Quote:
Originally Posted by BookCat
For years there was "no evidence" that smoking damaged health, just anecdotes. Many people thought smoking was good for you - ever seen the old adverts?
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While that seems to be true it isn't actually what happened. It was well known by tobacco companies that cigarettes had all kinds of negative health effects. They did a lot of studies and they hid the results. Not many others were doing studies.
Later, after the Surgeon General released his report in 1964, it was found out that the tobacco companies knew for decades about the health risks.
There were always ads about the health benefits of tobacco before that. When studies began that prompted the Surgeon General's report, and those were made available to the public, the ads that promoted the health benefits increased. After the Surgeon General's report they switched to other advertising memes.
The key fact here is that for decades before this the tobacco companies knew cigarettes were dangerous to health and they covered it up. I forget the penalties they suffered because of that but they were considerable.
I'm 78 and in those days I was a smoker so I lived through all this and watched it unfold with interest. This is all from memory. I may have some details wrong but I have much of it right and there was a lot more to it than I remember now.
Barry