Cruising Down the Cigarette Highway, 1950: the Unlimited Reach of Tobacco

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See also my related posts:

The Worst Picture of Santa, Ever 

and  Deathly Equality: Liberty and Lung Cancer

This is a simple ad for a butane-based lighter (appearing in LIFE magazine for 18 December 1950), lighting the way down Cigarette Road.  Actually, it was more a highway than a road, and a superhighway at that. Government-sponsored warnings about tobacco health issues was still more than a decade away:  medical doctors were part of the advertising machine, as were actors (including RWR), sports figures, and virtually anyone else with a mouth.

It seems to me that there are about 300 cigarettes in this ad, and that looks like a lot—point of fact though is that in 1950, the average American (of 18+ years) smoked about 3,522 cigarettes a year, which means about 10 cigarettes a day for everyone in the country.  Not 10 per smoker; 10 for everyone in the entire country, smoker or not, who was over 18 years of age.

The average smoker in 1950 smoked about 2.5 packs a day, or 50 cigarettes or so—that’s equal to this line of cigarettes being smoked every six days. 
There were virtually no brakes.

Even Santa (a pipe smoker) got into the business. This was a standard, acceptable, vanilla-packaged advertisement.

United States Cigarette Consumption, , 1900–2007

First number is total consumption in billions; second number is per capita yearly consumption for people 18+.

1915   17.9   285

1920   44.6   665

1925  79.8  1,085

1930 119.3 1,485

1935 134.4 1,564

1940 181.9 1,976

1945 340.6 3,449

1950 369.8 3,522

1955 396.4 3,597

1960 484.4 4,171

1965 528.8 4,259

1970 536.5 3,985

1975 607.2 4,123

1980 631.5 3,851

1985 594.0 3,461

1990 525.0 2,827

1995 487.0 2,515

2000 430.0 2,092

2005 376.0 1,716

2007 360.0

Source: Tobacco Outlook Report, Economic Research Service, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture.

JF Ptak Science Books LLC  Post 699  Blog Bookstore