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How the World Got HookedAwake!—1986 | April 8
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Actually, the cigarette story may be one of the biggest surprises of the last hundred years. Sparking the incredible demand of this so-called cigarette century were two 19th-century wars. A newborn industry, advertising, fanned the embers. And a surprising new tobacco—bright yellow, milder, and chemically different—emboldened smokers to inhale its smoke. That noteworthy change in smoking habits, oral inhaling, ensured that most smokers would remain hooked the rest of their lives.
The Wars That Kindled a Demand
Tobacco remained an extravagant luxury until 1856, when cigarettes found their first mass market. That is when British and French soldiers returned from the Crimean War with “paper cigars” and a habit they had learned there. A cigarette fad swept across Europe, creating an unexpected demand for Turkish cigarettes or their English imitations.
The “Crimea fad” established the cigarette as a cheap wartime substitute for pipe or cigar. But the fad died. Furthermore, as Robert Sobel points out, “in the early 1860s, there appeared to be no way that middle-class American men—the prime market for smokes—would take to cigarettes.” Smoke from these early cigarettes was not as seductive as that of the modern cigarette. Like cigar smoke, it was slightly alkaline, and smokers held it in their mouths. There was no comfortable way to inhale as cigarette smokers usually do today. It was time for the next surprise development.
The American Civil War (1861-65) introduced a more addictive smoke, doing so with what tobacco expert Jerome E. Brooks calls “explosive force.” Once more, war brought the inexpensive cigarette to soldiers—first Confederate, then Union. But this time it was no passing fad.
These cigarettes used American tobacco, and something about them was different. American growers had adopted new strains of tobacco that grew well in their nitrogen-poor soil. They also discovered, by a freak accident on a North Carolina farm, a curing process that turned their leaf bright yellow, mild, and sweet. In 1860 the U.S. Census Bureau called it “one of the most abnormal developments in agriculture that the world has ever known.” After a few cigarettes of this novel tobacco, new smokers felt a compelling urge to light up again.
Hooked!
Not understood at the time, this small but relentlessly growing market had become physically dependent, hooked, on a highly addictive substance. “The casual smoking of more than two or three cigarettes during adolescence” almost invariably leads to “regular dependent smoking,” says addiction researcher Dr. Michael A. H. Russell. “Unlike the adolescent who shoots heroin once or twice a week at first, an adolescent smoker experiences some two hundred successive nicotine ‘fixes’ by the time he has finished his first pack of cigarettes.”
Yes, inhaling was the secret. Nicotine, it seems, will penetrate and irritate mucous membranes only under alkaline conditions. Because cigarette smoke is slightly acid, it is the only tobacco smoke mild enough in mouth and throat for routine inhaling. But in the lungs the acid neutralizes, and nicotine dumps freely into the bloodstream. In just seven seconds the nicotine-rich blood arrives at the brain, so that each puff yields an almost instant nicotine reward. Youths who smoke more than one cigarette, reports a British government study, stand only a 15-percent chance to remain nonsmokers.
Thus, in the same decade as the Crimean War, the cigarette industry had spawned a powerful new habit. Within 20 years tobacco merchants hit on the idea of using catchy newspaper ads and testimonials to attract new customers. A machine patented in 1880 mass-produced the cigarette and kept the price low, while pictures of sports heroes and smiling ladies sold the cigarette image to the male public. But what kept them coming back for more? Nicotine dependency! As health writer William Bennet, M.D., puts it: “Mechanization, clever advertising and marketing techniques made their contribution, but [without nicotine] they never would have sold much dried cabbage.”
By 1900 the modern cigarette, already international, was ready to tighten its grip on world society.
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The Habit Buries the OppositionAwake!—1986 | April 8
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LIKE a reluctant smoker who will not quit, the cigarette market has at times cut down on its consumption for fear that smoking might be harmful and addictive, only to return more committed than ever. What mechanisms suppress such fears? Advertising and war! These have been “the two most important methods of spreading cigarette use,” according to historian Robert Sobel.
Cigarette use shot upward with the rise of ‘nation against nation’ in the first world war. (Matthew 24:7) What caused American production to go from 18 billion cigarettes in 1914 to 47 billion by 1918? A crusade for free cigarettes for soldiers! The narcotic effect was deemed helpful to combat loneliness at the front.
“Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag/While you’ve a lucifer [match] to light your fag [cigarette],” urged the British wartime song. As government agencies and patriotic private groups provided free smokes for fighting men, not even anticigarette protesters dared criticize.
Tightening the Grip
Newly converted smokers became good customers after the war. In 1925 alone, Americans consumed an average of nearly 700 cigarettes per person. Postwar Greece consumed half again as many per capita as the United States. American cigarettes became popular in many countries, but others like India, China, Japan, Italy, and Poland depended on homegrown tobacco to meet their domestic demand.
To increase their grip on the American market, advertisers aimed at the ladies. “Tobacco advertising in the late 1920’s was characterized as ‘gone mad,’” reports Jerome E. Brooks. But advertising kept Americans buying cigarettes during and after the economic depression of 1929. Huge budgets (about $75,000,000 in 1931) promoted the cigarette as an aid to remaining slim, an alternative to candy. Movies glorifying cigarette-smoking stars, such as Marlene Dietrich, helped create a sophisticated image. Thus in 1939, on the eve of a new world war, American women joined men in consuming 180 billion cigarettes.
Another war! Soldiers again got free cigarettes, even in their field rations. “Lucky Strike Green Has Gone to War!” ran a well-promoted ad, capitalizing on the patriotic wartime mood. With cigarette consumption in the United States estimated at 400 billion yearly by the end of World War II, who could question the place of tobacco in the world?
Indeed, who could question the importance of cigarettes to postwar Europe, where at one point cartons of cigarettes replaced currency in the black market? American soldiers stationed in Europe bought subsidized cigarettes for as little as five cents a pack and with them paid for everything—from new shoes to girlfriends. Tax-free military sales of cigarettes shot up from 5,400 per capita in 1945 to 21,250 in just two years.
For decades any objectionable aspects of tobacco use were successfully kept out of the public limelight—not refuted but simply overshadowed by the relentless growth of a popular habit. Privately, however, questions remained: Is smoking harmful? Is it clean or is it contaminating?
In 1952 the smoldering question of health suddenly surfaced. British doctors published a new study showing that cancer victims tended to be heavy smokers. The Reader’s Digest picked up the story, and wide publicity followed. By 1953 an anticigarette campaign seemed headed for success. Would the world kick the habit?
The Formidable Cigarette Industry
Publicly, the cigarette industry insisted that the case against cigarettes was unproved, merely statistical. But suddenly—and ironically—it revealed its secret weapon, the low-tar cigarette. The new product furnished an image of safety and health to frightened smokers who didn’t want to quit, while advertising again proved its ability to sell an image.
Actually, the low-tar brands were more soothing to the conscience of the smoker than to his health. Scientists were later to find that many smokers compensated by inhaling more deeply and by holding the smoke in the lungs longer until they got as much nicotine as ever. But another quarter century would pass before researchers could demonstrate this. Meanwhile, cigarettes emerged as one of the world’s most profitable industries, now chalking up annual sales worth over $40 billion (U.S.).
Economically the industry today is stronger than ever. Customers keep buying. Yearly consumption is rising by 1 percent annually in the industrialized countries and by over 3 percent in the developing countries of the Third World. In Pakistan and Brazil, the growth is respectively six and eight times faster than in most Western countries. One fifth of Thailand’s individual income is used to buy cigarettes.
Still, for many thoughtful individuals the tight grip of the world’s 100-year cigarette love affair is by no means the end of the story.
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