Tobacco Documents Online

These two Tobacco Institute advertisements appeared in the 1970s to cast doubt on the link between smoking and disease by turning the focus of tobacco-related illness onto people's personality traits. The first ad says that lots of things have been blamed for causing disease ("bread, butter, milk, sugar, cigarettes..." ) and suggests that people who use these substances "unthinkingly and excessively" are "special types of people." The ad suggests that "hard drivers" and "perfectionists" may have "used up their inherited capital of resistance to disease." While the piece claims this is "still a theory," its underlying purpose seems to be to cast doubt on the scientific certainty of the link between smoking and disease.

The ads appear to be part of a project initiated in 1967 by the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Company called Project Lighthouse, in which B&W hired the Tiderock Foundation to gather studies and personal commentary from scientists that cast doubt on the link between smoking and disease.

This 1988 ad for Barclay cigarettes features a woman holding a cigarette. The bottom of the ad contains the Surgeon General's warning that "Smokin by Pregnant Women may result in Fetal Injury, Premature Birth and Low Birth Weight."

While not for a tobacco product, this one-page advertisement found in the Philip Morris collection demonstrates how corporations use teens' fascination with drugs to market their products, and in the process glamorize and instiutionalize drug use to youth.

The ad was found among documents belonging to Jodi Sansone, Senior Manager of Philip Morris' Youth Smoking Prevention Programs around 1998-99. The ad is for a Sony Playstation video game released in 1998 called "Nitrous Oxide." It features a head wearing a gas mask and headphones. Underneath the text says,

"Never trip alone. Always use 2 player mode."

The text below that says:

"Breathe in. Breathe out. Play it alone. Play it with a friend. Head rush and techno-music included. Flashbacks sold separately."

A logo at the upper left in the ad says "music fueled by the Crystal Method," words which bear an uncomfortably close resemblance to the words "crystal meth," a street name for the powerfully addictive (and often locally manufactured) drug methamphetamine.

The ad carries the logo of Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation and a "TEEN" rating by the the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB), which indicates "content suitable for persons age 13 or older." Quotes:

This document mostly consists of sociological observations of the behavior and lifestyles of young male citizens of the Ivory Coast for the purpose of marketing cigarettes to this group. The paper makes some intimate observations about life in the Ivory Coast. Buried in the document are inferences that the cigarette pack is important for developing peer pressure to smoke a certain brand. The document notes in several places that this type of marketing tool is absent in poorer countries, where smokers typically purchase cigarettes "by the stick" rather they by the pack.

Perhaps most important are inferences in the document that a goal of cigarette advertising is less to merely influence brand choice than to stimulate increased consumption of cigarettes, a point the tobacco industry typically denies. This is evident in the following passages:

"Even if brand choices are not influenced by outdoor or POS [point of sale advertising] materials, when a smoker is just walking around there is the potential for stimulating the desire to smoke by appropriate materials. One would judge that such materials, in order to achieve that effect, should themselves show smoking."

and

"It is quite common for people when they have nothing to do, to just walk around...there are opportunities in this "empty time" to stimulate consumption using materials which show smoking as a trigger to the desire to smoke..." ..."

Ad denouncing newly increased cigarette tax in NYC, to go into effect the first of the year.

Philip Morris ran this advertisement in the Richmond News Leader on March 7, 1986. The ad attacks the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company over its workplace smoking restrictions. The ad gives an idea of the intimidation tactics employers could expect from tobacco companies in retaliation for enacting smoking policies to protect the health of their workers. The ad says, "Never mind that world-class scientific minds have found no conclusive health risk to others from ambient smoke, information available to C&P for the asking." The tag line says the ad was "presented in the public interest" by Philip Morris USA.

Today Philip Morris' web site displays different point of view, saying:

"Public health officials have concluded that secondhand smoke from cigarettes causes disease, including lung cancer and heart disease, in non-smoking adults...We also believe that the conclusions of public health officials concerning environmental tobacco smoke are sufficient to warrant measures that regulate smoking in public places..." http://www.philipmorrisusa.com/en/health_issues/secondhand_smoke.asp

It remains unknown whether PM ever apologized to the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone company for running this ad. The entire text of PM's ad is below. A clipping of the ad from the News Leader (showing it actually ran publicly) can be seen at http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/cgi/getdoc?tid=etk46e00&fmt=pdf&ref=results

Rite Aid is a national pharmacy chain in the United States that claims publicly to be a health care company while also selling cigarettes. Rite Aid is currently engaging in a promotion with the American Heart Association claiming it is "taking a stand against heart disease in women." Large red posters touting Rite Aid's "healthy heart" campaign are located in Rite Aid stores, often near their cigarette displays, allowing Rite Aid to promote both cigarettes and health simultaneously. (See photos at http://www.rawbw.com/~jpk/stand/Pictures.html. Links to documents indicating Rite Aid's plans to make money selling cigarettes are also available at that site.)

Rite Aid not only knows that cigarettes cause heart disease, they have been protected from claims arising from that fact. Brown & Williamson signed a contract holding Rite Aid harmless against legal action taken for damages, illness, or personal injury arising from selling cigarettes, and promising to pay for Rite Aid's defense in court: http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/fzg21c00

Today's document is a 1988 advertisement for Rite Aid brand generic cigarettes, which Rite Aid apparently sold around 1985-1988. In addition to carrying the Rite Aid logo, the ad carries the U.S. Surgeon General's warning stating Rite Aid brand cigarettes cause heart disease.