1909: Navy May Ban Cigarettes

Navy Ban on Cigarettes

As we accustom ourselves to the new sanity about cigarette smoke, we marvel at what was 'normal' only a few years ago. It's already becoming hard to believe people smoked in resturants. Years ago, of course it must have been appalling as cigarettes became so popular. They were different from cigars and pipe smoke: the frequency of use, the eventual ubiquitousness (women didn't smoke cigars or pipes normally but in the 1830's began to smoke Spanish 'sigaritos'). Eventually we all lived in a noxious indoor cloud. And while it was universally accepted to smoke in an elevator was rude, parents thought nothing of smoking in their cars with their kids.

Some relief could be had by becoming a smoker. I suppose some people picked up the habit in a subconscious way to adapt.

With the factory manufacturing of cigarettes, the insanity of chain-smoking caused as much an uproar in the early 1900's, as the uproar is now, with the percieved 'right' to smoke indoors finally taken away. Recovering our senses now, the facts below are interesting in a new way.

1900: Brosch experiments with tobacco carcinogenisis on guinea pigs

1900: REGULATION: Washington, Iowa, Tennessee and North Dakota have outlawed the sale of cigarettes.

1900: CONSUMPTION: 4.4 billion cigarettes are sold this year. The anti-cigarette movement has destroyed many smaller companies. Buck Duke is selling 9 out of 10 cigarettes in the US.

1900: SCOTUS: US Supreme Court uphold's Tennessee's ban on cigarette sales. One Justice, repeating a popular notion of the day, says, "there are many [cigarettes] whose tobacco has been mixed with opium or some other drug, and whose wrapper has been saturated in a solution of arsenic.".1901: REGULATION: Strong anti-cigarette activity in 43 of the 45 states. "[O]nly Wyoming and Louisiana had paid no attention to the cigarette controversy, while the other forty-three states either already had anti-cigarette laws on the books, were considering new or tougher anti-cigarette laws, or were the scenes of heavy anti- cigarette activity" (Dillow, 1981:10).

1901: ENGLAND: END OF AN AGE: QUEEN VICTORIA DIES. Edward VII, the tobacco-hating queen's son and successor, gathers friends together in a large drawing room at Buckingham Palace. He enters the room with a lit cigar in his hand and announces, "Gentlemen, you may smoke."

1902: USA: Sears, Roebuck and Co catalogue (page 441) sells "Sure Cure for the Tobacco Habit". Slogan "Tobacco to the Dogs". The product "will destroy the effects of nicotine". (LB)

1902: Spring: Topsy, the ill-tempered Coney Island elephant, kills J. F. Blount, a keeper, who tried to feed a lighted cigarette to her. She picked him up with her trunk and dashed him to the ground, killing him instantly. On January 5, 1903, 1500 watch Topsy's electrocution in Coney Island.

1903-08: The August Harpers Weekly says, "A great many thoughtful and intelligent men who smoke don't know if it does them good or harm. They notice bad effects when they smoke too much. They know that having once acquired the habit, it bothers them . . . to have their allowance of tobacco cut off."

1904: BUSINESS: Connorton's Tobacco Directory lists 2,124 "cigarettes, cigarros and cheroots." (GTAT)

1904: BUSINESS: Cigarette coupons first used as "come ons" for a new chain of tobacco stores.

1904: BUSINESS: Duke forms the American Tobacco Co. by the merger of 2 subsidiaries, Consolidated and American & Continental. The only form of tobacco Duke does not control is cigars--the form with the most prestige.

1904: American Lung Association is founded to fight tuberculosis.

1904: MEDICINE: The first laboratory synthesis of nicotine is reported.

1904: New York: A judge sends a woman is sent to jail for 30 days for smoking in front of her children.

1904: New York CIty. A woman is arrested for smoking a cigarette in an automobile. "You can't do that on Fifth Avenue," the arresting officer says.

1905: POLITICS: Indiana legislature bribery attempt is exposed, leading to passage of total cigarette ban

1905: U.S. warships head to Nicaragua on behalf of William Albers, a Amaerican accused of evading tobacco taxes

1905: BUSINESS: ATC acquires R.A. Patterson's Lucky Strike company.

1905: REGULATION: "Tobacco" does not appear in the US Pharmacopoeia, an official government listing of drugs. "The removal of tobacco from the Pharmacopoeia was the price that had to be paid to get the support of tobacco state legislators for the Food and Drug Act of 1906. The elimination of the word tobacco automatically removed the leaf from FDA supervision."--Smoking and Politics: Policymaking and the Federal Bureaucracy Fritschler, A. Lee. 1969, p. 37

1906-06-30: FEDERAL FOOD AND DRUGS ACT of 1906 prohibits sale of adulterated foods and drugs, and mandates honest statement of contents on labels. Food and Drug Administration begins. Originally, nicotine is on the list of drugs; after tobacco industry lobbying efforts, nicotine is removed from the list.
Definition of a drug includes medicines and preparations listed in U.S. Pharmacoepia or National Formulary. [JDJ: is this what Obama has just reversed?)
1914 interpretation advised that tobacco be included only when used to cure, mitigate, or prevent disease.

1906-04: SMOKEFREE: IN: Richmond resident Orville Stanley is arrested and pleads guilty to possession and unlawful use of tobacco. Fines are suspended because he is a minor. (!!)

1907: Business owners are refusing to hire smokers. On August 8, the New York Times writes: "Business ... is doing what all the anti-cigarette specialists could not do."

1907: REGULATION: WASHINGTON passes a law making it illegal to "manufacture, sell, exchange, barter, dispose of or give away any cigarettes, cigarette paper or cigarette wrappers."

1907: ADVERTISING: Bull Durham ad shocks New York. In 1907, the American Tobacco Company signed a contract with the operator of a horse-drawn stage line in New York to lease advertising space. One very controversial ad appeared for "Bull" Durham, the nation's leading tobacco brand. "Onlookers were shocked at the sight of the bull's well-endowed maleness so graphically rendered, and had the driver of the first stage that appeared on the street arrested." The City of New York sued the coach company and its client, the American Tobacco Company, to ban the ads. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court in 1911, which upheld New York's ban. Ironically, this case ruling took place the day after the same court handed down a historic verdict ordering the dissolution of the Buck Duke's $240 million-a-year American Tobacco Company monopoly, which the court deemed in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. --Moyer, D. The Tobacco Reference Guide http://new.globalink.org/tobacco/trg/Chapter4/Chap4Page52.html

REVERSAL: Ok, then women and children will not smoke, at least.

1908: CANADA: LEGISLATION: The Tobacco Restraint Act passed. Bans sales of cigarettes to those under 16; never enforced.

1908: ENGLAND: LEGISLATION: 1908 Children Act prohibits the sales of tobacco to under 16s -- based on the belief that smoking stunts childrens growth. This act paralleled similar acts for alcohol--based on medical and moral issues-- and concern for the welfare of children in general.

1908-01: SMOKEFREE: New York city passes Sullivan Act, forbidding women to smoke in public. Managers of public establishments must not permit females to smoke. An earlier ordinance which would have forbidden men to smoke in the presence of women failed to pass. One Katie Mulcahy is arrested for lighting up. Two weeks after enactment, Mayor George B. McClellan vetoes the ordinance.

1908-01: NY: New York City bans smoking by women in public.

1909: 15 states have passed legislation banning the sale of cigarettes.

1909: "Princess Nicotine; or the Smoke Fairy" is the first instance of tobacco product placement (for Sweet Caporal cigarettes and cigars) in the movies. The special effects are so remakable they are noted in a contemporary issue of "Scientific American." [JDJ: scroll down to watch]

1909: SPORTS: Baseball great Honus Wagner orders American Tobacco Company take his picture off their "Sweet Caporal" cigarette packs, fearing they would lead children to smoke. The shortage makes the Honus Wagner card the most valuable of all time, worth close to $500,000.

Source for bulleted list.