The "Smoking My Way To The Love Of My Life" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Reading an online copy of "The Saturday Evening Post" which at one time was one of my favorite magazines.  The magazine was dated September 25, 2019 and featured an article titled "When Smoking Was Just What the Doctor Ordered."  Hard to believe that at one time smoking was glamorous and the thing to do...even for DOCTORS!  

One of the oldest advertisements I could find. Click to enlarge.

Decades before the public health campaign against smoking, tobacco companies tried to align their brands with doctors using bribery and ludicrous health claims.  And...for many years it worked!  I was born in 1944 and two years later R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company began making a bold claim in their ads that "More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette!"  To back up their statement they said, "113,597 doctors from coast to coast were asked what brand they smoked".  

Lucky Strike advertisement.

Seems many of these doctors were given free Camel cigarettes as a bribe.  Never found whether they actually smoked them.  This R.J. Reynolds ad campaign was published in most national magazines for six years and television commercials showed men in lab coats gleefully lighting up while reading thick textbooks or making house calls.  My mother and father smoked.  My granddad smoked.  By the time I was in high school most of my friends smoked.  So...I smoked also.  I smoked before I could drive a car.  I raised guinea pigs in my back yard to sell to testing labs and to get food for them I would hitch my wagon to my bike and ride the alleys of my neighborhood to the local grocery store where they would give me all the loose lettuce leaves to load in my wagon.  

Another doctor ad as seen in "The Saturday Evening Post".

On my trip to and from the grocery store I would smoke a cigarette.  That was in the late 1950s.  Eventually my mom and dad discovered my cigarettes and told me that if I was going to smoke, they would prefer I smoke a pipe as my granddad did.  They thought it would be better for me than smoking cigarettes.  So, I rode my bike to pick up lettuce smoking a pipe.  See how ridiculous this sounds.  Well, smoking was ridiculous.  Actually, in the 19th century it was widely believed that smoking could cure ailments such as asthma, bronchitis, hay fever and influenza.  

Movie and TV stars pushed tobacco in the form of cigarettes.

It was said you would get immediate relief.  Then along came the 1960s and everyone began to pick up the habit.  Then "Lucky Strike Cigarettes" claimed they were less irritating to sensitive and tender throats than other cigarettes.  Then along came Philip Morris Company and claimed that their cigarettes were scientifically proven to be less irritating as "eminent doctors reported in medical journals."  They insisted their addition of diethylene glycol, a poison, into their tobacco made it moister and better on the throat.  I smoked my way through high school and college until I met a young girl named Carol.  On our first date she sensed that I smoked.  She asked me and when I said I did, she told me she wouldn't go out with any more.  SO I QUIT THAT NIGHT!  

Lucille Ball advertised Philip Morris.

Haven't smoked since!  Sadly, smoking was what caused the death of both of her parents.  Since that time smoking has been proven to cause a variety of diseases.  But, people still smoke!  Lancaster County is still famous for the tobacco they grow.  Amish farm fields are filled with the green leaves of tobacco.  And, their entire family shows up when it is time to cut the crop and store it in their tobacco sheds.  During our frequent trips to the island of St. Martin, it seems as if most of the French living on the island are smokers.  Cigarettes that are sold on the island do not carry the USA taxes, thus sell for quite a bit less than in the USA.  Will people ever learn?  Sadly not in my lifetime!  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.