"We seldom get into trouble when we speak softly. It is only when we raise our voices that the sparks fly and tiny molehills become great mountains of contention."
"An
Ancient Prejudice Has Been Removed!" and now women can take off
the chains that kept them captive. Liberated at last, now women, too,
can enjoy the many benefits of, uh, smoking,
proclaims the cigarette add in this classic and instructive Lucky
Strike ad from 1929, preserved at TobaccoDocuments.org.
The
full text of the ad:
An
Ancient Prejudice Has Been Removed. Today, legally, politically and
socially, womanhood stands in her true light. AMERICAN INTELLIGENCE
has cast aside the ancient prejudice that held her to be inferior.
"TOASTING DID IT" Gone is that ancient prejudice
against cigarettes Progress has been made. We removed the
prejudice against cigarettes when we removed from the tobaccos
harmful corrosive ACRIDS (pungent irritants) which are present in
cigarettes manufactured in the old-fashioned way. Thus "TOASTING"
has destroyed that ancient prejudice against cigarette smoking by men
and by women. "It's toasted" No Throat Irritation
No Cough.
Smoke
and mirror tactics,
indeed. A related version of this deceptive and deadly ad is
displayed in a must-read BBC article by William Kremer, "James
Buchanan Duke: Father of the Modern Cigarette," (BBC
News Magazine, Nov. 12, 2012), which I encountered in the course of
looking at case studies of innovators and entrepreneurs.
James
Buchanan's success story in business is a dark story of exploiting
human weakness and spreading suffering to millions. This brings two
passages of scripture to my mind. First, consider 2 Peter 2:18-19,
where we learn that the liberty offered by the world and its glib
marketers is not always liberty at all, but often servitude:
18
For when they speak great swelling words of vanity, they allure
through the lusts of the flesh, through much wantonness, those that
were clean escaped from them who live in error.
19
While they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of
corruption: for of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought
in bondage.
Then
look at the 1833 revelation known as the "Word
of Wisdom" recorded in Doctrine & Covenants 89,
where we learn, prophetically, that tobacco is not for man and should
be avoided as a key part of the Lord's health guidance for mankind.
4
Behold, verily, thus saith the Lord unto you: In consequence of evils
and designs which do and will exist in the hearts of conspiring men
in the last days, I have warned you, and forewarn you, by giving unto
you this word of wisdom by revelation
Conspiring
men in the last days just here apparently includes the clever
marketers of tobacco, alcohol, and other harmful drugs. Liberation
through a smoking addiction?
But
powerfully marketed, it has sold and continues to sell and destroy
the lives of those who become "liberated."
I'm
especially sensitive to this issue in China, where 1 out of 3 of the
world's cigarettes are smoked by Chinese men, with a little help from
some liberated Chinese women. The sound of hacking and snorting on
the streets of China from smokers (mostly) is one of the few truly
unpleasant things I have to deal with in this beautiful country.
The
fruits of smoking are ugly, stinky, debilitating and deadly, yet so
much money continues to be spent to market this pestilence. I cannot
understand why its a temptation at all, apart from raw
addiction.
Here
are a few excerpts from Kremer's outstanding article on James
Buchanan Duke (often called Buck Duke), the master entrepreneur whose
innovations have brought death across the globe (with the help of
many other soiled hands):
Jordan
Goodman, the author of Tobacco in History, says that as a historian
he is careful about pointing the finger at individuals, "but in
the history of tobacco I feel much more confident saying that James
Buchanan Duke otherwise known as Buck Duke was
responsible for the 20th Century phenomenon known as the cigarette."
Not
only did Duke help create the modern cigarette, he also pioneered the
marketing and distribution systems that have led to its success on
every continent....
"The
problem was he produced more cigarettes than he could sell,"
says Goodman. "He had to work out how to capture this market."
The
answer was to be found in advertising and marketing. Duke sponsored
races, gave his cigarettes out for free at beauty contests and placed
ads in the new "glossies" the first magazines. He
also recognised that the inclusion of collectable cigarette cards was
as important as getting the product right. In 1889 alone, he spent
$800,000 on marketing (about $25m in today's money).
We
now know that cigarettes are far more addictive than cigars. The fact
that the smoke is inhaled which it is not traditional for
cigars also makes them more dangerous. But a correlation with
lung cancer was not made until the 1930s and the causal link was not
established until 1957 in the UK and 1964 in the US.
Cigarettes
were in fact promoted as beneficial for health. They were listed in
pharmaceutical encyclopaedias until 1906 and prescribed by doctors
for coughs, colds and tuberculosis (a disease which the World Health
Organization now links with tobacco).
There
was an anti-cigarette movement in the early 1900s, but it was more
concerned with morality than health. A rise in smoking among women
and children fed into a wider concern about the moral decline of
society. Cigarettes were prohibited in 16 different US states between
1890 and 1927.
Duke's
gaze shifted overseas. In 1902 he formed British American Tobacco
with his transatlantic rival, Imperial Tobacco. The packaging and
marketing would be tweaked for different consumers but the cigarettes
would remain largely the same. More than a decade before the creation
of the Model T Ford, Duke had a universal product.
"To
him every cigarette was the same," says Goodman. "All of
the globalisation that we are now familiar with through McDonald's
and Starbucks all of that was preceded by Duke and the
cigarette."
The
global reach of cigarettes is still extending today. Although smoking
in wealthy parts of the world is in decline, cigarette demand in
developing countries is increasing by 3.4% a year, leading to an
overall growth in cigarette consumption.
Kremer
also reports that "Buck Duke is said to have marched up to a map
of the world and planted a finger on China, saying: 'This is where
we're going to build our empire!'" And so Big Tobacco has
indeed. Tragic.
Turning
again to women, a sidebar on the BBC article has a version of the
Lucky Strike ad with this information:
Dr
Robert K Jackler of Stanford University Medical School explains how
women were persuaded to smoke in the early 20th Century.
The
industry had a problem. You can't advertise your way into convincing
women to smoke you have to change cultural expectations.
A
woman smoking on a street corner was a signature of prostitution. A
polite woman would never be caught smoking in public.
Edward
Bernays who was actually Sigmund Freud's family member
was engaged by the American Tobacco Company to work out a public
relations strategy to enable women to smoke.
So
in the late 1920s, for example, they hired a bunch of young women to
march down Fifth Avenue in the Easter Parade, holding their "torches
of freedom" their cigarettes. And this then became a
symbol of women's emancipation.
Great
swelling words and symbols of vanity, promising liberty, but leading
into captivity, addiction, and corrupted lungs.
How
liberated are your lungs now? Or are they, perhaps, as the Lucky
Strike ad says, toasted?
The
bogus liberty promised to women and men by clever marketers and
conspiring men is not limited to tobacco products. I will leave it as
an exercise for the reader to find and share instructive parallels.
Jeff Lindsay has been defending the Church on the Internet since 1994, when he launched his
LDSFAQ website under JeffLindsay.com. He has also long been blogging about LDS matters on
the blog Mormanity (mormanity.blogspot.com). Jeff is a longtime resident of Appleton,
Wisconsin, who recently moved to Shanghai, China, with his wife, Kendra.
He works for an Asian corporation as head of intellectual property. Jeff and Kendra are the parents of 4 boys, 3 married and the the youngest on a mission.
He is a former innovation and IP consultant, a former professor, and former Corporate Patent
Strategist and Senior Research Fellow for a multinational corporation.
Jeff Lindsay, Cheryl Perkins and Mukund Karanjikar are authors of the book Conquering
Innovation Fatigue (John Wiley & Sons, 2009).
Jeff has a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Brigham Young University and is a registered US
patent agent. He has more than 100 granted US patents and is author of numerous publications.
Jeff's hobbies include photography, amateur magic, writing, and Mandarin Chinese.