Today’s speaker was returnee Andy Wilson, of Yorkshire Cancer Research, who gave us a talk entitled “The History of Tobacco”.
Tobacco was first discovered in South America 8000 years ago, but not used, grown and traded in until 6000 years later!
Use of it became much more common in the Crimean war, when Turkish soldiers rolled it into cigarettes, rather than taking it as snuff etc. At that time, cigarettes were hand-made at a rate of 3 per minute, but automation quickly ratcheted this up to 250 per minute.
Adolf Hitler was very anti-smoking, such that German soldiers were forbidden to smoke,and research into the dangers of smoking commenced in Germany in 1929.
Demand increased, however, in the USA and Europe, driven undoubtedly by the vast amounts of advertising money spent by tobacco companies. But in 1952, an article was published in Readers Digest showing how harmful tobacco was, and, not being advertising material, quickly made a huge impact on the American public.
In the UK, disease rates rocketed from 1947 onwards, but government couldn’t decide why, and simply ignored the results of health research. In the USA however, a damning report by Dr Alton Oschner into the harmful effects or tobacco caused a sharp drop in the value of tobacco company stock prices, which resulted in an unheard-of get-together of all such companies to launch a joint attack on this report. Marlborough Man was borne, and despite numerous court cases brought against them, the tobacco companies’ money always ensured that they won!
A conference in Harrogate in 1962, promoted by the tobacco companies via the Tobacco Research Council, decided to fully investigate whether tobacco caused cancer, but so scared were they of the word, that throughout the report, cancer was referred to as “zephyr”. They were trying to produce a “safe” cigarette, and could have succeeded, but the report never saw the light of day!
During a court case in 1983 a US judge ruled that tobacco companies conspired to conceal evidence, but money still spoke, and the companies got away with it.
But in 1994, a whistle-blower named Merrell Williams leaked evidence from 8000 legal documents that tobacco firms had know of the inherent dangers from their product for over 40 years. 5 southern states took them to court over the deaths of their citizens, and won, with very substantial damages, and in 1998 the remaining US States did the same, with the same result, but even larger punitive damages. The writing was on the wall; in 1999, advertising was banned in the US, smoking in public places was banned in 2012, but the UK lagged behind until 2017.
Vaping is now gaining strength, and strange to note, Cancer Research is very much in favour of existing smokers converting.