Cigarette smoking in Canada is a fascinating look at how consumer products, social rituals, and corporate misinformation interact. While widespread cigarette use began in the 1930s it was in the 1950s where a causal link between smoking and lung cancer surfaced in medical journals and mainstream media. Yet the best years for the Canadian cigarette industry were still to come, as per capita cigarette consumption rose steadily in the 1960s and 1970s. The persistence of smoking owes to such factors as product development, marketing and retailing innovation, public relations, sponsored science, and government inaction. Domestic and international tobacco firms worked to furnish Canadian smokers with hope and doubt: hope in the form of reassuring marketing, as seen with light and mild cigarette brands, and doubt by means of disinformation campaigns attacking medical research and press accounts that aligned cigarettes with serious disease.

Helping us dive into this historical smoke pit is Daniel J. Robinson. Daniel is a Professor in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at the University of Western Ontario, where he teaches courses on media history, advertising and marketing. He is the author of Cigarette Nation: Business, Health, and Canadian Smokers, 1930-1975, (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2021), and has served as an expert witness for two provinces suing tobacco companies involving health-care costs recovery lawsuits.

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S11E7 Cigarette Nation: The History of Cigarettes in Canada