American Magazine, Nov. 2013

Date: 1619
Date: 1492
Date: 1776
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Have you heard about the
great American smokeout?
In August, AU became the first tobacco-free campus in
Washington, joining more than 1,100 smoke-free colleges
and universities across the country and nearly 800
where the use of chew, cloves, cigars, and cigarettes has
gone up in, well, smoke.
It’s no shock that AU—long committed to the health
and well-being of students, faculty, and staff—snuffed
out tobacco. What might surprise you is that bans like
AU’s are nothing new.
cash crop
Nearly four centuries ago in 1632, the Massachusetts
Bay colony banned smoking in public, citing moral,
not health, concerns. (It would be another 150 years
before scientists and physicians began reporting on
the deleterious effects of smoking.) Some cities and
colonies, worried about fire danger and claims that
smoking led to drunkenness, followed. In 1639, Governor
Williem Kieft beat Mayor Michael Bloomberg to the
punch by 364 years, banning smoking across New
Amsterdam, which later became New York.
While some thought smoking a drag, there was
no denying tobacco’s economic importance. Tobacco
was used as a monetary standard—literally a cash
crop—across the colonies. Years later, it bankrolled the
American Revolution (“If you can’t send money, send
tobacco,” General George Washington implored his
countrymen) and the Civil War after that. It served as
“life insurance” for Lewis and Clark as they explored
the Northwest, and it birthed what is today a $35 billion
per year industry.
Lucy loved cigarettes (the 1950s sitcom was
sponsored by Phillip Morris), and America’s arbiter of
etiquette, Emily Post, politely deferred to smokers,
writing in 1940 that “those who smoke outnumber those
who do not by a hundred to one, [so nonsmokers] must
learn to adapt.” (Post’s numbers were a bit off: only
40 percent of adults smoked.) And those antitobacco
laws? They were overturned by the early 1900s. States
steered clear of the issue until California enacted a ban
in 1995, thus sparking a new wave of legislation. Today,
28 states and D.C. prohibit smoking in enclosed public
spaces, including bars and restaurants.
Like the contradictions of the cigarette—a source
of pleasure and pain, commonplace yet controversial,
a moneymaker and a heartbreaker—America has
always had a love-hate relationship with tobacco.
it’s toasted
The Industrial Revolution gave rise to two industries
that have since become inextricably linked: tobacco
companies that could, for the first time, distribute
their products en mass across the country, and
advertising agencies, charged with marketing tobacco
to national audiences.
In 1895, Thomas Edison’s company produced the first
motion picture commercial: an ad for Admiral cigarettes.
Over the next two decades, Camels and Lucky Strike,
which boasted the slogan “It’s toasted” (just like every
Date: 1864 Date: 1909
Date: 1913
12 American Magazine NOVEMBER 2013