Tobacco Documents Online

This is a sample of a previous Philip Morris "anti-smoking" campaign aimed at youth. It's essentially a finger-wagging ad that says "you're not old enough for this." Essentially taunts kids, and equates smoking with another adult "initiation ritual": smoking.

Today's document is a print ad that was apparently published by the Tobacco Advisory Council in response to a ban on smoking on British flights in 1988 "Welcome aboard This Flight to Glasgow. Will All Smokers Kindly Extinguish Their Personal Freedom.

To put the tobacco industry's behavior into historical perspective, it is helpful to examine older cigarette advertisements that routinely ran nationwide. Most of our parents, aunts and uncles grew up seeing cigarette ads that aimed to convince people that cigarettes had significant health and social benefits. Today's document is one such old advertisement. It was a 1934 ad for R.J. Reynolds cigarette brand CAMEL, and was found in a file at the Philip Morris Tobacco Company called, "HISTORICAL CIGARETTE ADVERTISING NICOTINE - ADDICTION CLAIMS."

Many of the industry's older cigarette ads offered readers pseudo-scientific sounding "information" that touted the supposed "benefits" of smoking cigarettes. Such ads claimed that smoking was good for digestion, calmed the nerves and was a convenient stimulant that could be administered over and over without concern for side effects. Such ads that touted cigarettes' stimulant properties spoke directly of the drug effects of nicotine.

Today's document is an ad that lured people to smoke byportraying Camel cigarettes as a stimulant that could self-administered repeatedly without concern for any health effects. It says that when you are tired,

"That's one of the many times to light a Camel and enjoy its rich flavor while your flow of healthful energy is restored...You can smoke just as many of these delightful Camels as you want. You can increase your flow of energy over and over again. And you need never worry about your nerves..."

Such ads doubtless led many people into a lifetime of nicotine addiction, and contributed to today's popular attitudes that minimize the health dangers of cigarettes and preserve the idea that they are a harmless solution to problems of stress and "nerves."

This 1952 advertisement from the Lorillard Tobacco Company promotes the "health benefits" of KENT's new "MICRONITE FILTER."

KENT'S micronite filter was made out of asbestos. Many people who smoked these cigarettes came down with mesothelioma, the hallmark cancer that results from asbestos exposure.

The following item is from the Baltimore Sun newspaper, April 30, 1999:

$2 million award in smoking lawsuit

BALTIMORE SUN STAFF Caitlin Francke

A Baltimore jury awarded more than $2 million yesterday to a cancer victim who smoked cigarettes with asbestos filters -- a landmark verdict against the twin poisons of tobacco and asbestos.The verdict against the manufacturer of Kent cigarettes, which used asbestos in its filters for four years in the 1950s, and Hollingsworth & Vose Co., which made the "Micronite" filters, is the largest in a series of lawsuits brought against both companies in the past decade.

Advertising copy from 1929 touts Old Gold cigarettes (and chocolate) as both being "fine and healthful treats."

This 1963 advertisement for Winston cigarettes targeted American Jews and ran in newspapers and Jewish magazines in 1963. The ad features a line of people dancing the hora (shot from above, looking down on the dancers). The text along side and below the photo links smoking with the joy of the Jewish holidays:

"Shevouth time is the season for many of the happiest celebrations in Jewish life. And at some point during the festivities...SOMETHING WONDERFUL HAPPENS. The music stops, then it starts again. The beat is faster, exciting. A circle forms and spirits soar into the joyous, lively world of the irresistible hora!

And certainly joy abounds in smoking when your cigarette is Winston, America's best-selling filter cigarette. The special pleasure begins up fron, ahead of the pure white, modern filter. That's where only winston puts filter blend tobaccos specially selected and specially processed for the best taste in filter smoking. Try Winston. Winston tastes good--like a cigarette should!"

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 one-page Tobacco Institute document is the text of a proposed print ad designed to confuse the public about the link between smoking and lung cancer. It was one of five ads drafted and tested by Ted Bates & Company, Inc. Advertising for the Tobacco Institute in the wake of the publication of the 1967 Surgeon General's Report, The Health Consequences of Smoking. A partial quote from the document:

"COMMUNISM CAUSES CANCER

You don't believe it? Well, wait a second. Let's use the same kind of statistical analysis the Public Health Service is using to 'prove' that cigarettes cause cancer. We'll use only statistical facts taken from bona fide population surveys.

1. Americans smoke a lot and some of them die of lung cancer. The Dutch smoke less than Americans, but more of them die of lung cancer.

2. The Australians smoke a lot and some of them die of lung cancer. The British smoke as much as the Australians, but twice as many British have lung cancer...

One statistical inference is very clear. In each pair of countries, the higher cancer rate is in the country closer to the Iron Curtain...By the same means that some public servants are using to indict cigarettes, we've just proved that Communism causes cancer. But you know and we know, Communism is not guilty. And nobody yet knows about cigarettes."

While quite old, this 1936 Camel cigarette advertisement gives an important perspective on the origins of errant beliefs regarding smoking and health, as well as insight into how the notion first arose that smoking and eating go together. The title of the ad announces,

"Recent findings show that smoking Camels benefits Digestion."

The describes how these "findings" came about:

"...physiological laboratories established the fact that smoking Camel cigarettes has a marked beneficial effect on the processes of digestion...American scientists actually measured the increased digestive fluids brought about by smoking Camels. They found that Camels assist the flow of digestive fluids...exercise a favorable alkalizing effect."

Photos show professional people who lend credibility to these claims: dieticians and scientists.

Ads like this show that the tobacco industry did indeed make very straightforward health claims about their products earlier in the century.