Hi! Thanks for coming and doing an AMA. This might be a weird one, but I know that some cigarettes were directly marketed to women, like Virginia Slims - did cigarette companies ever directly market brands to market segments based on race or ethnicity?

Thanks for doing this!

I remember as a child (1990s) buying chocolate cigarettes in the local store. I always wondered ever since: were these a deliberate plot by the industry to reach children early? Or did they just evolve to meet a demand "naturally"?

Thanks for doing this! Vaping among high schoolers is a huge issue at the moment and we know young people got interested due to flavors and the general "cool" factor/peer pressure.

Did cigarette manufacturers target young people in the 1950's and 1960's in the same way vape providers do today? Likewise, did chew tobacco providers deliberately target young people in the midwest in the 1970's and 80's?

Thanks!

Thank you for doing this AMA! One does rarely see politicians smoking cigarettes in the open public nowaday compared to earlier decades. Why is this, and when did the public image of smoking change to a point where it was no longer "possible" for politicians to be seen smoking?

How involved was the US government in anti-smoking advocacy during the latter part of the 20th century? On the one hand, there is the surgeon general's warning, and soon after the inclusion of warnings on cigarette packs, but on the other the Tobacco Lobby, as least in the popular conception, was an incredibly powerful force until quite recently (and is hardly dead yet. How do we see the impact of the latter limiting the impulses seen in the former? To what extent was the Tobacco Lobby actually able to reign in government intervention against tobacco?

Even back in the days when the vast majority of adult men in North America and Western Europe smoked, there was still an understanding that it's inappropriate for children to smoke. Was is like that from the first days of westerners smoking tobacco, or did it take a while for people to make those sorts of rules?

After America discovered the harm of cigarette, how much more the cigarette companies increased their focus of their sales in the 3rd world countries? I have noticed a huge increase of cigarette use in my third world country since 80s. Is it related with their company strategy?

Did the Tobacco Wars in Kentucky have a major impact on the overall tobacco market in the US? (I'm from western KY and this is my major research area, but I don't really know of its broader impact on the industry)

How widespread was the health marketing of cigarettes prior to the Surgeon General's Warning? There are vintage advertisements that get highlighted about "4 in 5 doctors smoke X" or Camels and the 'T-Zone', but was this actually that widespread and common form of pushing various brands of cigarettes, or does the impression we have today of extent of this form of advertising get amplified specifically due to us cherry picking these particularly absurd messages for their absurdity while ignoring the more common, and mundane, ones?

Hello Professor,

Thank you for agreeing to answer questions on this subject.

I remember reading that cigarettes were originally marketed in the 20's to women as a way to 'rebel' and photos of women smoking were used in an early example of progressive advertising (I'm not sure if that's a real thing, I mean when a brand rides a positive cultural trend to increase its own exposure, for example, Gilette's "Is this the best a man can get" campaign, or sponsoring a float in a Gay pride parade).

My question: Were cigarettes actually marketed to women as a tool of rebellion and female empowerment? If so, was it more widespread than a photo shoot for one brand of cigarettes? If not, who created this myth?

​

P.S. I'm trying to use 'progressive advertising' neutrally, this is not an attempt to get ammo to blast companies for making progressive commercials.

Wikipedia tells me the first successful industrial scale cigarette rolling machine was invented in 1880. Did the convenience of pre-rolled cigarettes lead to a dramatic increase in tobacco consumption?

Hi Prof. Milov, thank you so much for joining us here today!

I am, like most folks (I suspect) fairly profoundly ignorant of the history of tobacco production and consumption prior to its modern iteration, where a relatively small number of megacorporations appear to dominate the supply of tobacco worldwide. When did tobacco consumption / smoking first become widespread in the colonial United States? On that note, was it commonly consumed by pre-colonial Native American societies? Was there a time when the production, processing and sale of tobacco was far more decentralised across thousands of individual suppliers?

Hi Professor,

I was wondering if you know of any historical examples of the tobacco industry lobbying to put “anti-tobacco” measures on the ballot to override more restrictive anti-tobacco statutes. I ask this because I live in San Francisco, which recently passed a very stringent ban on the sales of e-cigarettes and vaping products. This year, there’s an initiative on the ballot, Prop C, which purports to institute a ban on e-cigarette and vaping products, but many of the rebuttals to Prop C state that the Proposition was funded by JUUL and the tobacco industry to defeat the prior resolution and usher in less restrictive regulations.

So I was wondering if there’s a history of these kinds of tactics and what the results may have been (e.g., if they got passed and had a negative effect on public health or if they got defeated and there was a beneficial effect on public health).

How do workers in the cigarette industry fit in the story of American organized labor? Has tobacco production been a site of class struggle? Did agricultural workers in the tobacco industry organize and agitate for better working conditions? Was there any kind of broad consciousness of workers in the distinct stages of the production as 'tobacco workers' or did they think of themselves as workers in their specific workplace? I'd be interested to hear anything about Tobacco workers!

In a nutshell, if cigarettes are deadly and already heavily regulated, why aren't they illegal?

I read a book about sugar not too long ago (I forget the title at the moment) and the author writes about tobacco companies beginning to marinade tobacco leaves in a sugary marinade, and he claims that this addition of sugar into cigarettes around world war 1 was a major factor in the rise of lung cancer in the 40s. I was very surprised to read that cigarettes contained sugar. What is your take on the history of sugar in cigarettes?

YES! Sarah agreed! Thanks for doing this AMA, Prof. Milov.

First off, thanks so much for doing this AMA. I'll admit I'm a little sketchy on the history of growing tobacco in the US, outside of my grandparents talking about working for farmers cutting & hanging tobacco in Depression-era North Carolina. So hopefully this isn't a dumb question.

Considering tobacco grows best in the South, did the profitability of growing it have any impact on the sharecropping system or vice-versa?

How early did tobacco companies begin to suspect their product might be physically addictive? Was there ever any attempt by these companies to engage the market in an ethical way in response to this fact? How quickly after this realization did companies take deliberate advantage of the addictive nature of tobacco?

What led to cigarettes becoming the dominant form of tobacco consumption?

Pipes (in my experience) smell better, are nicer to smoke, and allow more control over consumption. Why did cigarettes replace them?

No period war film is complete without soldiers smoking like chimneys! During the World Wars, was a connection ever spotted between soldiers smoking and reduced performance in military training?

Thank you for taking your time doing this. I just recently finished The Cigarette Century by Allan Brandt, at this point a ten year old book but I'm a little behind. I appreciated the book, and as an M.D. got to feel ashamed at the rather ambiguous role played by my forebears in early tobacco control. I wonder if it would be possible for you to compare the differences in your perspective or what has been the major shift/new information in this field during the last decade?

Thanks for doing this AMA!

I believe I heard Dr. Sean McMeekin remark that cigarettes appeared to be a passing fad at the beginning of the 20th century, but the outbreak of WWI enabled millions more to be introduced to them. How true is this, and in general, do wars correlate with large long term increases in regular tobacco customers?

Thank you for joining us Professor Milov! One not directly smoking related but activism related question if that's okay:

Other industries with major political and lobby influence apart from cigarettes in the US (and elsewhere) include the sugar and oil industries. Big oil's decades long campaigns tackling the science behind global warming are increasingly coming to light.
In this light, are there lessons to be drawn from the nonsmokers rights movement for the current activism facing the climate catastrophe?

Prof. Milov,

Dr. John Fea, in his book Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? postulates that the slave trade took off due to the Virginian practice of indentured servants paying off their debt and then buying land in the colony to plant their own crop (ie., mainly tobacco). The newly landed needed their own source of cheap labor for the tobacco crop, which they turned to the African Slave Trade.

Does your research corroborate this explanation?

Thanks for doing this!

How do you think the US has managed to drastically turn around it’s smoking culture without doing things that are standard in Europe - such as health warnings, plain packaging and non-display laws?

Like the person who mentioned Western Kentucky, I'd be interested in broad regional variations that you might have noticed in the tobacco industry--the size of farms, the development of agri-business vs smaller growers. Maybe even how the American Civil War affected the tobacco trade, given that most states known for tobacco growing joined the Confederacy.

I’m curious to hear you elaborate on the effectiveness of anti smoking legislation+ education versus the criminalization of illicit drugs. Do you think that Cigarette usage/abuse would have been better, worse or unchanged at this point in history if there was a prohibition or ban on it similar to alcohol or even hard drugs like say cocaine. Lastly do you believe that the decline in cigarette usage is a model that can be more widely applied to other substances or is it unique in a way that most people don’t understand?

Thank you for your time

Thanks for doing this! I haven't had a chance to read your book yet, but it's near the top of my list.

I know that in European history (I'm a historian of Europe) scholars not only stress the importance of advertising in the rise of the cigarette, but also connect the success of the cigarette to the success of advertising itself overall at the turn-of-the-century. I'm thinking of Hinton's book on Smoking in British Popular Culture for Britain, and for Germany, Ciarlo's book Advertising Empire... where both of them see advertising's status itself rise because of their (relatively new) profession's connection to the boom in cigarette consumption (and claiming to be the engine powering that boom).

Was the same true for the United States?

With the "T-Zone" and "9 out of 10 doctors smoke Camels", was this just advertisers being opportunists (and riding the cigarette wave)?

Or were advertisers themselves also one of the groups that were beneficiaries of cigarette politics?

Inspired by Stompin Tom singing Tillsonberg, how has Tobacco farming changed over the years, and has the actual farming requirements affected the push to sell/politicise it?

I'm not fully aware of the history behind tobacco products within the legal space in the United States. However, when I read a summary of your book and some reviews, it's all very reminiscent of how the legality and public perception of tobacco products evolved within the history of the few European countries I've lived in, albeit with a diverging chronology.

So my question is, as an outsider to the public debate and the limited knowledge of the historical discourse within the United States of America : in what way does your book adress specific gaps in public knowledge or knowledge within historical discourse? Does it aim to add more nuance? Does it bring a previously undervalued or even completely unadressed political element to the history of the cigarette? Does it recalibrate public perception of said history or moreso adress a gap within historical discourse?

Thanks for taking the time to answer some questions and a sincere congratulations on the publication of your book!

What do you think about Brandt's The Cigarette Century and Proctor's The Golden Holocaust?

Why did cigarettes face such a public backlash, but not alcohol?

Very interesting and thanks.

​

How do the changing opinions on tobacco and cigarette use in the United States differ from other countries like those in the EU and Russia? Did tobacco industry in those countries also benefit from the state?

I remember reading that American soldier's rations in WW2 came with cigarettes. When did the US military stop including cigarettes with meals and what was the political and cultural push back like?

I know that clove cigarettes were included in the 2009 ban on flavors, and that they never really had as large a market share as menthol, but when were they introduced to the US? And since you mentioned market segmentation in another post, who was the market?

When I talk to older folks about how rampant smoking was "back in the day", they always say the same thing: "We just didn't know any better!" Do you have a sense of how true that was? I find it really hard to believe that people in general didn't know it was bad to inhale smoke. But I suppose if they didn't really talk about it, then it would be tough for us to know now, what it was they knew then.

I remember reading that Camel cigarettes were were the first big brand "American blend" (virginia-burley-oriental) cigarette launched in the 1920s, although the branding was distinctively "oriental". I understand that before that burley tobacco wasn't very common in cigarettes at all, and oriental and virginia leaf were the norm.

What made burley tobacco to become so popular an addition in tobacco blends?

In the movie, The Kong’s Speech, one of the doctors advocates for cigarette smoking, encouraging Colin Firth’s Duke of York to breathe the smoke deeply into his lungs and stating that it will calm his nerves and give him confidence. Were these generally accepted ideas?

Also, did anything big happen to change opinions on tobacco use, or was a cumulation if little things? It seems like in literature and movies from or set in the 1940s through 1960s everyone is smoking, which my relatives have told me was accurate to what they remember, now it is much less common and certainly permitted in far fewer places.

Tobacco is a uniquely American product but was there some precursors on other continents?

How have tobacco politics influenced the prohibition/legalization of marijuana?

Good evening Professor Milov,

I would like to say I am really happy to see academic work dedicated to tobacco . I am Brazilian and majored in History at UNIMEP (Methodist University of Piracicaba) and it has always intriged me how historians seem to overlook, sometimes just mentioning briefily tobacco as a source of revenew , whereas coffee and sugarcane, at least in Brazilian historiography, have countless works on it, some have even named historical periods of the country, like "The Era of Coffee", for example. I remember as a student trying to do some research on the matter and finding not one work dedicated to it. I still haven't read your book but I will surely do as soon as I have the chance.

Hello Prof Milov,

I recall an NPR interview hosted two senior (and Male and Pale) professors to talk about this subject, where your work was basically plagiarised. Link. Would you be willing to discuss that event and update us on it? Can you also speak to fighting to be heard as an early career researcher and how to be an activist for your own research and against the patriarchy?

When did cigarettes become a political issue in the first place?

My question is when did the government start to take a stance against tobacco and why did the government decide to stop supporting tobacco? I mean they were even putting cigarettes in ration packs for the military seems the gov and big tobacco were good bedfellows

When did tobacco companies start adding chemicals to their products?

Just want to say that I've learned a ton from browsing this thread about this particular subject matter and hope that this sub encourages and facilitates more AMA's in the future! Thank you mods and Professor!

How and where did you find the support to write such a niche book? How did this first become a subject you knew you wanted to write about in general, and what background in academics do you have? Kind thanks, another niche history fan.

What kind of cigarettes did people smoke back in the Wild West?

I may have missed the boat but if you see this, thank you. It has always struck me that cigarettes seem to be perfectly calibrated for the modern postindustrial workday compared to other smoking methods. Like if you smoke a cigar or a pipe it takes a lot longer to ingest the same amount of tobacco, and it strikes me also that cigarettes must have stated being manufactured around the same time that modern style demands on workers' time really became commonplace. Is this application "by design," did anyone realize in advance that cigarettes would work this way and appeal especially to wage laborers or simply a lucky invention that caught on at exactly the right moment

How do cigars fit in? Are they as big a problem as cigarettes? No one I know thinks that they are as bad for you as cigarettes and hollywood has definitely led us to associate cigars with the badass gangster types, they dont even seem to need advertising. Are cigars a problem in your opinion?

Every single country I have ever been to in the world has graphic pictures of diseased lungs etc on cigarette packs. The United States, despite having an otherwise very antismoking political climate, has a simple warning that is almost completely benign (my favorite: if you are a pregnant woman quitting smoking can improve your health). Why this discrepancy?

Hey? I hope I'm asking a right question for what you learned.

Why didn't the 90' anti smoking advertisement focus on certain aspects instead of telling the other reasons people continue it?

They focused on people looking cool or cancer, but failed to mention the very real social and the physical aspects?

I'm asking because I've known a few who admitted to doing it to look a certain way. While 90% in the last 15 years did it, because they felt left out when a group of smokers went outside.

(Specifically at chaotic jobs with people.

I'm not sure if you're still answering questions, but do you have any insight into any role the tobacco industry plays into the criminalization of marijuana, both historically and now?

Welcome!

Did the tobacco industry influence Prohibition and/or the War on Drugs?

How did Prohibition and the War on Drugs affect the tobacco industry?

I understand it is a bit late, but how accurate is the picture of the cancer causing monster that the media shows? I mean, in these commercials you see these wheelchair bound, gargelly voiced people speaking through wholes in their throat, and how that will happen to you of you so much as touch a cigarette. I have never seen anything of the sort in real life, and it seems like the odds of this being true is extremely low, as if they chose the most extreme cases to showcase and try to pass off as the norm. But let's be honest, if people smoked cigarettes their entire lives for so long, you would think people would have eventually noticed if a sizable portion the population keeling over and wheezing to death in their late 40's. It just seems a bit too much like fear mongering.

Mad Men is one of my favorite shows, and I'm always struck by the Pilot's handling of smoking culture/advertising. I wonder, even though the show doesn't necessarily romanticize smoking, if Mad Men saw a resurgence or uptick in smoking among viewers. Is there any data to support that?

Are cigarettes different these days than what they had before? What I mean is did they take steps to make it “safer” or cleaner, relative to how it was before or it’s still exactly the same?

Going also by the top post, are mentholated cigarettes more harmful than plain ones? Aside from masking the smell or taste

Thank you for doing the AMA, your answers are fascinating

When the tobacco industry had to pay-out to the states, was there more going on behind the scenes? Can you elaborate on that situation between government and tobacco industry and some of the little know consequences?

I've heard stories about Phillip Morris, backed by the US government, effectively forcing other countries to allow smoking cigarettes instead of letting them be banned due to trade. Is there any truth to this?

what are the best most effective research methods you've used that can help us?

Hello,

What were the early forms of tobacco Americans smoked? More specifically, in the form of cigarette-like tobacco. For example, I watched HBO's John Adams, where Adams is a heavy smoker is that a cigar he smokes? If so what was more popular in the early US Cigars or other smoking instruments (like pipes or something else)

Thanks for posting this AMA.

What was the process of writing the book?

How long was the research phase?

And how do you juggle between researching and writing?

Hi, in one of your responses you mentioned that the armed services promoted cigarette use at the front. What was the purpose, stated or unstated, for doing this?

Hey, thanks for putting on this AMA!

What is, in your opinion, the single most unethical thing the cigarette companies did in the USA or elsewhere?

Did politics play into the reason cigars are usually made in other countries now and cigarettes are made in the US? I recall at one point that there were many US made cigars.

Ah, yes, the cigarette, Spain's greatest and worst gift to the world.

If you're still answering questions, do you think it would have been possible for marihuana to achieve similar levels of popularity to tobacco in the XIX-XXth century?

Is there any country nowadays that outlaws all tobacco, and have they always outlawed tobacco. If so, why?