Tobacco.org

• A Brief History Of The Cigar  

Castro's regime (and American attempts to eliminated it) prompted the Bay of Pigs debacle, closed off a beautiful country with a vibrant music culture, and -- possibly worst of all -- triggered a 46-year-old trade embargo that has deprived Americans of Cuba's most prized export: its vaunted cigars.

Though Cuban cigars are perhaps the world's most revered, the stogie probably didn't originate on the island. Cigar smoking first took hold elsewhere in the Americas--exactly where and when remains uncertain. . . .

Ulysses S. Grant's cigar habit proved his undoing, saddling him with the throat cancer that killed him. And Freud was a chimney: Patients on his couch had to endure not only running commentary about their suppressed Oedipal complexes but the acrid stench from his 20-a-day cigar habit (which ultimately killed him too).

Despite the obvious health risks, cigars remain a fixture of pop culture. An episode of Seinfeld centered around a box of Cubans, while the stogie's famous champions include Michael Jordan, Rush Limbaugh and Lil' Wayne. Politicians dabble too . . .

Yet Washington is where cigar-lovers looking to enjoy a smooth Cohiba or Romeo y Julieta -- without skirting the law -- can look for hope. President-elect Barack Obama has indicated a willingness to discuss with Raul Castro the repeal of bans on Cuban-American travel and remittances--gestures that could ultimately lead to scrapping the trade embargo. For aficionados, that would be a welcome tonic for the grim times ahead. As Evelyn Waugh said, "The most futile and disastrous day seems well spent when it is reviewed through the blue, fragrant smoke of a Havana cigar."

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SMOKIN'! How The American Tobacco Industry Employs PR Scum To Continue Its Murderous Assault On Human Lives 

Brill's analysis inspired Bernays to stage a legendary publicity event that is still taught as a model in PR schools. To sell cigarettes as a symbol of women's liberation, he hired beautiful women to march in New York's prominent Easter parade, each waving a lit cigarette and wearing a banner proclaiming it a "torch of liberty." Bernays made sure publicity photos of his smoking models appeared world-wide.

Decades of saturation cigarette advertising and promotion continued into the 1950s via billboards, magazines, movies, TV and radio. Thanks to Bernays and other early pioneers of public relations, cigarettes built a marketing juggernaut upon an unshakable identification with sex, youth, vitality and freedom. The work for the tobacco industry, in turn, earned PR widespread credibility and launched the rise of today's multi-billion dollar public relations industry.

The Truth Hurts

IN 1952, READER'S Digest ran an influential article titled "Cancer by the Carton." A 1953 report by Dr. Ernst L. Wynder heralded to the scientific community a definitive link between cigarette smoking and cancer. Over the next two years, dozens of articles appeared in The New York Times and other major public publications: Good Housekeeping, the New Yorker, Look, Woman's Home Companion. Sales of cigarettes went into an unusual, sudden decline.

The tobacco czars were in a panic. . . .

AT HILL'S SUGGESTION, the industry created a group called the Tobacco Institute Research Committee (TIRC), and ran a full-page ad, titled "A Frank Statement to Cigarette Smokers," in more than 400 newspapers. The ad acknowledged tobacco companies had a "special responsibility" to the public, and promised to sponsor "independent research" aimed at "learning the facts about smoking and health."

This pretense of honest concern from a respected figure worked its expected magic. Opinion research by Hill & Knowlton showed only 9 percent of the newspapers expressing opinions on the TIRC were unfavorable, whereas 65 percent were favorable without reservation. . . .

After all, as PR pro Kirk Hallahan recently observed, new technology has already made you superfluous. "Today, with many more options available, PR professionals are much less dependent upon mass media for publicity," Hallahan stated in the Summer 1994 Public Relations Quarterly. "In the decade ahead, the largest American corporations could underwrite entire, sponsored channels. Organizations such as Procter & Gamble might circumvent public media altogether and subsidize programming that combines promotional and otherwise conducive messages--news, Talk Shows, infomercials, or sponsored entertainment or sports.... Channel sponsors will be able reach coveted super-heavy users...with a highly tailored message over which they exert complete control."

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Yale club with noted members struggles to reopen after more than a century of rich traditions  

Mory's, a legendary Yale eating and drinking club that traces its roots to the Civil War, has a powerful membership that includes two presidents named Bush. Foreign leaders and movie stars such as Al Pacino, Paul Newman, Dan Aykroyd, Tom Hanks and Jodie Foster have patronized the club. . . .

The club survived Prohibition, including a visit to Yale by prohibitionist Carry Nation, who was known to smash up bars with her cane and bricks. Her photo shows students drinking and smoking around her; Getman isn't sure how they pulled that off.

"There are things that happen here that aren't going to happen anywhere else," said Robin Soltesz, the club's comptroller. "They have to save it."

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• Cigarette groups warned Lynch of Marxist and IRA alliance dangers 

Tobacco adverts ban: IRELAND'S MAIN cigarette brands privately warned the taoiseach three decades ago that a tobacco advertising ban could plunge the country into disaster by sparking a deadly fusion of Marxists and the IRA.

State files also reveal fears in Jack Lynch's department at the time that moves to curb smoking could become another contraception-type row that would embarrass the Republic and isolate Protestants in Northern Ireland.

The chairmen of Carrolls, Gallahers and Player Wills tobacco companies demanded a meeting with Mr Lynch in 1978 as then health minister Charles Haughey prepared new laws to stamp out cigarette promotion.

In minutes of the meeting, newly-released into the National Archives, an aide of the Taoiseach records how the three men warned of potentially dire consequences from any restrictions.

They argued it would cut back on their sales, leaving them less money to create new employment in other non-tobacco industries.

"They saw the dangers that if employment was not provided for our growing young population, there could be a fusion between Marxism and the IRA, with disastrous effects for the country," the minutes state. . . .

Later that year, the Tobacco Products Act was passed into law which allowed for restrictions to be introduced.

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1990s: 10 key events 

1998: LAWSUIT EXPOSES TRUTHS OF TOBACCO

It's only appropriate that Minnesota, the state that pioneered clean indoor air, was a leader in the landmark legal action that brought the tobacco industry to its knees. The state, along with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, reached a $6.1 billion settlement and that money has been used to gild attorneys' offices as well as pay for smoking cessation programs.

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TOBACCO TRUST  

Sunday, Nov. 8, 1908 . . .

U.S. Judges Condemn Tobacco Trust; Court of Appeals Upholds Government's Charge of Violation of the Sherman Law; Receivership Is Denied; Unnecessary and Unreasonable, the Court Says, but Restraint of Trade Is Proved — Judge Ward Dissents

Wednesday, Dec. 16, 1908 . . .

Court Restrains the Tobacco Trust; Held to be in Restraint of Trade, and Ordered Out of Inter-State Business; Stay Pending an Appeal; It May Resume as Soon as Competition Among Constituent Companies Is Established

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Outdoor smoking ban under consideration in San Luis Obispo  

In 1990 the city passed a ban on smoking in public buildings, including bars and restaurants. It was the first of its kind in the country.

California adopted a statewide law in 1994, adding bars to that list four years later.

San Luis Obispo City Council members are considering a ban on outdoor smoking in public places. It is an issue that has some smokers fuming. Talk of a ban on smoking outside in San Luis Obispo has some smokers fearing some of their personal freedoms are vanishing.

"It's a little ridiculous, honestly. It's a free choice that people have. It's kind of like banning drinking," said smoker Janine Thompson.

Complaints to the city council about second-hand smoke and litter from cigarette butts is prompting council members to take action.

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Comment: Cigarette and waterpipe smoking among adolescents in Estonia: HBSC survey results, 1994-2006 

Parna and colleagues credit Ward et al for stating that “”waterpipes”” “have been used to smoke tobacco and other substances in Africa and Asia for at least four centuries"[1][2].

In fact, this is not the right source and it was one of the errors to be found in the WHO report on ““waterpipe”” smoking that I had clearly highlighted from the onset in the critique of that document [3]. Let it be quoted again:

“Origins. It is said (page 1) that, according to Chattopadhyay, “waterpipes have been used to smoke tobacco and other substances by the indigenous peoples of Africa and Asia for at least four centuries””[4]

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• Días de humo 

Focused mainly in the development of the design of objects and the graph around the tobacco during century XX in Mexico, Days of smoke in addition it will show to historical antecedents as far as the consolidation and the social assent of a culture of the tobacco. A trip towards the past, towards which today already it is history and that allows us to generate stories and memories in nostalgia, around those days of smoke…

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Dias de Humo, The Days of Smoking  

For Mexico City’s smokers, who were recently deprived the pleasure of enjoying their habit in restaurants, bars, offices and other public places, an exhibition celebrating the pleasure and history of tobacco might feel like someone’s blowing smoke in their faces.

But organizers of “Dias de Humo” (Days of Smoke), which opened last week at the Museo Soumaya, say that the intention behind the show is to celebrate smoking’s place in history, art and culture, not to encourage the habit.

12 photos * 28 views

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• Mexico City smokers enjoy a bit of nostalgia 

For Mexico City’s smokers, who were recently deprived of the pleasure of enjoying their habit in restaurants, bars, offices and other public places, an exhibition celebrating the pleasure and history of tobacco might feel like someone’s blowing smoke in their faces.

But organizers of “Dias de Humo” (The Days of Smoking), which opened last week at the Museo Soumaya, say the intention is to celebrate smoking’s place in history, art and culture, not to encourage the habit.

Pre-Hispanic pipes, personalized cigarette holders and snuffboxes, newspaper articles, old television ads and publicity posters tell what is more than just the history of tobacco.

Some of Mexico’s most famed artists and public figures, such as José Guadalupe Posada, Frida Kahlo and José Clemente Orozco, are included in an exhibit that is really a kind of history of Mexico, using the tobacco industry and smoking culture as the organizing thread.

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Baker City’s voter-passed smoking ban state’s first 

Baker City residents were embroiled in the debate over banning smoking in public places even before lawmakers in Salem took up the issue in 2001.

In May 2000, city voters passed, by a margin of 52 percent to 42 percent, a measure that banned smoking in most businesses inside the city limits, including restaurants.

The city measure, ordinance No. 3150, exempts taverns and bars from the smoking ban, as well as motel rooms.

Baker City was the first Oregon city in which voters approved a smoking ban. A few other cities imposed such bans before 2000, but in those cases the City Council, rather than the voters, passed the prohibition.

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History of the Case  

1999: After Mayola Williams's three-pack-a-day husband, Jesse, died of lung cancer in 1997, she sued Philip Morris and won. An Oregon jury awarded her more than $800,000 in economic damages and $79.5 million on a claim that the company had misrepresented the harm its cigarettes could do. The Oregon Court of Appeals upheld the award, and the Oregon Supreme Court declined to review the case.

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Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures: A History of Tobacco and Chocolate in the Atlantic World by Marcy Norton  

Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures, Marcy Norton's excellent new book, is proof that, in the right hands, even a seemingly narrow study can provide significant insight. Her history of tobacco and chocolate tells us much about those commodities and the broader intersection of culture, consumption and statecraft.

Before Columbus sailed the ocean blue, tobacco and chocolate were completely alien to Europeans. . . .

The book's final chapter on politics is a vivid demonstration of the value in cultural analysis. In 1626, Hapsburg Spain was near bankrupt and proposed new taxes on foodstuffs had caused rioting. Chocolate and tobacco, however, occupied a new place in Spanish society; they were prevalent but condemned by the church. "Vices" was the label the government chose, which justified a raft of special taxes that revived the treasury and became more valuable than gold bullion by 1800. It was because of their cultural position that the state could justify these exorbitant taxes in paternalistic terms. A profitable exploitation that, as any nicotine slave will attest, still endures.

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KAY: Fred Flinstone: Winston tastes good, like a cigarette should  

National Public Radio reccently ran a great piece on the history (and future) of tobacco advertising. As a 40-year-old, I dimly remember an era when cigarette ads still ran on television. But it shocked me to learn that some ads even featured children's cartoon characters. Check out this one from Fred and Barney

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