http://www.tobacco.org/newsfeed/category/history.rss Latest top tobacco news headlines en-us http://www.nypress.com/21/20/news&columns/russsmith.cfm http://tobacco.org/news/265341.html It's in the tradition of oral history handed down to succeeding generations: Some of the details spun out will be wrong, apocryphal or innocently burnished by the passage of time. However, what's more disturbing to me, a longtime smoker, is that when such reminiscences are recorded in written essays--and thus recorded as gospel via the Internet--is that some authors are simply getting their facts wrong. David Sedaris, born in 1956, recently published a typically entertaining piece on his own smoking history in The New Yorker, "Letting Go: Smoking and non-smoking," and his fiddling with the truth (probably inadvertent, for he is over 50 years old) resulted in my immediate thought that none of his editors at the weekly ever fell prey to the now-reviled habit. . . . The following is just one example of where Sedaris is off base: "[C]oolness, for most of us, had nothing to do with it. It's popular to believe that every smoker was brainwashed, sucked in by product placement and subliminal print ads." No doubt, New York anti-smoking activist Gene Borio, a pleasant enough fellow who used to bombard New York Press with letters to the editor in the golden days (at least on the revenue side for publishers) after a full-page cigarette advertisement was published, will disagree--and Gene, the war's over: you won--but smoking had everything to do with "coolness." It wasn't Ricky and Lucy Ricardo casually lighting up on I Love Lucy reruns that led me to start smoking at the age of 14; it was the far more compelling example of my fourth-oldest brother . . . it is important in terms of 20th-century pop culture and business history not to distort a staple of American life (like horse-drawn carriages or transistor radios) that was once so prevalent and vibrant. New York Press mug1988@aol.com (Russ Smith) Wed, 14 May 2008 04:00:00 GMT http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/15/nyregion/15towns.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=tobacco&st=nyt&oref=slogin http://tobacco.org/news/265293.html A 52-story tower will rise in place of this pile of bricks and rubble. Across the street from the hulking remains of the Hudson & Manhattan Powerhouse, which once provided electricity for what is now the PATH rail system, is a mountain of bricks and rubble in the middle of a sprawling vacant lot. Once it was the site of the Lorillard Tobacco and Snuff Manufactory, the largest tobacco factory in the country. Later it was a thoroughly magical warren for hundreds of artists, and the inspiration for an arts district envisioned as a way to revive a decrepit, forgotten warehouse district near the Jersey City waterfront. Current plans call for it to become a 52-story residential tower designed to look like a precarious stack of blocks. Whether or not you care to see Jersey City as New York's sixth borough, you could write a pretty interesting urban history centered on the 12 or so blocks now designated as its Powerhouse Arts District. . . . it was a bitterly contested decision by the City Council last month to approve a proposal by the giant home builder Toll Brothers to construct three residential towers of 30 stories or more. . . . In retrospect, that plan probably died with the pile of rubble at the old tobacco factory when the city -- facing lawsuits from the developer who owned the building, which had since been converted into artists' studios -- allowed him to knock down the building and build a high rise instead. "That was the first domino," said Mr. Kessler. "So now we have Toll Brothers." New York Times peappl@nytimes.com (PETER APPLEBOME) Thu, 15 May 2008 04:00:00 GMT http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/strongdrugsstrong-an-exhibition-that-could-be-addictive/2008/05/11/1210444241688.html?page=fullpage http://tobacco.org/news/265101.html TOBACCO companies were always going to be sensitive to critical publicity. Even so museum curator Inara Waldon was surprised to find her exhibition threatened with legal action for merely reporting a historical event. That event was the activities of the anti-tobacco and alcohol advertising activists calling themselves BUGA UP. The name stood for Billboard Utilising Graffitists Against Unhealthy Promotions and the group was active, mainly in Melbourne and Sydney from the 1970s to the early 1990s. They were a thorn in the side of the tobacco and liquor industries and those who advertised their products, when they defaced or as they would claim "refaced" advertising. Waldon says that some of the BUGA UP leading lights have gone on to greater things. Arthur Chesterfield Evans, a surgeon who became a Democrats member of NSW parliament from 1998 until last year, was convicted of defacing a Rothmans billboard but released on appeal. Another Sydney BUGA UP alumni is Simon Chapman, now professor of public health at Sydney University and still a leading critic of tobacco companies. Waldon is the research force behind an exhibition at the Melbourne Museum entitled, Drugs: A Social History. She makes the point that while high-profile illegal drugs such as heroin and ecstasy are top of our hierarchy of social bogies, it is the legal ones such as tobacco and alcohol that kill more Australians and do more social damage. The Age Australia Mon, 12 May 2008 04:00:00 GMT http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/11/books/chapters/first-chapter-red-leather-diary.html?_r=2&sq=cigarette&st=nyt&oref=slogin&scp=2&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin http://tobacco.org/news/265062.html For more than half a century, its tarnished latch unlocked, the red leather diary lay silent inside an old steamer trunk strewn with vintage labels evoking the glamorous age of ocean-liner travel. "This book belongs to," reads the frontispiece, followed by "Florence Wolfson" scrawled in faded black ink. Inside, in brief, breathless dispatches written on gold-edged pages, the journal recorded five years in the life and times of a smart and headstrong New York teenager, a young woman who loved Baudelaire, Central Park, and men and women with equal abandon. . . . The diary’s “Memoranda” section included pages for “Birthdays and Anniversaries” and “Christmas Cards Sent.” The “Index of Important Events” was only “to be used to schedule outstanding occurrences.” It revealed the roller coaster that was Florence’s emotional life. Fire in old house, February 14, 1927 My first dance, December 30, 1929 My first cigarette, January 12, 1930 New York Times Sun, 11 May 2008 04:00:00 GMT http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentary/18746919.html http://tobacco.org/news/264982.html It had all the elements of a John Grisham novel: a crack legal team filing a long-shot lawsuit, a behemoth defendant peddling cancer-causing products, secret stashes of incriminating documents, and a mind-boggling, multibillion-dollar settlement. Yet Minnesota's landmark tobacco case was a real-life legal thriller. Ten years ago today, after a dramatic trial in St. Paul, the state settled with the nation's tobacco companies for more than $6 billion. As Minnesota's sesquicentennial approaches, we're marking 150 years of statehood with wagon trains and faded photos of early settlers. But the 10-year milestone of the tobacco settlement reminds us that the state's more-recent history also offers much to celebrate, including the risk-taking legal pioneers who beat Big Tobacco. The Minnesota case not only paved the way for other states to settle, but blew once and for all the industry's smokescreen on how much it knew about the dangers of its own products. Minneapolis Star Tribune jburcum@startribune.com (Jill Burcum, Star Tribune) Wed, 07 May 2008 04:00:00 GMT http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/us/04island.html http://tobacco.org/news/264607.html During slavery, Sapelo was part of the plantation economy, but after the Civil War blacks began to buy land and formed settlements. Those were consolidated by the island’s last white owner, the tobacco heir R. J. Reynolds Jr., who forced black residents to relocate to Hog Hammock in the ’50s and ’60s, an act still remembered with bitterness. New York Times Sun, 04 May 2008 04:00:00 GMT http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/william-stewart-crusader-against-smoking-818682.html?r=RSS http://tobacco.org/news/264580.html "Caution - Cigarette Smoking May Be Hazardous to Your Health." By today's explicit and bloodcurdling standards the warning that appeared for the first time on cigarette packs in the United States in 1966 was quaint in its understatement. But with those words William Stewart helped turn smoking - in the West at least - from emblem of cool into, almost literally, a deadly social sin. Stewart was Surgeon General of the United States, the country's most senior public health official, between 1965 and 1969. In recent years, under the dominance of the conservative doctrine of "small government," the post has lost much of its former importance. But in that era, as President Lyndon Johnson pushed through his groundbreaking civil rights and public health legislation, the Surgeon General was a power in the land. . . . Today the cigarette packet health warnings he helped pioneer in the US are positively tame by international standards. Across the EU, packets proclaim that "Smoking Kills", while many countries either have already, or are about to have, packets carry pictures of body organs damaged by smoking. In America, by contrast, there are merely rotating warnings printed on the side of the packet only, and in colours that do not clash with those of the product - with no updating since 1984. The Independent Thu, 01 May 2008 04:00:00 GMT http://www.pr-inside.com/new-york-times-obituary-is-wrong-on-dr-stewart-s-role-regarding-cigarette-health-warnings-the-cigarette-warnings-als-r563651.htm http://tobacco.org/news/264343.html Contrary to the obituary in today's New York Times, former Surgeon General Dr. William H. Stewart did not "put the first health warnings on cigarette packs," notes the public interest law professor who caused the first decline in US smoking by getting free time for antismoking messages on radio and TV. "Although Dr. Stewart urged health warnings, he had no authority to order them," notes law professor John Banzhaf of George Washington University. In fact, the story is somewhat more complicated, he explains. . . . Unfortunately, something that Stewart could not have anticipated -- but which Congress should have foreseen -- occurred. Years later the major tobacco companies were successful in defending themselves from law suits claiming that they failed to adequately disclose the dangers of smoking by arguing that they put on their packs exactly the warning Congress had required. None of this should detract from Stewart's legacy, however, says Banzhaf. PR Insider Tue, 29 Apr 2008 04:00:00 GMT http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/30/books/30horw.html?_r=3&sq=tobacco&st=nyt&oref=slogin&scp=1&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin http://tobacco.org/news/264305.html Tony Horwitz’s new book, “A Voyage Long and Strange,” is about the American history most Americans never learned, including the story of the short-lived, early-17th-century colony established on this windswept island eight miles west of Martha’s Vineyard. The book starts with the Viking discovery of North America, dispels a number of myths about Columbus (a much lousier navigator than we were taught) and then traces the various Spanish and French explorations of America before turning to the English settlements at Jamestown and Plymouth. . . . The Indians who met them on Cuttyhunk were "exceeding courteous, gentle of disposition and well conditioned," and made a very favorable impression, especially the women. "This is the rare story of gentle first contact between Europeans and Native Americans," Mr. Horwitz said. "Some of the other stories are pretty bleak. But here you get these wonderful details like 'drinking tobacco' together and descriptions of the natives as very 'witty.'" New York Times Wed, 30 Apr 2008 04:00:00 GMT http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/29/health/29stewart.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=cigarette&st=nyt&oref=slogin http://tobacco.org/news/264246.html eneral in the Johnson administration who put the first health warnings on cigarette packs and integrated the United States Public Health Service and many Southern hospitals, died on April 23 in New Orleans. He was 86. His death was announced by the L.S.U. Health Sciences Center, including the Louisiana State University School of Medicine, which he directed from 1969 to 1974. . . . Dr. Stewart also prepared an influential three-part report, "Health Consequences of Smoking," released from 1967 to 1969, as the second salvo in a series of surgeon generals' reports that helped change smoking from social norm to social stigma. Dr. Luther L. Terry, Dr. Stewart's predecessor, began the campaign with the 1964 report that the death rate from lung cancer for men who smoked cigarettes was almost 1,000 percent higher than it was for nonsmokers. New York Times Tue, 29 Apr 2008 04:00:00 GMT http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/26/AR2008042602246.html?sub=AR http://tobacco.org/news/264206.html William H. Stewart, 86, who as U.S. surgeon general from 1965 to 1969 led the federal anti-smoking crusade and called for warning labels on cigarette advertising and who used the introduction of Medicare to desegregate hospitals throughout the country, died April 23 of kidney failure at Ochsner Medical Center in New Orleans. Dr. Stewart was a career Public Health Service officer who became surgeon general one year after his predecessor, Luther L. Terry, released a landmark report that drew an explicit link between smoking and lung cancer and other diseases. Expanding on the 1964 report, Dr. Stewart commissioned studies that hammered the tobacco industry by spelling out the toll that cigarettes exacted in lost productivity, disease and early death. Many of his recommendations, including stricter warning labels on cigarette packages and advertising, were adopted despite fierce opposition. . . . He fought to toughen the Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act of 1965, which affixed a warning on cigarette packages saying that smoking could be "hazardous to your health." He maintained that it was "indefensible" for the tobacco industry to advertise cigarettes "in a context of happiness, vigor, success and well-being without even a hint appearing anywhere that the product may also lead to disease and death." The Washington Post Sun, 27 Apr 2008 04:00:00 GMT http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?articleID=20080420_1_A1_hOnly77131 http://tobacco.org/news/264158.html After years of violating a tobacco compact with the state, Cherokee-licensed smoke shops are being pressed to sell properly taxed cigarettes with in the Tulsa area, a Tulsa World investigation shows. Meanwhile, smoke shops licensed by the Creek Nation continue to sell low-tax cigarettes in the Tulsa area without a tobacco agreement with the state. Tulsa, a high-tax zone, requires an 86-cent compact stamp. The Tulsa World purchased cigarettes last week at 22 area smoke shops or stores. The stores are affiliated with the Cherokee, Creek and Osage nations and are in Glenpool, Sapulpa, Sand Springs, Broken Arrow, Claremore and Tulsa. Tulsa World clifton.adcock@tulsaworld.com (CLIFTON ADCOCK and OMER GILLHAM World Staff Writers) Sun, 20 Apr 2008 04:00:00 GMT http://www.reflector.com/opin/content/news/opinion/stories/2008/04/20/ED_WarehouseFire.html http://tobacco.org/news/263803.html For 100 years, the Imperial Tobacco Warehouse cut a striking figure on the Greenville landscape. . . . The three-story warehouse that once housed the most powerful of the tobacco companies in the city was laid to ruin, declared a total loss in an early estimation. Fire investigators hope that a cause of the fire can be pinpointed, though the effort may be complicated in the ashes that remain. The loss of that prominent landmark represents an unfortunate moment for the city. The building harkens back to an important era in the community's growth, when tobacco ruled the landscape and its cultivation defined the local economy. At one time, the Imperial Tobacco Company was the leading purchaser of the golden leaf for export in Greenville. That era faded as the inherent danger of smoking was acknowledged, and Imperial left the city in 1978. And that building, like most area tobacco warehouses, offered only a fading reminder of time consigned to history. The revitalization effort now under way in Greenville intends to breathe new life into the old Tobacco Town area, and some believed the Imperial warehouse would play a vital role. . . . While Greenville should balance those decisions with a desire to protect history, this week's fire reminds the community how fragile and fleeting its links to the past can be. And it should encourage work to preserve the rich memories that places like the Imperial warehouse represent. Greenville Daily Reflector lsavage@coxnc.com Sun, 20 Apr 2008 04:00:00 GMT http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2008/04/18/news/mtregional/news09.txt http://tobacco.org/news/263628.html Twenty-eight years ago, scientist Victor DeNoble was sitting around with a bunch of drunk monkeys when the telephone rang. Executives with Philip Morris, the giant tobacco company, wanted him to come to work for them. DeNoble was studying alcohol addiction at the time - hence, the drunk monkeys, including his favorite, Sarah - but Philip Morris wanted him to apply his knowledge of addiction to nicotine. Specifically, they wanted him to create a man-made chemical to replace the nicotine in cigarettes. The reason? It takes nicotine just seven seconds to go from the lungs to the heart to the brain. . . . "They told me, 'We kill 130,000 people a year with heart attacks,' " DeNoble told a crowd at Salish Kootenai College on Thursday. "I said, 'You kill 130,000 people a year?' And they said, 'Well, we don't kill them, but the nicotine does.' " The problem for tobacco companies, DeNoble said, is that if you removed nicotine from cigarettes, no one would smoke. You wouldn't crave the high you get from it. What the company wanted was for DeNoble to create a drug that would still hook people and keep them addicted, without harming the heart. The Missoulian webmaster@missoulian.com (VINCE DEVLIN of the Missoulian) Fri, 18 Apr 2008 04:00:00 GMT http://www.thetelegraph.com/news/smoking_13024___article.html/smokers_cigarettes.html http://tobacco.org/news/263411.html There have been some complaints to The Telegraph about the statewide ban on smoking in public places. I find that its both fair and unfair, fair because non-smokers can now go into restaurants and bars and not be choked with smoke, and unfair because I can understand the smokers' feeling that it's an intrusion on their freedom. ... But smokers might be surprised to learn that as early as 1775 doctors were already publishing medical reports, warning that smoking causes cancer. In an era when life spans were short, when it was rare to find people who lived into the sixties, lung cancer would relentlessly kill them. .. . For hundreds of years, most people knew or suspected that long-term tobacco use was bad. Yet its use is still a protected right...The fact that its toxic effects are not generally felt until the person is old and relatively less useful in society, makes it a perfect drug and a fabulous moneymaker. The cigarettes you smoke for 40 or so years support governments, farmers, retailers, distributors and on and on. They're good for business. Later, as you finally sicken, the medical and pharmaceutical establishments will make money caring for your last days. And nobody forced you do it! Smoking is good for you. Where did I get all the above? From a book titled "You Said What? Lies and propaganda throughout history." It was compiled by Bill Fawcett and contains 313 sketches. Among them was the one about smoking that got my attention as a longtime former puffer. It was written by E.J. Neiburger whose title "Smoking is Good for You" is a lie that can kill you. Illinois River Bend Telegraph jkulp.2@juno.com (Jim Kulp) Fri, 11 Apr 2008 04:00:00 GMT