Robert Evans

He doesn't have to wait until he has really good data to be like smoking causes lung cancer.

He sees this, he puts two and two together, and he becomes the first prominent figure to publish a claim that tobacco use is associated with a heightened rate of cancer and early death.

And he's doing it again to warn insurance companies.

A new wave of studies follows.

And as the 1930s gives away to the 40s, the tobacco industry keeps a worried, watchful eye on this emerging science.

They also start exploding their advertising budgets in order to kind of make up for the increasing talk in the background about maybe cigarettes aren't so great for us.

In 1911, prior to the bust of the American Tobacco Trust, the entire cigarette industry profited about $13 million a year.

By 1918, the big five tobacco companies were spending more than $13 million every year just in ads.

In doing so, they'd helped create the very language of American culture.

And I'm going to quote from a write-up in the Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice by Richard Polley.

Cigarette sellers were among the most enthusiastic pioneers in the use of network broadcasting for coast-to-coast advertising.

By 1930, American Tobacco, Brown & Williamson, P. Laurelard, and R.J.

Reynolds were all buying to network radio time.

There has been no greater enthusiast for radio broadcast advertising than George W. Hill of the ATC, whose business for the first five months of 1930 surpassed all records.

The company sponsors the Lucky Strike Dance Orchestra in three-hour broadcasts each week.

Lucky Strike sponsored many radio comedies and musical shows, such as Jack Benny and the Kay Kayser College of Musical Knowledge, and the best-known and longest-running popular musical shows, Lucky Strike's Hit Parade.

This show started in 1928 and ran into the 1950s on television.

It featured teen idol Frank Sinatra when he was launching his career.

So popular was this show in 1938 that a sweepstakes promotion offering free cartons of Luckys for the names of the three most popular tunes drew nearly 7 million entries per week.

The Lucky Strike hit parade was the first show to rank popular music releases in an ongoing basis.