robert]

Key. Ideally, like 11 or 12. 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 1950s, many brands used cartoon trade characters in their advertising the ads on Lucky Strike's hit parade for a while featured a cute animated character called Scoop, who, through the then impressive technical feat of superimposition, appeared on screen with the show's star, Dorothy Collins. So that's where we get who Framed Roger Rabbit? Motherfuckers. Cigarettes taught us how to do.

[James]

That. Yep. Great. They gave us.

[Robert]

Avatar. Philip Morris's US Car. Philip Morris's cartoons when advertising on I Love Philip Morris used cartoons when advertising on I Love Lucy. Lorillard created TV cartoon ads for Old Gold that featured the voices of their Honeymooners stars Jackie Gleason and Art Carney. This presaged the Winston spots that employ the animated hit characters from the Flintstones, a totally cartoon show they sponsored, whose voices, structure and sense of humor all imitated the honeymoon. And I think a lot of people are vaguely aware that the Flintstones used to have cigarette ads. You knew that.

[James]

Right? No, I didn't think.

[Robert]

So. Oh, that's why it was created. The Flintstones were made as a cigarette ad. And to get an idea for how blatant this advertising was, you need to see some old episodes of the Flintstones. And I think this one includes a representative scene you should know to understand what's happening on screen. Right at the start of this, we see Fred and Barney kind of, like, hanging out in the yard on their asses while their wives are doing, like, yard work and house chores. So they're, like, chilling out, watching their wives.

[James]

Work. Right. Good stuff. They sure work hard, don't they?

[Robert]

Yeah. I hate to see them work so.

[James]

Hard. Yeah, me too. Let's go around back when we can't see.

[Robert]

Them. Gee, we ought to do something.

[James]

Fred.

[Robert]

Okay. How's about taking a nap? I got a better idea, dear. Let's take a Winston break. That's it. Winston smoked a cigarette that delivers flavor 20 times a pack. Winston's got that Built a blend the year. Built a blend makes the big taste difference. And only Winston has it up front where it counts here, ahead of the pure white filter. Winston packs rich tobacco, specially selected and specially.

[James]

Wow. They're still.

[Robert]

Going. Winston tastes good like cigarette chunks. Oh, yeah. That is a lot of cigarette.

[James]

Advertising. Yeah, I was. At first, I was appalled by the directness of it, but then just the duration of it.

[Robert]

Yeah. Wow. They really were committed to selling kids.

[James]

Cigarettes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whitsun also not a great name compared to, like.

[Robert]

Camel. No, Camel.

[James]

Marlboro. Yeah. Just a dude called Winston with little.

[Robert]

Imagination.

[James]

Yeah.

[Robert]

Wow. That was amazing. Yeah, it's the.

[James]

Best. Yeah. That is Like Alex Jones tier just transition from content to.

[Robert]

Ads. Fucking Barney Rubble wants to get your ass into a pack of.

[James]

Winstons. Yeah, he's gonna be doing, what is it? Fucking silver or whatever Alex Jones is trying to sell you.

[Robert]

Now. Yeah, Colloidal.

[James]

Silver.

[Robert]

Yes. That you can shoot up your ass. I. I don't.

[James]

Know. Yeah. Nor do I care. I don't think our listenership overlaps, so no one else knows either, so it's.

[Robert]

Fine. No, our listeners are buying a lot of gold now because of those gold ads running. Oh, yeah, well, that's.

[James]

Good. It's been a success. We have to get them back for the next.

[Robert]

Season. Yeah, we love the gold ad people. You know, I'm just gonna. I'm do a free ad right now. Buy gold. It's the cigarettes of currency. Well, actually, that's cigarettes. Gold's almost as valuable as cigarettes in a pinch. So pick some up today. Smoke it, why don't you? You know what, James? I have an idea. Why don't we make a lot of money? We get cigarettes, grind up gold into them, pour gold flakes into the cigarettes, and then sell them to rich assholes who have.

[James]

Tiktoks. Yeah, there's definitely. There's like a thing. Isn't there like a vodka or.

[Robert]

Something that has gold flakes? Oh, yeah, there's a couple of liquors that have.

[James]

It. Yeah. You may perceive it as unnecessary, Sophie, but I need to signal so many.

[Robert]

Gold. Gold, unnecessary things in food. You know how there's, you know.

[James]

I got my gold.

[Robert]

Whiskey. Robert, getting back to the script. Pour out some gold liquor.

[James]

And. Yeah, yeah, all right, I'm.

[Robert]

Back. Wrap a cigarette in gold.

[James]

Foil. There was no gold, but I've got my glass of lead vodka here and I'm good to.

[Robert]

Go. So during the late 40s to the early 50s, the science coming out about cigarettes and cancer starts to look worse and worse. The R.J. reynolds Company launches a new campaign for Camel cigarettes in 1946, centered around the slogan, more doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette for the next six years. This is like. This is their main advertising push for six.

[James]

Years. Dentist and toothbrushing with cigarettes. Some amazing.

[Robert]

Great. Yeah, absolutely. Yes. The cigarette that 9 out of 10 doctors recommend. Reynolds backs up their claim that more doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette. With surveys that they said had been conducted by, by, quote, three leading independent research organizations. Now, they don't name these organizations. One representative ad claims that a survey of 113,597 doctors from, quote, every branch of medicine had shown that Camels were the brand most often smoked by.

[James]

Doctors. Yeah, that's what you want, is the cigarette that your podiatrist.

[Robert]

Chooses. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I wanna know. Yeah, nobody knows what you should be smoking better than a fucking proctologist. That's who's got it.

[James]

Down.

[Robert]

Yeah. As an.

[James]

Obstetrician, my urologist chooses.

[Robert]

Winston's. Yeah, that would be quite funny. Boy, women seem to really want a cigarette after giving birth. Probably good for.

[James]

You. Want a.

[Robert]

Drink? So, RJ Reynolds assured customers that this survey, which totally existed, was an actual fact and not a casual claim. And their competitors were all doing the same thing. American Tobacco 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 that Lucky Strikes tobacco underwent decreased throat irritation. In fact, Lucky Strike's curing process did not significantly differ from that of other blood brands. Related campaigns emphasized that Lucky's would help consumers, especially women. Their new market, stay trim since they could reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet. Along with these persistent health claims, a typical advertisement from 1930 boldly stated that 20,679 physicians say Luckies are less.

[James]

Irritating.

[Robert]

Great. Now James, do you want to know how they'd gotten the information that Lucky's were seen as less irritating by.

[James]

Doctors? Did they send them a packet of Lucky drugs and also just.

[Robert]

Asbestos? They sure did, yeah. Their advertising agency, Lloyd, Thomas and Logan, sent cigarette cartons to physicians in 1926, 1927 and 1928 and then asked them to answer, are Lucky Strike cigarettes less irritating to tender throats than other cigarettes? And the doctors were like, yeah, I want more free.

[James]

Cigarettes. Sure, yeah. Why do I want free cigarette box? Cool. I'll take that one. Great. Good. That's how science is. Is.

[Robert]

Done. That is how science is done. Yep. 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. The toasting, as they explained, is, quote, your throat protection against irritation against cough. Thank God. Thank God they figured out toasting. Otherwise these cigarettes might really hurt.

[James]

People. Yeah, yeah. You Got to toast them. That's how you just pop a couple of cigarettes in your.

[Robert]

Toaster.

[James]

Yeah. In the morning and. Yeah, no cancer for.

[Robert]

You. So self reported adult smoking peaked in the early 1950s at about 45% of the population. Big Tobacco's ploy to buy up doctors had worked for a while. But in late 1953, the first irrefutable studies linking lung cancer to tobacco use were published to tremendous major peer reviewed journal studies had tied not just cancer, but cardiac disease and serious respiratory illness to smoking. The situation was serious enough that the head executives of the big five tobacco companies all came together in December of 1953 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 great greater death toll. The master of the moment was John W. Hill, president of the biggest PR firm in the country, Hill and Knowlton. Now, John had been born in Indiana in 1890. He'd spent most of his early career working as a journalist. He's a journalist for 18 years, working his way up the ladder to become an editor and a popular columnist. In 1927, he blazed a trail that generations of soulless hacks would follow. And he decided to start a prison. By the time 1953 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 entity, a think tank of scientists funded by tobacco money, but ostensibly independent. This would allow Big Tobacco to claim they were taking fears of lung cancer seriously while also providing them with disinformation. To muddy the waters by painting these existing studies is insufficient. I'm going to quote. Yeah, it's awesome. It's so.

[James]

Good. No one's ever done it.

[Robert]

Since. No one. This is not. This is not the thing that's going to end all life on this planet. No. Hill did not just build the Apocalypse.

[James]

Bomb. Yes. Yeah. Jesus Christ. Yeah. Wow. They've given us everything from Pokemon cards to fucking climate.

[Robert]

Change. It's incredible. Cigarettes are amazing, James.

[James]

Yes. Wow. Yeah, they are.

[Robert]

Something. One of the single most important inventions in the history of the.

[James]

Planet. Yeah. God, people die of starvation, you know, and here we are, we've made a cancer stick and we've, we've created new and exciting ways to lie about.

[Robert]

It. It's amazing. It's so.

[James]

Cool. I'm going to quote him. Who can fault.

[Robert]

It? God, what a great product. I'm going to quote now from a 2012 article in the American Journal of Public Health. The industry had supported some individual research in recent years, but Hill's proposal offered the potential of a research program that would be controlled by the industry, yet promoted as independent. This was a public relations masterstroke. 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 making academic institutions partners with the tobacco industry in its moment of crisis. Hill and his clients had no interest. Yeah. In answer, Hill and his clients had no interest in answering a scientific question. Their goal was to maintain vigorous control over the research program, to use science in the service of public relations. Although the tobacco executives had proposed forming a Cigarette Information Committee dedicated to defending smoking against the medical findings, Hill argued aggressively for adding research to the committee's title and agenda. It is believed, he wrote, that the word research is needed in the name to give weight and added credence to the committee statements. Hill understood that his client should be viewed as embracing science rather than dismissing it. Now, again, Hill's a journalist, right? That's part of how he's able to do this. He understands how to communicate. He understands how people read things. One of the first things he emphasized to the industry 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? Right. Arguing like Lucky Strikes are healthier than Marlboro'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 1954 and announced its existence with full page ads in more than 400 newspapers. This ad, known as the Frank Statement, claimed that tobacco companies were deeply concerned about the welfare of their customers and would pursue any end to get to the bottom of this whole tobacco equals cancer thing. Quote, we accept an interest in people's health as a basic responsibility paramount to every other consideration in our business. We believe the products we make are not injurious to health. We always have and always will cooperate closely with those whose task it is to safeguard the public health. That's.

[James]

Good. Great. Yeah, sure. Very honest, very.

[Robert]

Straightforward. So despite these high minded claims, the TIRC's agenda was laid out by Hill before he consulted a single scientist. Executive director of the organization WT Hoyt had no scientific background. His previous job had been selling ads for the Saturday Evening Post. Within his first few months of operation, Hoyt and other executives of the TIRC 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, there is no conclusive scientific proof of a link between smoking and cancer. Two, medical research points to many possible causes of cancer. And three, 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.

[James]

Possible.

[Robert]

Great. Yeah, yeah. This is gonna go well, James. It's gonna go really.

[James]

Well. Yep, I can see it's ending.

[Robert]

Well. So the first scientific director appointed to the TIRC was Clarence Cook Little, an extremely prominent biologist and geneticist who had become extremely prominent because he was a popular young eugenicist. Oh.

[James]

Good. Yeah, yeah.

[Robert]

Magnificent. It's really funny because Cook, like a little. The reason he believes that cigarettes. Because he's a he, he truly believes that the people who connect them to cancer is wrong. Because he believes that lung cancer is genetic so it can't be caused by an environmental factor like inhaling 4,500 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.

[James]

Cancer. Oh.

[Robert]

God. It is. 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.

[James]

Folks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Accidentally.

[Robert]

Based. Well, he drops everyone else.

[James]

Too. Yeah, true. Maybe not unlike.

[Robert]

Him. Cigarettes don't.

[James]

Discriminate. Yeah. Oh dear God. They really have become a magnet for the shittest things in human.

[Robert]

Managers. It is incredible how many terrible. Yeah, it's, it's amazing what's going to happen.

[James]

Next. They're going to like stand with the turfs or.

[Robert]

Something. Cigarettes. We just don't like queer.

[James]

People. I tell you, it's probably in the Harry Potter book.

[Robert]

Somewhere. Yeah, yeah. In 1954, the TIRC's budget was around a million dollars, nearly all of which went to Hill and Knowlton and various ads rather than actual science. But by 1963, the TIRC 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 gonna do research into what causes lung cancer, but we'll do research into how cancer develops over time and how it grows in the body and ways to fight it and stuff. And this is important stuff. So they can keep coming out with these studies funded by TARC money that are real studies, but none of them happen to look into whether or not smoking causes cancer. Right. You can look at how genetics or virology impacts cancer rates and those are important things to study. But by picking what gets funded specifically, they are very, very purposefully drawing.

[James]

Attention away, putting better airbags in the no brakes model of our.

[Robert]

Car. So this strategy worked for decades, distracting the public and lawmakers from any actions that might negatively impact the rate at which people smoked. Key to the success of this program was Hill's understanding of how journalists. From that Journal of Public Health article, Hill understood that the success of any public relations strategy was highly dependent on face to face interpersonal relations with important media outlets. Each time the TIRC issued a press release, the Hill and Knowlton organization would initiate a personal contact. The firm systematically documented the courtship of newspapers and magazines where it could urge balance and fairness in the industry. In these entreaties on behalf of the industry, the firm's 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, 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.

[James]

Presentations. Great. He's also responsible for the dozens of direct marketing emails I get every single day. Yeah, great. Right now I'm personally agree for this.

[Robert]

Motherfucker. Yeah. Cigarettes created.

[James]

Everything.

[Robert]

Yes. The primary independent skeptic, of course, was the tirc's little. That's the eugenics guy. Given the penchant of the press for controversy and its often naive notion of balance, these appeals were remarkably successful. Hill and Knowlton expertly broadcast their arguments, typically not based on substantive research, of any kind of a small group of skeptics, as if their positions represented a dominant perspective on the medical science of the cigarette. In this sense, the public relations can't advantage 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.

[James]

Baby. Fuck sake. Why Piss.

[Robert]

Off. Uh.

[James]

Huh. Yeah, no, they've invented both sides in.

[Robert]

It. They did invent both sides.

[James]

Again. So they gave us Donald Trump is what you're telling.

[Robert]

Me. They gave us Donald Trump, they gave us climate change denial, they gave us a fucking lot of the gun industries, Bari Weiss tactics, Barry Weiss. All of that shit comes from big tobacco. Yeah, God, they gave us, they gave us the fucking Iraq war. All of these, all of these strategies are the things that like, were like, they pioneered all of those strategies and that's where we're going to end for the day.

[James]

James. Yeah, there's. Yeah, no, let's stop. I've become.

[Robert]

Enraged. We will talk in more detail about the tobacco industry later. But yeah, this is, this is how they, like, there's a bigger story in kind of how they kept this up as it became increasingly obvious that cigarettes caused cancer and like how they advertised to children in like the 90s and stuff. And Joe Camel, there's a story in like how they tried to destroy the lives of people who blew the whistle on them, like former tobacco employees. We'll talk about all of those one day. But this is, this is the story of how tobacco invented everything in the market. Modern.

[James]

World. Yeah, great. I feel really good about all the things that we've got from.

[Robert]

It. It's cool that you can tie like Funko Pop's climate change denial and the Iraq war all to trying to get people to.

[James]

Smoke. Yes. Yeah, it's really, it's really great. And capitalism has done us nothing but.

[Robert]

Good. Yeah. Pokemon and medical patents all have cigarettes to.

[James]

Thank. Yeah. God, yeah. It's just unfathomable. It's terrible. It's fucking awful. Yeah. It's the nature of the system. System we live in. Maybe change.

[Robert]

It. That's the nature of the system we live in. In part because of.

[James]

Cigarettes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Great, good. Maybe maybe consider a different.

[Robert]

System. Yeah, maybe consider a system in which it's not possible to do.

[James]

This. 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.

[Robert]

Vape. Yeah, get a flavored vape. You know, buy some of that. I don't know what else. What drugs do kids like to do today? Get some of that, get some of that flavored fentanyl Tide pods. Mix your fentanyl and your Tide pods together, kids. Have a good one doing that.

[James]

On ticking the talk right now, from what I.

[Robert]

Understand. Yeah, yeah. TikTok. Another thing that. James, is there anything you'd like to.

[James]

Plug, apart from Tide Pods? Yeah, let me think. Yeah, we talked about the podcast. I've written a book. It's called the Popular front and the 1936 Barcelona Olympics. You can probably find it at the library. Then you won't be helping to create the system which gave us, you know, Pokemon cards and everyone having cancer and. Yeah, you can find me on Twitter. It's just my name, James. Like Bon Stat. Like the.

[Robert]

Beer.

[James]

Wow. I think that's all. Anarchism is the other thing I always like to plug on podcasts. So maybe read.

[Robert]

Kropotkin. And we're doing an It Could Happen Here live stream virtual show on October 26th. Yeah.

[James]

Motherfucker.

[Robert]

Yep. So pick up a pack of Lucky Strikes. I want to see all of you beautiful people smoking when we do our live show. Just. Just really burn them down. Nothing raises the value of a house faster than smoking cigarettes in it. Yeah, Robert, shut the.

[James]

Up. Bring. Go back to return to tradition by sticking two cigarettes up your nose and smoking them that.

[Robert]

Way. Yeah, smoke your cigarettes the traditional, traditional way. Anyway. Yeah. Bye. Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website, coolzone media.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the Bastards is Now available on YouTube. New episodes every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel, YouTube.com behindthebastards. This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed.