Chapter 1: What is the primary focus of this episode on the tobacco industry?
This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. Hi, I'm Dr. Priyanka Wally. And I'm Hari Kundabolu. It's a new year, and on the podcast Health Stuff, we're resetting the way we talk about our health. Which means being honest about what we know, what we don't know, and how messy it can all be. I like to sleep in late and sleep early. Is there a chronotype for that, or am I just depressed?
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Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast. And this January, we're going to go on the road to beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada, to cover the Consumer Electronics Show, tech's biggest conference. Better Offline CES coverage won't be the usual rundown of the hottest gadgets or biggest trends, but an unvarnished look at what the tech industry plans to sell or do to you in 2025.
I'll be joined by David Roth at Defector and the writer Edward Ongueso Jr. With guest appearances from Behind the Bastards Robert Evans, It Could Happen Here's Gare Davis, and a few surprise guests throughout the show. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts from.
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Chapter 2: How did World War I impact cigarette popularity?
Once again, a win for humanity. Yeah, a Titanic dub. So cigarettes did not get to have their real moment in the sun until a few years after the dissolution of American tobacco, which again, the Supreme Court knocks it out in 1911. Probably somewhere under 10% of smokers and a much smaller portion of the U.S. population actually smoked cigarettes. So a pretty small fraction of the U.S.
adult population is smoking still, even as successful as, Our old buddy Duke wasn't getting people to smoke. But the thing that's going to actually start to change this and really turn around cigarettes fortunes is the First World War. Now, James, you've been in a trench. Yeah, I've been in a couple of trenches. Yeah. Yeah. That's no professional reasons.
Yeah, trenches are not the cleanest places in the world, especially if it's raining and they're muddy. You wouldn't want to have a pipe in a trench necessarily. You could smoke a pipe in a trench, but stuff's going to get in it. That's kind of gross, right? That's not ideal. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And when, you know, if you're doing trench stuff, you probably don't have time to sit down and really smoke a cigar. You know, they take a while. Cigarettes are the- It depends on what rank you're at, doesn't it? Once you- Right, right. If you're sitting, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you get up to the field grade officers, you're fine with a cigar.
They have plenty of time for cigars and they have clean enough areas for pipes. But if you're a working man in the trenches, the best way you have to smoke in between getting murdered by German machine guns is a cigarette. And that's really what causes a shitload of people to start adopting cigarettes. That's what actually makes it a mainstream thing is World War I. Now, it goes well with death.
It does go well with death. James cigarette adoption had crept up only gradually prior to this, and it had been met by this a really active anti-smoking campaign the whole time. It's kind of worth noting that the first 20 years of like the 20th century, basically from like the late 1890s to like 1917, 1918.
There's a very active anti-smoking campaign in the United States, and it's powered by a lot of the same voices who are also fighting for prohibition. There were even bans on the public consumption of tobacco in some states. In 1910, a doctor named Charles Peace founded the Non-Smokers Protective League, advocating for a public smoking ban in America's largest city.
In 1913, the New York Times published an op-ed opposing the establishment of smoking cars in the subway. Now... These people we now know are right. You know, like cigarettes, bad. Public smoking, bad. But they're not ā again, there's not strong evidence that proves cigarettes cause cancer at this point. There's not really good scientific studies at this point.
These people are just busybodies, right? Yeah, right. They can be right for the wrong reasons. Well, what are their arguments? Well ā Don't like it. Yeah. Let me let me tell you, chief among the voices of small of nonsmokers is our old friend of the pod, John Harvey Kellogg, America's good. Yeah.
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Chapter 3: What role did advertising play in the rise of cigarette consumption?
Because women start smoking. That's a big part of the anti-smoking campaign. In 1904, New York State passes a law that makes it a crime for women to, quote, endanger the morals of children by smoking in their presence. A woman named Jenny Lasher was charged and sentenced to jail for violating it.
In 1908, New York City aldermen passed an ordinance restricting public smoking by women from the Washington Post. Quote, the Sullivan Ordinance made it illegal for restaurant and bar owners to permit women to smoke in their establishments.
The stated rationale from Bowery moralist and political chieftain Tim Sullivan was that proper ladies were offended by women smoking, and it certainly wasn't any kind of attempt by a man to control women's behavior. Despite the ordinance's short duration, it lasted only two weeks. The sentiment underlying it was held by others as well.
Women's smoking was viewed by many as taboo, associated with what Amanda Amos and Margarita Haglund have termed louche and libidinous moral behavior. So... It is a good band name. And it's interesting. One of the things that cigarettes do is they make it... They are a big part of why it starts to become okay for men and women to socialize together who are unmarried, right? In a lot of ways.
So one of the things that is... prior to cigarettes becoming mainstream, after you have like a big dinner, if you have a fancy potty, then after dinner, the men will go to smoke cigars and the women will go clean up or something. And increasingly in the early 20s, or in the early 1900s, what starts to happen is after dinner, everybody has a cigarette.
And women didn't smoke cigars, but cigarettes are new. And so it's not really that weird to a lot of modern people that women would smoke them. And also, there's not women's cigarettes. So everyone's smoking the same cigarettes. And increasingly, they start doing it in the same places together. Unmarried men and women just hanging out and having a smoke and talking. This is a big part of...
this is kind of in the background of the, of the suffrage movement, but it like cigarettes do play a significant role in the increasing acceptance of, of social equality for women because men and women spend time together to smoke. Yeah. It makes not an on factor. Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely a time period when there's generally this change in gender roles, right.
With women working in the first world war. Well, that's, yeah, that's another part of it. Right. is like women are taking on men's jobs. Why wouldn't they be able to smoke? And you know, it's a whole thing. So smokers also started to organize to establish more public smoking places.
Tobacco dealers would often back and fund local efforts to lobby for smoking cars on trains or to allow the smoking of cigarettes on the rear platform of street cars. Within the military, there were strenuous debates as to whether or not tobacco should be legal for soldiers. In 1907, the Surgeon General of the Navy had recommended that sailors under 21 be banned from smoking cigarettes.
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Chapter 4: How did the anti-smoking movement evolve in the early 20th century?
They work. Yeah, they're a great tool for journalism. Well, they're also, in terms of how they're being used, that's not unhealthy by the military. Because cigarettes, spoilers, make you worse at everything that is important for soldiers. Almost everything, right? Today, U.S. soldiers who smoke score an average of 35 points lower on PT tests. Cigarette smoking harms your night vision.
Like, it's bad for your performance. Yes, they are bad for your performance in combat. In addition to, like, people get shot smoking cigarettes. Yes, yeah, yeah.
That happens for sure.
But one thing they do is they are a stress reliever. And we can debate in the long term, it's not a great coping strategy. But if your daily job is to get shot at repeatedly, you don't care about the long term. You just want like a moment where things feel okay. Yeah, there is not a long term for a lot of people in World War I. No, no, especially not.
And the other thing that they do is, as we just talked about, people bond while smoking. It's a part of why men and women, it's a way in which men and women start to bond socially in a way they had not in a long time in Western society. And soldiers in the trenches bond sharing smokes. It is a thing that you do with each other.
And you can't, number one, this is a thing I don't think the tobacco industry could have anticipated because it's just a very human thing. And it's also, you can't fight this. Like, there's nothing to do about it. It's just a thing that people have adopted for themselves in a difficult time. And so this is a problem for the anti-smoking people.
Obviously, smoking, again, very bad for everything else that makes you be a soldier, but soldiers are not thinking about that in the times when they're smoking them. And in a lot of military planners' cases, like, they're also... It's hard to argue, even though you've got people who are in the medical profession for the military being like these probably aren't good for people.
It's hard to argue that like a guy who you're asking to run in a machine gun nest doesn't deserve to have like a cigarette. Yeah.
Yes.
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Chapter 5: What strategies did tobacco companies use to counteract health concerns?
The anti-smoking movement, they're only smoked by criminals and not white people, right? And now they're part of the icon of the heroic soldier, right? So in 1900, again, barely 5% of the country smoked, or like 1904, something like that. By 1940... And again, sorry, but in like the start of the 1900s, about 5% of the country who smokes tobacco smokes, right?
By 1940, 40% of the United States adult population smokes on a daily basis. Yeah, it is a huge increase. Yeah, that is crazy.
average per consumer consumption escalated to in 1900 americans consumed about 54 cigarettes per person per year right that's the average for the whole population in 1963 americans consume 4300 cigarettes per year jesus christ i was not expecting that that is so many cigarettes yeah It's 4,300 per... Jesus Christ. That's quite a few cigarettes. Yeah, yeah. You're really upping the intake there.
They're going to get through those Pokemon card collections now. Oh, yeah. No, no. A lot of kids are getting a lot of baseball cards. Yep. You know, those numbers are driven up by all of the 11-year-olds smoking 12,000 cigarettes a year.
Smoking four cigarettes at once.
Just burning through an entire carton in a day. So this new wave of smokers brought with it changes in American smoking habits, largely driven by R.J. Reynolds, president of the Reynolds Tobacco Company. Richard Joshua Reynolds had been born on July 20th, 1850 in Patrick County, Virginia.
His father was a tobacco farmer, and as a young man, Reynolds worked for his dad's plantation, which absolutely included a fuckload of enslaved people. RJ was just 15 when the Civil War ended, bringing with it the first tiny surge in cigarette usage. He quickly fell in love with the things, and he turned his father's company into an industry-leading producer.
And RJ Reynolds is different from Duke in that Duke, when he smokes, smokes cigars, right? He wants to sell cigarettes. He thinks they're a good business. He doesn't understand them, right? He understands how to get people to want to buy something. He's a good marketer. He doesn't really get what people like in a cigarette. There is nothing that RJ Reynolds loves more than cigarettes.
This man, like you have never loved a human being in your life the way this man loves the concept of a cigarette, right? He is such a cigarette lover that he attempts to avoid getting into Duke's tobacco trust, right? He has his own way he wants to do things. He doesn't want to get involved in this trust. He wants to sell his cigarettes the way he wants to.
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Chapter 6: How did public perception of smoking change post-World War II?
Yeah. And this is the start of that part of it. Right. Because cigarettes have started to go viral in this, but not necessarily on a brand basis. Right. You do have kind of some of these early brands, but they all like every tobacco company has a bunch of different brands and they sell different ones in different regions. Yeah.
Reynolds is the first guy to be like, no, not only do I want my company to be the biggest, I want this one specific kind of cigarette to be everywhere. Yeah. So, when World War I ended, Camel accounted for more than 30% of the U.S. cigarette market. Camels came into vogue just as a new generation of female smokers came onto the scene.
These women had traditionally taken male jobs from men who'd left to fight, and after helping to save the U.S. economy, they didn't take well to the argument that them enjoying a smoke was some sort of sin against femininity. From the Washington Post.
Cigarette advertising companies, which at the time primarily employed male advertising executives, quickly co-opted the ideas of independence that women began to assert at the polls and in the workplace. They targeted women, conveying the notions that women who smoked were independent, attractive, and even athletic.
Lucky Strike's 1925 marketing pitch to women told them to reach for a lucky instead of a sweet. The message? Smoke and you'll be thin.
Oh, great. There it is.
Yeah. It's pretty fun. Yeah. I wondered how long that would take. And this is number one. One thing that starts to happen in this is a whole new generation of extremely skinny female models starts to become popular because of this Lucky Strike ad campaign. They help to create like that, that whole thing, that whole trend. Yeah. Yeah. Body image.
Now, there's a backlash to this and there's kind of a war between cigarettes and the candy industry. And it's very funny that one of the cigarettes that will come on the market at this time, I think it might be Marlboro's, their advertising campaign is to like push back at Camel by being like, no, cigarettes and candy are both good for you. You should have your cigarette and your chocolate.
They're a healthy treat. But no, the candy industry has to be like, the fuck are you saying about people not eating candy? Come on. We're not trying to shit on cigarettes here.
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Chapter 7: What scientific research emerged linking smoking to health issues?
Wonderful name and intellect. Yeah. Yeah. Real, real smart guy. Real cummer, Hugh. Yeah. There were other names he could have been cursed with, which could have, his first name could have been worse, but. Yeah. Yeah. But. There we are. But you know what will make you cum, James? Please enlighten me. The sponsors of our podcast.
Not their products, which are asexual, but the actual people who run and own stock in the companies. Anytime you ask for it. That's good to know. That's a promise. Yeah, I'll put that in the old context.
Hi, I'm Dr. Priyanka Wally. And I'm Hari Kundabolu. It's a new year, and on the podcast Health Stuff, we're resetting the way we talk about our health. Which means being honest about what we know, what we don't know, and how messy it can all be. I like to sleep in late and sleep early. Is there a chronotype for that, or am I just depressed?
We talk to experts who share real experiences and insight.
You just really need to find where it is that you can have an impact in your own life and just start doing that. We break down the topics you want to know more about. Sleep, stress, mental health, and how the world around us affects our overall health. We talk about all the ways to keep your body and mind inside and out healthy. We human beings, all we want is connection.
We just want to connect with each other. Health stuff is about learning, laughing, and feeling a little less alone.
Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Ed Zitron of the Better Offline Podcast, and I want you to join me at this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, starting January 6th through January 10th, 2026.
We're doing 10 radio-style podcast episodes about the world's biggest tech conference, and we're going to dig into the latest and weirdest gadgets, gizmos, and horrible AI gear that the tech industry is desperate to sell you, all while covering the biggest stories in Silicon Valley as the AI bubble threatens to burst. I'll be joined by David Roth, Chloe Radcliffe, Adam Conover, Corey Doctorow,
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Chapter 8: How did the tobacco industry's tactics influence modern marketing?
It's exceptionally funny to make juvenile jokes about cum. I am never going to stop making jokes about cum. And I'm never going to stop telling people that when Mitch McConnell comes, all that exits his penis is a mix of dry scabs and spider legs. That, while not juvenile, is still funny. It's funny and true, James. Exceptionally funny. Yeah, it's true. And he can sue us over it.
We'll take him to court. Show us the evidence, Mitch. Yeah. Show us the evidence, Mitch. Show us the evidence that when you come, the dry scabs exiting your urethra don't make a sound exactly like crabs scuttling on a soapstone bed. Prove it to me. Prove it to me, Mitch. I'm now physically unwell. Would you like a cigarette? Yeah.
I think I've been traumatized on a level that's similar to someone who- That justifies tobacco? Yeah. I'd like to shorten my life, yes. Well, why don't you reach for a Lucky instead of a Sweet? That will help me stay, maintain my girlish physique. So as we've just come back, the Surgeon General has been like, this is going to lower the moral tone of women.
And again, I just so that I'm not mistaken, cigarettes are bad. Don't smoke them. These people are technically in the right, but they're in the right for the wrong reasons, usually. So fuck them. I'm going to quote again from Alan Brandt here.
Another supporter of the legislation noted that the fingers of our girls are being varnished with the stains of those harmful little instruments of destruction.
Just as earlier opponents of the cigarette had done, Senator Southwick argued that the use of the cigarette violated the liberties of nonsmokers, which is fair, offended moral sensibilities, which is unfair, and polluted public space, which is, we'll call that one mixed. We cannot bring our wives and daughters to the city, he wrote.
and cannot come along without encountering tobacco smoke everywhere that saturates our clothing and nauseates us. Personal liberty, ours is as inviolate or should be as theirs.
amazing like at a time when like industry is ripping children's arms off their bodies oh yeah no people are just burning pure petroleum jelly in the back of a fucking model t yeah yeah just pouring some lead into the reserve lead tank yeah again fucking 1922 your your worst encounter is not going to be with tobacco smoke in the streets of the city the coal burning colonialism factory isn't a problem it's women smoking that we need to worry about
Now, by 1922, 16 states had banned or restricted cigarette sales and promotion. But none of these restrictions lasted long. The disaster that was Prohibition and the growing number of tobacco addicts made the anti-smoking cause untenable. A chief issue with the fight to restrict smoking was the fact that it rested mostly on moral panic grounds, right? Again...
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