More than World War 2 (75 million). More than the Spanish flu (50 million).

Everybody knows that smoking is bad for you. Everyone knows that it gives you lung cancer. And I know you’re sick of hearing about it. But actually, the dangers are still understated.

People around the world continue to rationalise their cigarette use.

I’ll quit when I’m older. It’s not that bad. My 86 year old grandmother smokes and she’s ok. Everybody has to die sometime. I just want to enjoy life now.

The problem is, it’s hard to keep rationalising your smoking habit when you’re hooked up to a ventilator 24/7 to keep you alive.

Lung cancer. Throat cancer. All kinds of cancers. Bronchitis. Heart attacks. Strokes. Macular degeneration.

If you’re somebody who prefers to “live in the moment” and doesn’t worry about future consequences, then consider the following:

Death from smoking is painful and prolonged. Most patients have their freedom gradually more and more restricted until they’re not allowed to leave their own home because they need a machine to breathe.

Other smokers literally suffocate to death. Often in their homes, completely alone.

This is real.

This isn’t something that happens to characters in movies. Or people in documentaries. This is something that happens to real people. People just like you.

And there’s absolutely no reason that it won’t happen to you or your loved ones if the smoking continues.

The problem is – cigarettes are “normal”. It’s normal to take a smoke break at work. It’s normal to meet people in the smoking area at the club. It’s normal smoke when you drink, when you eat, when you have sex or when you wake up in the morning. Nothing beats a cigarette after sex, right?

When you see other people doing an action, your subconscious brain believes that the activity must be safe. And so you don’t feel fear as you inhale thousands of chemicals into your lungs. You know intellectually that smoking is bad, but you don’t feel like it’s dangerous.

Your subconscious brain doesn’t understand that a huge portion of the population you’re surrounded by is hooked onto a highly addictive substance that’s slowly killing them.

Not only is smoking normal, but you might even think it’s cool.

Do you feel cool as you breathe in that sweet, sweet smoke and look off wistfully into the distance, contemplating life? Or as you flick open that lighter and hold it up to your mouth?

Do you feel cool as light up another one in the smoking area of the club with all the other cool kids? Bottle of beer in one hand, cigarette in the other.

Do you feel like a rebel? Do you feel unique? Do you feel artistic?

I’d like to offer an alternative viewpoint: Smokers are conformists. Smokers are sheep. Smokers are losers.

Now if you’re a smoker, don’t be offended. It’s not your fault that you’ve been duped by a media and a culture into thinking that smoking is cool ever since you were a child.

Advertising, movies, TV and the people around you have convinced you that slowly killing yourself is cool. You bought in. And it’s ok. You just need to understand exactly how you’ve been brainwashed so you can better fight the addiction you’re dealing with.

(If you’re not a smoker, you might still believe, to an extent, that smoking is cool).

Now not everyone thinks smoking is cool. And if you think smoking is massively uncool, then this article isn’t for you.

But if you’re a smoker and a part of you still believes that smoking is rebellious, masculine, tough or just plain cool – then this article is for you.

This is why you think smoking is cool.

Why you think smoking is cool

In the 1920s, smoking was seen as an inappropriate habit for women and was looked down upon as distasteful. Some women began to smoke as they took over a number of male jobs in World War 1.

George Washington Hill, the president of the American Tobacco Company, realised the potential market that could be found in women. “It will be like a gold mine opening in our front yard” he said in 1928.

But he had a problem. Smoking for women was completely taboo. So he enlisted the help of Edward Bernays (today known as the father of public relations).

Bernays had the perfect plan to break this taboo.

Every year New York held an Easter day parade in which thousands of people attended. He persuaded a group of feminists to hide cigarettes under their clothes during the parade.

He instructed them to light up their cigarettes on his signal. Bernays then informed the press that he’d heard a group of suffragettes were preparing to protest by lighting up cigarettes. The press couldn’t miss such an outrage, so photographers lined up to capture the moment.

All of the major newspapers covered the event (just as Bernays has planned) and newspapers reported the young women and their “torches of freedom”

From that point forward, the sale of cigarettes to women began to skyrocket. With a single symbolic act, Bernays had broken the taboo towards women smoking cigarettes and made them socially acceptable.

He had also managed to link cigarettes with: rebelliousness and female empowerment. An idea that is still strong in the minds of modern people.

Women up and down the country began furiously lighting up cigarettes as a symbol of empowerment and freedom.

Never realising that they were manipulated by Edward Bernays and the tobacco industry.

In the 1950’s people were starting to get concerned about the health consequences of cigarettes.

So cigarette brands began releasing the “filtered cigarette”. Adding a filter, they said, made the cigarette safe to smoke.

Most cigarette companies based their advertising around the technology of the filter. They wanted to ease fears about smoking.

Malboro took a different approach – making adverts completely devoid of health concerns or health claims.

Instead they opted for the gun slinging baddass of the wild west: Malboro Man.

In 1955, when when the Malboro Man campaign started, sales were at $5 billion. In 1957, sales had reached $20 billion. It was an enormous success.

Malboro easily overcame growing health concerns and their sales continued to increase. After all, the Malboro man wouldn’t be scared of a little health issue – and he’s a real man

The public had been successfully manipulated by mass-marketing.

An association had been created in the minds of people everywhere: Smoking = Masculinity. (An association that still exists in the minds of many people today)

Men everywhere started looking wistfully off into the distance, putting a cigarette between their lips and feeling like a real man as they slowly killed themselves.

Teenage boys everywhere started smoking. Trying to prove to their friends that they were a tough guy just like the Malboro man – starting an addiction that would later rob them of their life.

The idea created by the Malboro man continues to persist even today. And men continue to smoke cigarettes at least partly because of the masculine feeling it gives them.

(By the way, most of the actors who played the Malboro Man later died from smoking related illnesses).

It’s ironic that many men believe (at least subconsciously) that smoking makes them more masculine, when smoking has been proven to lower your sperm count and cause erectile dysfunction.

And all of this glamorisation was created to distract the public from one simple fact: Cigarettes are deadly.

“We have one essential job – stop public panic. There is only one problem – confidence, and how to establish it. And most important, how to free millions of Americans from the guilty fear that’s going to arise in their biological depths every time they light a cigarette. – PR firm Hill & Knowlton in 1953

So Edward Bernays managed to link cigarettes with rebelliousness and independence in women. Malboro managed to link cigarettes with toughness and masculinity.

The messages from these two marketing campaigns pulsated through the decades and still hold influence over many of us today. But it wasn’t only advertisers that manipulated how we feel about cigarettes.

Cigarettes In Movies

It’s the movies that have really been running things in America ever since they were invented. They show you what to do, how to do it, when to do it, how to feel about it, and how to look how you feel about it. —Andy Warhol (1928–87)

You’ve been primed to believe that smoking is cool ever since you were a child. And you barely even noticed.

In mainstream cinema, the cigarette is a sign of a baddass. Just how many times have you seen the rebellious character light up a cigarette on screen? How many times have you seen him/her puff on that cigarette with an “I don’t give a fuck” expression on their face?

You’ve seen this thousands of times since you were a child. A long time ago your brain made a connection between cigarettes and rebelliousness. A connection that still exists in your subconscious mind today.

If I was to ask you what exactly is so rebelliousness about smoking cigarettes, would you be able to give me a logical answer?

What exactly is rebellious about spending your hard-earned money on hundreds of packs of cigarettes? What’s rebellious about picking up a common addiction and giving your money over to cigarette manufacturers?

The truth is there’s no rational reason for you to feel like smoking is rebellious. The reason you might feel that way is because of the media you’ve been watching since the day you were born.

(By the way. actors in movies don’t smoke real cigarettes. They usually smoke healthy herbal cigarettes)

The Centre For Disease Prevention And Control (CDC) has solid evidence that smoking shown in movies causes young people to start smoking.

Movies are a great way to initiate young people into smoking. The tobacco industry calls them “replacement smokers” – to replace the smokers who died from using their product.

Why is there so much smoking in movies? Two reasons.

1. The Tobacco Industry

The Tobacco industry are the original champions of product placement. In released documents, the following deals between the tobacco industry and the movie industry have been proven.

• $350,000 to have Lark cigarettes appear in the James Bond movie License to Kill

• $42,000 to place Marlboro cigarettes in Superman II

• $30,000 to place Eve cigarettes in Supergirl

• $5,000 to have Lucky Strike appear in Beverly Hills Cop

• $500,000 for Sylvester Stallone to use Brown and Williamson products in five feature films.

And these are just the few deals we know about. Other deals were undoubtedly made behind closed doors – but we have no access to those records. Even so, it seems highly likely that the tobacco industry had something to do with the prevalence of cigarettes in movies.

“Film is better than any commercial that has been run on television or any magazine, because the audience is totally unaware of any sponsor involvement” – CEO Of Production Inc Robert Richards talking to president of RJR William Smith.

There are far more smokers in movies than in real life. And the health consequences of smoking are rarely ever seen in movies. An endless list of studies has shown that cigarette smoking in movies leads to smoking initiation in teenagers.

We don’t know exactly how many deals were made between the tobacco industry and Hollywood, but we do know that the tobacco industry was (and is) well aware of the power of movies to change public opinion. It’s reasonable to assume that the tobacco industry has been heavily involved in Hollywood throughout the decades.

2. Lazy Script Writing

Cigarette manufacturers had created an association between cigarettes and masculinity, rebelliousness and independence. This association was then reinforced by the movie industry, often without any help from the tobacco industry.

The cigarette became a plot device. Want to make a character seem more rebellious? Put a cigarette in their hand and the audience will immediately understand what kind of character they’re dealing with.

Of course, there is nothing inherently rebellious about holding a cigarette. Cigarettes are nothing more than nicotine, tobacco and an assortment of chemicals wrapped in paper. But the public and the writers already had a particular emotional connection towards cigarettes instilled in them by the tobacco industry.

So cigarettes got endless amounts of free advertising through the movie industry.

The tobacco Industry In 2020

Cigarettes are not a problem of the past. They’re a problem of the present.

Yes, the number of smokers in developed countries is dropping. Government led anti-smoking campaigns have had an impact on the psyche of the public. Many now see cigarettes as the deadly, addictive and life-ruining devices they really are.

There are health warnings on every cigarette packet and cigarette advertising is completely banned.

But guess what. The tobacco industry isn’t declining. It’s booming.

Confused?

The following image is from modern day Indonesia.

Indonesia is now the second largest cigarette market in the world. 36% of the population are reported smokers. 63% of men and only 5% of women. (Advertising linking smoking to masculinity has clearly been highly effective).

Advertising for cigarettes can be found on billboards, on TV, in magazines, online and almost anywhere else you can think of. Almost all major events in Indonesia are sponsored by cigarette brands, especially events of a more western nature (Rock concerts, nightclubs etc).

Why is cigarette advertising allowed in Indonesia? Because cigarette brands (who have insane amounts of wealth) lobby the Indonesian government to stop any regulation being passed.

Indonesia is a developing country that’s trying to lift itself out of poverty. Cigarette brands are taking advantage of this and using the vulnerability of the government to make extreme profits.

The exact same marketing strategies that were used on developed countries decades ago are being used in developing countries. From Indonesia to Africa.

Cigarettes are ridiculously cheap in Indonesia at around $1.2 a pack and they’re far stronger (and more deadly) than the cigarettes we have in the west.

It’s no surprise then, that lung cancer is increasing. Over 200,000 people die from cigarettes in Indonesia every year.

And it’s not just Indonesia, the tobacco industry is taking advantage of countries all over the developing world. They have moved the cigarette epidemic from developed countries to developing countries.

The biggest problem the tobacco industry has is that it’s customers keep dying.

Two thirds of long term smokers will die from smoking related illnesses.

That’s why it needs to focus on what they call “replacement smokers” by constantly advertising to young people in developing countries.

The tobacco industry is doing fantastic. And they’re still making billions of dollars through the legal sale of a highly addictive drug – nicotine.

“It may be useful, therefore, to look at the tobacco industry as if for a large part of it’s business is the administration of nicotine” – BAT Scientists in 1967

Here’s the truth. A cigarette is simply the delivery device for a highly addictive drug called nicotine. It’s not masculine. It’s not rebellious. It’s not artistic. It’s not a sign of independence.

These are all lies sold to you by the tobacco industry.

The tobacco industry doesn’t see smokers as human beings. It sees them as walking dollar signs. They have no morality and they’re perfectly happy if their product kills hundreds of millions of people – as long as it keeps producing insane profits.

Every single time you feel cool as you light up a cigarette – the tobacco industry is laughing at you.

And every time a teenage boy lights up a cigarette because he thinks it’s manly, the tobacco industry rubs it’s hands together.

https://cancercontrol.cancer.gov/brp/tcrb/monographs/19/m19_complete.pdf