Can Scientists and Doctors Be Bought?

When Cigarette Companies Used Doctors to Push Smoking
Before studies showed that cigarettes caused cancer, tobacco companies recruited the medical community for their ads.

What cigarette do doctors says causes less throat irritation? In the 1930s and 40s, tobacco companies would happily tell you it was theirs. Doctors hadn’t yet discovered a clear link between smoking and lung cancer, and a majority of them actually smoked cigarettes. So in cigarette ads, tobacco companies used doctors’ authority to make their claims about their cigarettes seem more legitimate.

To the modern-day reader, the pitching of cigarettes as healthy (even to youth and pregnant moms) and the use of doctors’ endorsements may appear horrifying. Yet before 1950, there wasn’t good evidence showing that cigarette smoking was bad for you.

“People started to get worried in the ‘40s because lung cancer was spiking; the lung cancer death rate was going through the roof,” says Martha Gardner, a history and social sciences professor at Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences. “People noticed that and were worried about it, but that didn’t mean they knew it was cigarettes.”

Yes, cigarettes did cause coughing and throat irritation. But companies used this to their advantage to promote their product as better than the competition. It wasn’t all cigarettes that gave you problems—it was just those other ones.