What the Hell Was Going on with Cigarette Ads in the 70s? (2024)

Like in Seinfeld you will have episodes where Kramer is smoking in offices....and even in the doctor's clinic! There was an episode where Kramer took out a cigar and smoked in a doctor's waiting room. I thought he would immediately get in trouble but none of the other characters cared.

And then you got movies from back then like Jackie Brown (which is a great movie by the way) where you see character's smoking in a mall cafeteria. A mall! A family friendly environment! And it's considered normal!?!?!? Blows my mind.

cjrp• 2 months ago

Smoking on airplanes is the one that just seemed like an accident waiting to happen. And yet there were (relatively) few incidents caused by cigarettes.

black_knight• 2 months ago

I heard that air quality on planes was better back then (maybe someone who was alive then can confirm). Because of smoking they had to ventilate the whole aircraft much better. While these days I feel like they are just starving us for oxygen so as to not have to heat up fresh air.

m-i-l• 2 months ago

Or smoking a cigar in an oxygen rich spacecraft cabin, as per the opening scene of the original Planet of the Apes (released in Feb 1968, after the Apollo 1 fire in Jan 1967).

collingreen2• 2 months ago

Even the hindenburg had a smoking lounge! Included a bunch of extra tech to make that less dangerous in a giant explosive balloon.

https://www.airships.net/hindenburg-smoking-room/

asdff7• 2 months ago

I like how they still have the ash trays in the bathroom. I get it, throwing the heater into the paper towel trash is a recipe for disaster. But still, the idea of taking a poop in this tiny little uncomfortable bathroom with 5 people waiting for you and sitting there demolishing an entire cigarette while you do it is sort of hilarious in its desperation.

petesergeant3• 2 months ago

I remember transatlantic flights with smoking sections

ArnoVW• 2 months ago

The day they introduced non smoking (late nineties?) a friend of mine found out as the aeroport. He made a big stink, canceled his ticket and booked a new flight for Amsterdam - NYC with the only company still allowing smoking: Aeroflot.

He spent the better part of a day, flying via Moscow.

The next time he had to fly he grudgingly accepted it.

Sometimes even Shaw's unreasonable man has to come to terms with defeat.

notabotiswear• 2 months ago

Airplane!, 1980.

js2• 2 months ago

"You're too young to smoke. You're going to set this whole place on fire."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ma_XNn1bwOM

https://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/2620/how-do-they-...

IdiotSavage• 2 months ago

The Sixties where the time!

in the office: https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/14040813590...

in university: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1315981/mediaviewer/rm154904524...

in airplanes: https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/15032513024...

acc348• 2 months ago

I was recently watching some TV show and there was this one scene in maternity hospital. The doctor(!) was smoking while talking to the main character. Insane for today's standards.

socalgal22• 2 months ago

You can still smoke indoors in public places in many places in the world

torben-friis• 2 months ago

It is hard to overstate how common that was in the nineties, at least here in Spain.

Clouds would come out of family bars and diners when you opened the door. Movie theaters and art galleries would have people smoking inside as it was part of their intellectual aesthetic. During weddings giving out Cuban style cigars as a present was assumed. Schools would not allow it officially, but every bathroom and teacher lounge would clearly smell from the people hiding for a smoke. Same for hospital waiting areas and bathrooms. Trains had smoking and non smoking wagons, which people complained about, feeling smokers were being ostracized. Beaches were full of cigarette buts to the point that accidentally stepping on a not yet cold one was a common concern. Not "going for a smoke" at work was considered socially isolating, and particularly for men saying you don't smoke would lead to others questioning your heterosexuality in a non PC manner. Teenagers would start smoking around the family as a "proof of adulthood" as soon as they had their first part time job to pay for it.

tsoukase• 2 months ago

Same in Greece, that came last in banning smoking in closed spaces since the last 5-6 years! Funny thing, now our clothes in taverns don't smell smoke anymore, but meat and garlic.

sfdlkj3jk342a• 2 months ago

You don't have to go back 30 years to see it. Just take a shared taxi in Sumatra. Most of the men and some women will be smoking. Inside the car. With the windows closed. Sitting next to babies and young children.

hackeraccount4• 2 months ago

I remember visiting a friend in California which I think was the first place to ban smoking in bars. Anyhow we want to some jazz club and no one was smoking. So weird. And I didn't and don't smoke.

If you had asked me I would have said, nah I don't smoke and I don't like the smell but I get used to it. When I got out of that place I suddenly realized that it I didn't "not like it" it really bugged me. And no, I never really got used to it.

So strange.

asdff7• 2 months ago

It is kind of weird but I have nostalgia for cigarette smoke smell. When I catch someone on the street smoking I take a big whiff.

I will say bars do not smell better now that the cigarette smoke is gone. At least for some dive bars. That smoke was doing some heavy lifting...

zeristor• 2 months ago

I can remember there used to be a tube train set aside for smokers.

Sometimes it was thick with smoke and the walls would have tar.

After the Oxford St, Kings Cross Tube station fires, along with the Bradford stadium fire in the 80s they thought that safety could be improved a tad.

Personally, I like my air fresh.

Theodores• 2 months ago

The last hold out in the UK was the offices of BAT (British American Tobacco). They had ashtrays, spittoons and untold free cigarettes for their staff to help themselves to.

To spice it up a bit, they had lots of cigarettes to try from developing markets. Sometimes these had extra flavour that appealed to the smoker, so more nicotine and tar.

They had this 70s style going on in the early 2000s, at a time when smoking had been outlawed from enclosed public spaces plus lots of outdoor spaces such as sports grounds and train platforms.

Out of the 70s context, the dedication to normalising smoking in the BAT offices made the place sound like more of a cult. I did not work there myself but I had a friend that did. He didn't smoke once he left the 'cult'.

m463• 2 months ago

I remember flying back then. I was young, and for some reason I got moved to First Class, wow!

But planes back then had smoking and non-smoking.

And the "first class row" behind me was smoking.

So imagine I was in first class row 3, and the people in first class row 4 were smoking.

I felt like I should try to go back to coach row 18 or whatever, which was probably 10 rows away from smoking in 28.

pseudohadamard2• 2 months ago

But everyone knows they're healthy! It's a herbal remedy taken bronchially as an inhumnation, as this video by Dr.Fry indicates: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XewVicFzRxw

kotaKat• 2 months ago

I feel like I was brainwashed so much harder by the anti-smoking and anti-tobacco lobby (i.e. state Departments of Health) over smoking in media. This is probably why it all disappeared...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_Check_(program)

New York schools statewide constantly were and are bombarded with constant media and FUD that the single moment you see someone light a cigarette, that's marketing.

lurking_swe• 2 months ago

obviously it is marketing - it’s why cigarettes became popular in the first place. They had a “cool” factor. And most people are sheep so…makes sense?

homeonthemtn• 2 months ago

We used to hang out in the smoking section of diners at 2am with friends slugging down coffee and chain smoking. The whole smoking section was packed with the rest of the place empty.

In a way I miss it because it was such a social thing to do. I have zero interest in smoking any more but the rituals around it were nice

chunkyguy• 2 months ago

Like last year at a cafe in a small town somewhere in Greece.

You make it sound like indoor smoking in public places is a thing of a past.

econ• 2 months ago

If you think that's strange. I remember work places with all kinds of alcohol, weed and live music.

A friend of mine from Yugoslavia described their lunchroom looking like a grand Caffe with walls full of strong liquor, various kinds of beer on the tap. They started drinking beer at 11 am in the sun in front of the building and kept going till 1-3 am (often talking about work!). He often slept on the sofa and didn't go home for weeks. His boss was always the first to arrive and was happy he wasn't the only one there. Sleeping at work showed a high level of dedication.

notahacker• 2 months ago

Reminds me of reading my grandparents' old copies of National Geographic from a similar era. The ads were all attractively retro cars or cigarettes. A couple of taglines that stick in the mind are "the thinking man smokes" and "doctors recommend..."!

cucumber37328423• 2 months ago

I remember reading one and they were advertising all the benefits of tubeless tires on drop center rims. High technology at the time.

markyc• 2 months ago

what will our grand kids be shocked to read about us and our acceptable 'cigarettes'?

plastic everywhere

social media as news

teflon

fossil fuel cars

sugar/ultra-processed food

petesergeant3• 2 months ago

Meat not as a treat, but as a staple

nxm2• 2 months ago

Huh? As has been the case since our species evolved into homosapiens?

Pay084• 2 months ago

No, it's going to be about either the roll back of nuclear reactors or various social movements.

throw9393ir• 2 months ago

Perhaps overuse of medication. No real proof it works, severe side effects, "misterious" rise in cancer and other dissieases, state sanctioned censorship, billion dolar corruption scandals...

kortilla• 2 months ago

Medication for normal emotions

kuerbel• 2 months ago

Not only teflon, but pfas. Overuse of pesticides. The second coming of authoritarianism 80 years after the last time. Not doing enough about climate change. Anthropocene extinction.

tialaramex4• 2 months ago

Yeah, Nazis again surprised me and I'm not even a young person.

I figured sure it's a pattern, but it'll take like 150 years or something, nope, here we are in less than 100 years and there are Nazis again.

silvestrov• 2 months ago

plastic everywhere.

plastic will still be everywhere. The major catastrophe that could happen is for evolution of plastic eating bacteria like the creation of (dead) wood eating bacteria. Look at all the plastic containers etc you have in your kitchen and imagine it's just gone.

social media as news

Mainstream news isn't going to get any better.

teflon

teflon has gotten a lot better since it was introduced. It will stick around.

fossil fuel cars

will be seen like rotary phones: they will not understand why they are so cumbersome or why so many people had resistance against electric cars. It's like electric lights versus living with only oil/candle lights.

I think a near term would be: "you had to go to a cinema to watch a movie?"

phs318u3• 2 months ago

Mainstream news isn't going to get any better.

Perhaps. But “social media as news” is definitely going to get a lot worse.

Teflon ... It will stick around.

Please tell me that was a deliberate choice of words :)

everdrive• 2 months ago

Look at all the plastic containers etc you have in your kitchen and imagine it's just gone.

This is not a catastrophe by any stretch of the imagination.

danaris2• 2 months ago

The major catastrophe that could happen is for evolution of plastic eating bacteria like the creation of (dead) wood eating bacteria. Look at all the plastic containers etc you have in your kitchen and imagine it's just gone.

Look at all the wood you have in your house.

Notice that it is still there. Despite the fact that bacteria are very, very good at eating wood.

Even in the hypothetical case that bacteria evolve that can digest plastic, the idea that they would somehow instantly spread to consume all plastic in the world is ludicrous.

We would just need to take a few new precautions with it.

nxm2• 2 months ago

Covid vaccines to young and healthy individuals

autoexec2• 2 months ago

Thanks for reminding me. Hopefully antivaxxers

collingreen2• 2 months ago

Just Covid? Not all vaccinations for endemic disease they will definitely be exposed to?

If so, why just covid? If not, when is the right time, if any, to give vaccinations that appear to be very effective (or do we think the data is unreliable/dishonest here?).

I certainly have my own take here but I'm trying to ask a neutral question and understand your perspective before it gets downvoted away.

tialaramex4• 2 months ago

fossil fuel cars

All or almost all of fire is my guess. My guess is that celebratory fire is last to go, bonfires, fireworks, in 2070 probably roasting marshmallows is at the edge of reasonable behaviour, but the idea that we deliberately burned things as part of normal life will seem very odd.

In 1870 fire is the usual (and incredibly wasteful) way humans make light and heat everywhere. In 1970 there's more abstraction, the light is electrical but from thermal generation, so there is still fire but it's somewhere else, and your heat is more likely from fire inside a metal box in a distant room, a gas, oil or in some cases coal boiler to heat air or water.

My guess is that even in pessimistic models in 2070 that's all electrical and the electricity is generated from sources which do not involve fire. PV, wind, hydro, even the geothermal and nuclear plants don't actually make fire to heat steam, they're just hot.

JKCalhoun5• 2 months ago

Fires—interesting point.

I'm in a neighborhood in Omaha, Nebraska that is maybe 5 years old—new housing development. There are no chimneys on any of the homes.

When I was in the Bay Area, sure, not a surprise. I am surprised the Midwaste gives a shit.

(To be sure, everyone seems to have fire pits in their backyards, ha ha. You take what you can get, I suppose.)

ahazred8ta• 2 months ago

With the decline of cigarettes, there are homo sapiens children growing up today who have never seen fire. First time in two million years.

JKCalhoun5• 2 months ago

Ha ha, the replies to your comment have become a laundry list of people's grievances and/or agendas.

Kreutzer• 2 months ago

gambling commercials that are so pervasive on streaming platforms/cable

hackeraccount4• 2 months ago

The other stuff the parent mentioned I don't know about but this one I can totally see. Legalized gambling is going to see like a weird mania of this time in the future.

hackeraccount4• 2 months ago

This is my take (speaking of political preferences) but gender reassignment surgery is going to look like giving people lobotomies.

I don't know when but I think attitudes abut sex/gender in future will be really different - not your side won and my side lost but just different then we understand. Like people won't do single sex sport different. I think the model for sports in the future is things like those obstacle course shows - Men and Women both compete at the same time but viewers are just aware that they have different capabilities; so they know that a woman doing X is much more amazing then a man doing X+10.

autoexec2• 2 months ago

but gender reassignment surgery is going to look like giving people lobotomies.

Unlike lobotomies, there will always be some subset of the population who needs those kinds of surgeries. That said, as they've become increasingly sought after I do sometimes wonder if there will be enough detransitiors to cause us to be more cautious about performing them as readily in as many situations. Especially at young ages.

Men and Women both compete at the same time but viewers are just aware that they have different capabilities;

I doubt that'll happen. Not as long as we have sports with winners and losers. Too often it would mean that women would never (or almost never) win. Women would need to accept never stepping into the winners circle and taking the trophy home. Either that or we'd end up giving two trophies at the end of every game, one trophy for the best male winner, and another for the best female loser. At that point however, the men and women aren't really in the same competition with each other and you might as well just have two separate teams.

There are also a number of sports where it would be dangerous for women and men to compete together. It works out fine when they're just taking turns running an obstacle course, but it's less fine when you've got men killing and causing serious harm to women in contact sports like rugby, MMA, and ice hockey. There are sports that many women wouldn't want to participate in at all if they had to play against men. We shouldn't deny those women the ability to play the sports they love on teams where they feel safe. That said, I've always felt that the men's teams should be open to anyone who wants to participate and can qualify (and often that's already the case today).

Not to overly infantilize the fairer sex here, but imagine that same proposal only with children. We don't put 6 year olds on NFL teams for many of the same reasons. No amount of bonus points awarded to the kids for the handicap of their size/skill would make it acceptable. It'd be less safe, it'd be demoralizing for children to lose all the time, and it'd be less fun for the players and less fun to watch for spectators. People want to see the best of the best go head to head. We can compartmentalize them because even pitting teams of the best 10-12 year olds against each other is exciting. Everybody has a reasonably fair chance. What teams would even pick up the 8 year old football player when they could get even a poor adult player instead? I know that the differences between men and women athletes aren't as extreme but I think it illustrates the issues.

Plus having separate teams for people of different sexes, ages, weight classes, and skill levels means that there are more games to play/watch/bet on/sell tickets for.

bigstrat2003• 2 months ago

You think that our grandchildren will be shocked by sugar, something that has been in use for hundreds of years (and that's just refined sugar, not counting natural forms)? Not very likely.

Ekaros2• 2 months ago

Seeing some "coffee" products sold I feel there is certain line involved. And we are clearly over it. 100-200 grams of sugar in single drink. I think some sort of limits might reasonably be in order with those outliers.

Not that limited use isn't reasonably fine.

bramgn• 2 months ago

and yet somehow that world seemed more healthy than today's

Pay084• 2 months ago

It wasn't. Lifespans were almost a decade shorter.

phs318u3• 2 months ago

“Seemed” is the key word here.

Vasbarlog5• 2 months ago

If you wear your nostalgia glasses it sure does "seem" more healthy. Life expectancy at birth in the 70s was 70.8. Now it's 79.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/hus/data-finder.htm?&subject=Life%2...

cucumber37328423• 2 months ago

I wonder how much of that was occupational vs lifestyle.

sceptic123• 2 months ago

Life expectancy is a useful summary statistic but not really a guide to healthy.

The main reason for the increase there is a reduction in child mortality, not an increase in overall healthiness. Ironically, one of the main factors improving the adult population statistics is the decrease in smoking.

But look at something like HALE (Healthy Life Expectancy from WHO[1]) that's much lower and is currently decreasing.

https://data.who.int/indicators/i/48D9B0C/C64284D

narag• 2 months ago

What seems to me is the ads seem less staged and processed than current ones. They're wilder and not as softened as every media are now.

As for people pointing at lifespans for the healthy part, how much of the change is systemic use of anticoagulants? And of course less tobacco, but I wouldn't rush to say people are in much better shape now.

JKCalhoun5• 2 months ago

I get what you're saying. And seeing your detractors here, I can't argue with the data.

I wonder though if we didn't trade the low-hanging fruit of lung cancer for the kinds of things that kill us now. I won't argue that we didn't add a decade to our average lifespan, but it does seem our lives have become more sedentary than they were. (Mine certainly has—but then I'm also forty-plus years older, ha ha.)

I wonder how 70's man and 70's woman fared who didn't smoke or live with a smoker—if you compared just that group with modern man and woman.

pavel_lishin2• 2 months ago

I talked to everyone I know who was alive in the 1970s, and they're still alive today. That proves it.

CodeCompost• 2 months ago

Quit smoking 10 years ago. Best thing I ever did. I'm particularly inspired by articles like this:

* https://www.webmd.com/smoking-cessation/what-happens-body-qu...

According to the article I have 5 years to go till my body has completely recovered from the effects of smoking.

anygivnthursday• 2 months ago

Congrats! I quit around the same time cca 2012-2014.

I did not smoke on a plane, but smoking on trains (and many places indoor) was "normal" before like 2010 around my place. I did not like it even as a smoker and rather went out.

But fully echo you that quitting was one of the best decisions of my life.

JKCalhoun5• 2 months ago

I quit in 1999. I don't need to tell you how hard it was. A year of still wanting a cigarette, having to fight the urge, every single day.

Two years quit and I was still having dreams where I am lighting up…

Twenty-seven years since now and it's all a distant memory. Even forgotten in dreamland…

felooboolooomba• 2 months ago

They didn't have a scientific proof that smoking was bad for you. Just like we don't have the proof that social media is awful for you and that Trump is a cult.

Vasbarlog5• 2 months ago

Cigarettes were recognised as the cause of lung cancer in the 1940s and 1950s, with the confluence of studies from epidemiology, animal experiments, cellular pathology and chemical analytics

https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/21/2/87

thisislife2• 2 months ago

And to think that in the 1920s, doctors prescribed cigarettes for weight loss. And now the tobacco industry is moving on to weed, and repeating the same marketing tricks that they used to sell cigarettes nearly a 100 years back ...

hackeraccount4• 2 months ago

Looking at smoking rates for people in the US - it peaks for men in the 1950's. I'm not saying studies and taxes and PSA's did nothing but on some level I think most people had a pretty good idea that smoking was no good long before they ever saw scientific proof.

I think those studies, taxes and everything else was as much an expression of that thinking as it was an influence on it.

ffaser5gxlsll• 2 months ago

Press page-down: scrolls the galleries right. Somebody thought this was a good idea, let alone intuitive.

juleiie3• 2 months ago

I miss this awful habit so much.

Ever since quitting years ago I never really recovered. It’s like 35% of my mental focus and clarity evaporated.

All these moments when something had to be figured out suddenly things became easy if you only went for a smoke. Solutions became crystal clear obvious and effortless.

At a price.

Without it is always like a little bit of heavy fog is obscuring everything. That I know could be instantly lifted by this terrible drug.

I even remember my first time what a transcendental clarity it summoned. It was as if some thick veil fell from me in an instant. That’s very, very addicting and just useful.

Does overclocking your brain is worth the accelerated parts wear and tear? Well I made a decision that it isn’t. That I am intelligent and privileged enough to hopefully achieve the things I want and enjoy them for longer.

Pay084• 2 months ago

Have you tried doing something similarly meditative instead?

juleiie3• 2 months ago

I tried using matcha tea instead and it is kind of similar in that general direction but it doesn’t work quite the same mostly due to being constant effect for a few hours after a strong drink instead of a precise impulse.

It was alright for a couple of projects but the day I drink matcha is firmly a “matcha day” with its characteristic of great energy at first and then feeling kind of shitty the rest of the day. It shapes your day too much.

I am sure there are some substances that are similar to nicotine in mechanism and less harmful to the heart and blood thickening but they aren’t easy to get usually or aren’t well researched.

Despite all nicotine is fairly well known and tested on huge population not to mention virtually unlimited access for any interested adult.

asdff7• 2 months ago

Why not chew some nicotine gum? People cite things like blood pressure and cardiovascular effects, but seems like caffeine has these same issues and they might just be general stimulant related effects. Have you ever considered if you have add/adhd? You might benefit from adderall as well or some other stimulant. These also have extended release formulations.

I wish coca leaves were available stateside. Not sure the growing requirements, but it seems like they have a lot of similar neuro benefits without much of the harm from the narcotic derivative.

sumanep• 2 months ago

Drink "yerba mate"

RetroTechie• 2 months ago

The trick is to hit a 'Ballmer peak', such that the overall experience is optimal. Long term effects included.

But for most psycho-active substances, such optimal dose / frequency is quite low (if not 0). A beer during a BBQ with friends? Fine. Some recreational drug to enhance the experience of say, a music festival? That I can understand.

But needing a smoke 10, 15..20x all day, every day? Look in the mirror, and admit: you're just an addict, damaging your health.

juleiie3• 2 months ago

Look, in our modern realities, somebody who goes through their day completely sober, raw and unfiltered is a much bigger freak than any common junkie.

I can understand the need to smoothen out the reception of reality but what I will never get is enjoyment to take all the bullshit of today raw and supposedly with pleasure.

Can you really blame me for being extra suspicious around sworn sober types?

0rbiter• 2 months ago

And there I was wondering where all the bunkum came from that LLMs spit out. This is proof that we don't need AI to write hilariously absurd copy.

amriksohata• 2 months ago

For those who are not that old, when cigarettes were mainstream there were many scientists (or business backed science) telling people that smoking was healthy. Then they decided to change tact when it became obvious it was causing lung disease.

RhysU• 2 months ago

Absent any restrictions on targeting adults, what would cigarette ads look like today?

RichardCA• 2 months ago

Here's a fun one, Benson and Hedges commissioned some classic 80's CGI, it got played at one of the art-house animation festivals that was a thing for nerds to do in the 80's. Looks like it was Robert Abel who did it.

But what was the point? It seemed like they were trying to sell gold collectibles to rich people in Malaysia.

https://youtu.be/fdBoKOpctp4

recursivecaveat• 2 months ago

Today I learned that cigarette filters were designed to spontaneously brown on use to give the illusion that they had trapped a large amount of tar or whatever: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cigarette_filter#Colour_change

Clamchop• 2 months ago

These don't seem strange to me at all.

Lifestyle marketing, romance, appeals to independence, metaphor, and humor. All timeless advertising tropes. It's cigarettes themselves that are passé.

phendrenad2• 2 months ago

If you want to browse old tobacco ads without the comedy schtick this site adds, Standord has an interesting archive: https://tobacco.stanford.edu/cigarettes/

sidewndr46• 2 months ago

Isn't this true of most advertising from the past? I've watch lots of Honda ads in the US from the 1980s. I don't think you could air them today

What the Hell Was Going on with Cigarette Ads in the 70s? (2024)

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