Cigarette smoking is one of the largest public health tragedies of modern civilization. The number of people who die each year from smoking-related causes in the United States alone could fill three jumbo jets every day, 365 days a year. This fact has long spurred activists to fight tobacco use.

Since the 1960s, anti-smoking ad campaigns have circulated in the United States. At first, they were funded by private, usually socially conservative, groups who viewed smoking as more of a moralistic problem than a health concern. But as time went on and the negative health effects of smoking became more known and accepted, the anti-smoking campaigns began to focus more and more on the negative health effects of cigarette smoking. This shift began in 1964, after the Surgeon General released a comprehensive study based upon 15 years of research revealing the negative health effects of smoking. Even so, it took decades of further education, in the face of constant tobacco industry denial, to firmly implant the negative effects of smoking in the public mind.

The Glamorous Cigarette

By far the most challenging aspect of smoking culture is the glamor of it all. First World War II soldiers and then famous Hollywood actors made smoking seem manly and heroic, and for women it was associated with freedom and the rights won in the suffrage movement. Many anti-smoking ads have specifically targeted the glamorization of the cigarette, such as the ad to the left.

The tobacco industry, however, consistently outspent early anti-smoking ad campaigns by large margins, thus mostly negating their effect. The governments of the United States and Britain responded with a ban on all radio and television cigarette advertisements, starting in the U.K. in 1965 and in the U.S. in 1971. A host of other countries also ban television and radio advertising of cigarettes, including New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and South Africa.

Tobacco companies responded by finding new avenues for their advertising, the most popular of which is the sponsorship of sporting events and product giveaways. Rodeo events in the U.S. are often sponsored by smokeless tobacco companies like Skoal and Copenhagen. NASCAR and other sport car events are favorites of cigarette company sponsors in the United States. Snooker, a billiard game, used to be primarily funded by tobacco companies in the U.K. until a ban on tobacco sponsorships took effect earlier this decade in that country. The United States still allows the sponsorship of sporting events by tobacco companies, while all of the other major countries listed above have banned sporting event sponsorships.

The New Generation of Anti-Smoking Ad Campaigns

In 1998, the four largest tobacco companies in the United States (Phillip Morris, RJ Reynolds, Brown & Williamson, and Lorillard) signed a comprehensive deal with 46 states and six U.S. territories to settle the litigation that several states had brought against them seeking payment for increased Medicaid costs caused by cigarette use.

The settlement, called the Master Settlement Agreement (MSA), requires the tobacco companies to pay the states named in the settlement an annual fee. While the total amount is private, it is definitely in the billions of dollars. This money is spent at the discretion of each state, but is meant to fund state Medicaid coffers and anti-smoking campaigns. The MSA also provided funds for the creation and annual budget of the American Legacy Foundation, an anti-smoking advocacy group behind national anti-smoking ad campaigns, such as The Truth. A litany of state-run anti-smoking campaigns have arisen from the settlement, and the result has been a 50 year low in cigarette smoking in the United States.

Some have criticized the MSA as too lenient on tobacco companies, who still make millions of dollars in profit every year selling a product known to make people sick. The big four companies involved in the settlement got guarantees from the states on price controls for tobacco products, preventing smaller distributors from undercutting them on prices and making it too expensive for them to operate.