Smoking was a boom industry during the first half of the twentieth century. Heavy advertising and the inclusion of cigarettes in a soldier’s rations during the Great and Second World Wars, meant that generations of young men were drawn into tobacco’s clutches.
The Great War coincided with the mass production of cigarettes on an industrial scale. Previous to this, they tended to be luxury items, handmade for the exclusive consumption by the urban elites. Mass produced cigarettes required a large market, and the big producers in the Status and the UK – American Tobacco Company, the Imperial Tobacco Company, and the subsequent joint venture British-American Tobacco Company turned the sights on the global market.
For the men drafted into the war, these mass produced cigarettes were easier to smoke in the cramped and filthy trench conditions. The constant, and free, supply of cigarettes to the men in the trenches was a nod to the importance of the tobacco as a relief from the physical and psychological stress of the war experience.
By 1920, more than 50 per cent of cigarettes consumed in the UK was in the form of cigarettes. By the 1950s, up to 80 per cent of men in the UK regularly smoked.
Smoking among women was also on the rise. Demonized in the past as a ‘wanton’ habit for loose women, the war had given many women the opportunity to play a more proactive role in society, eschewing past prejudices to embrace new norms. Hollywood movie stars such as Marlene Dietrich and Lauren Bacall glamourised smoking and made is acceptable across all echelons of society.
Although it wasn’t long after the two wars that the link between smoking and lung cancer was established and verified, it was not actually confirmed by the Royal College of Physicians until 1962. The US Surgeon General caught up in 1964. Despite this, the rate of people giving the cigarettes up was slow, and tended to be focussed around the more affluent, professional classes – meaning that cigarettes were fast becoming a symbol of poverty and addiction.
So consider this – in 1962, about 70 per cent of men, and 40 per cent of women in the UK were smoking anywhere and everywhere. There were no restrictions about where they could or couldn’t smoke – they just did it wherever and whenever they wanted.
Fast forward 60 years, and that percentage of adults smoking is currently down to 14.7 per cent. And the only place that it is socially (and legally) acceptable to smoke is either in your own home, or at a designated smoking station alongside all the other ‘unclean’ smokers!
Unfortunately there still seems to be a growing trend that smoking among teenagers is on the rise, and this is despite the astronomical cost of a packet of cigarettes.
Although vaping is considered a safe alternative to tobacco, the lower price makes vaping much more accessible to teenagers. While on the one hand this could be considered good, keeping them from the more harmful effects of tobacco, it could also be considered a gateway into the more addictive habit of smoking tobacco. Cheap disposable vapes can be bought for a fiver, and last much longer than a packet of cigarettes. What is more, they come in such as array of colours and flavours that they have created their own trending movement among teenagers.
It may seem disingenuous that, despite the plethora of knowledge and information about the damaging effect of tobacco on your health, that young people are still willing to experiment with these harmful substances. But that is the nature of youth – and they will never change.
