The Rise and Fall of Cigarettes

Cigarettes and other tobacco products are some of the most popular products in the United States. The article “Kicking the Habit”, by Robert K. Elder in Upfront magazine in The New York Times, talks about tobacco and its rise and fall. It started when Christopher Columbus discovered it in 1492, and saw his crew becoming addicted to it. Tobacco started to spread, and by the 17^th century tobacco had spread around the world. It started to become so popular that cigarettes became a part of American soldiers’ rations during World War I in 1914-18. Cigarettes continued to be very popular until a report was published by the U. S. Surgeon General in 1964, linking tobacco to lung cancer. Tobacco’s popularity has changed drastically over time, from unknown to very popular, and then from very popular to a lot less likable.

            Cigarettes became popular through many different forms of media, such as advertisements: “Advertising played a huge role in getting Americans hooked on nicotine, the addictive chemical found in cigarettes.”   The ads came in all forms. They were in magazines, commercials, even television shows like The Flintstones, who endorsed Winston cigarettes for several years. Lots of respectable people endorsed cigarettes like actors, “trustworthy” physicians, and even Santa Claus. Everyone wanted in on this rapidly growing product, but didn’t realize what it was doing to them yet. Through all of these different medias and people, cigarettes became more and more popular, and everyone wanted in on this rapidly growing product, but didn’t realize what it was doing to them yet.

            Nevertheless, after the report from the Surgeon General came out in 1964, even though smoking was very popular, a lot of people became wary and cautious of it. A year later, according to the Upfront article, “Congress began requiring warning labels on cigarettes, starting with ‘Caution: Cigarette Smoking May Be Hazardous to Your Health.’” More and more studies started coming out stating the dangers of smoking and even secondhand smoking. Cigarette prices skyrocketed because of sin taxes and more and more smokers gave up their now classified “dangerous” habit. However, one of the worst blows to the cigarette industry was in 1994 when CEOs of many tobacco companies swore that they thought nicotine (the main component of cigarettes) is not addictive. Because they failed to say that nicotine was both harmful and addictive, the companies lost many multimillion dollar lawsuits later on. The author of the Upfront article didn’t show opinion on the issue of smoking, but talking a lot about how smoking’s reputation fell shows how he might have thought smoking was bad for you.

            Smoking has had its ups and downs throughout history. Everyone thought it was good to smoke and people including doctors promoted it. It started out as a very popular product, but once a report relating it to lung cancer came out in 1964, it went down from there. Once the article came out people started to realize how bad cigarettes are, and more and more people quit. As the article stated: “Today roughly 18 percent of American adults describe themselves as smokers… That’s a big decline from the 42 percent of Americans who smoked in 1965.” Even though the percent is a lot lower, the CDC still says that smoking is the leading cause of preventable illness and death in the U.S., and more than 480,000 Americans die from smoke-related illnesses (lung diseases, stroke, heart disease, and more) each year. Smoking is terrible for you, and everyone knows that, and they think that people have always known that. That is not true though. The author of the article taught me that it took a long time for people to realize that a very popular product was bad for you, but once they did, lots of people quit this disgusting habit.