Early Advertising Claims

Ironically, even before scientific evidence began to suggest that smoking causes lung cancer and other diseases, tobacco companies in the United States were promoting cigarettes with advertisements suggesting that some brands were "healthier" or "less irritating" than others. The documents contain several examples of early advertising claims made by B&W and other tobacco companies {1700.04; 1703.01; 1703.02; 1704.01}.

One document simply lists the advertising slogans for various brands of cigarettes from the 1920s through the 1950s, including Kool, Camel, Lucky Strike, Old Gold, and Viceroy, among others {1700.04}. For example, an advertising slogan for Lucky Strike in 1928 was:

It's toasted. No Throat Irritation—No Cough [emphasis in original]. {1700.04, p. 11}

And in 1929 Lucky Strike advertisements claimed that

20,679 physicians have confirmed the fact that Lucky Strike is less irritating to the throat than other cigarettes. {1700.04, p. 11}

Similarly, advertisements for Kool cigarettes in the 1930s and 1940s suggested that Kools would not irritate the throat. They contained slogans such as

For your throat's sake Switch from 'Hots' to Kools . {1700.04, p. 1}

By the 1950s, when the public was becoming more apprehensive about the health dangers of smoking that were being described in the press, the tobacco industry heavily promoted filter cigarettes and made claims about less tar. In B&W's advertising of Viceroy cigarettes, for example, the "Health-Guard" filter introduced in 1952 was touted:

New HEALTH-GUARD Filter Makes VICEROY Better For Your Health Than Any Other Leading Cigarette! {1703.01, p. 2}

This statement was supported in the advertisements with "facts" designed to downplay the ad claims of other companies. For example, in 1952, at a time when Lorillard was extolling the low nicotine delivery of Kent, B&W trumpeted:

Although most filters help to remove tobacco tars, laboratory analysis proved that smoke from other leading filter-tip cigarettes contain [sic ] up to 110.5% more nicotine than VICEROY [emphasis in original]. {1703.01, p. 2}

Reduced nicotine was a key claim made for several other brands at the time. Before filters, Camel, Chesterfield, and Old Gold all made low-nicotine claims. Kent's health claims were also based on nicotine data, but this claim was not explicit in the advertising at the time (5, 6).

In 1955 B&W drew additional contrasts between Viceroy's Health-Guard filter, which was made from cellulose acetate, and the crocidolite asbestos (Micronite) filter of Kent. Ads in college newspapers posed this question:

Why do more college men and women smoke VICEROYS than any other filter cigarette? ...

Because only VICEROY gives you 20,000 filter traps in every filter tip, made from a pure natural substance—cellulose—found in delicious fruits and other edibles! ...

Besides being non-mineral and non-toxic, this cellulose acetate filter never shreds or crumbles. {1703.01, p. 9}

A 1955 magazine ad proclaimed:

NO OTHER FILTER LIKE VICEROY! NO COTTON! NO PAPER! NO ASBESTOS! NO CHARCOAL! NO FOREIGN SUBSTANCES OF ANY KING ! [sic ]. {1703.01, p. 10}

Nonetheless, after an article published in Reader's Digest in 1957 (7) cited Kent as the least toxic filter cigarette, a finding based on a comparison of tar deliveries, Viceroy's sales dropped sharply {1703.02, p. 11}.

These examples of the tobacco industry's advertising claims, along with the "tar derby" memo from Pepples, indicate that the industry began promoting filter and reduced-tar cigarettes during the 1950s primarily to calm public fears about the health effects of smoking. Although the advertisements of the era suggested that the new cigarettes were "healthier," there was no real evidence that this was so. When the evidence finally began to come in (beginning only twenty years later, in 1977), the verdict was that lowering tar with filters had only a very modest effect in lowering the enormous risk of lung cancer caused by cigarettes and no effect in protecting the consumer from the more common threat, fatal heart disease (8, 9).

Today the tobacco industry claims that it markets filter and "low-tar" cigarettes because of public demand, and not because it believes that these products are "safer." For instance, R. J. Reynolds—in its monograph about Premier, a novel nicotine delivery system—refers to the development of filter and "low-tar" cigarettes as manufacturer responses to consumer demand (10). However, the industry itself, through its advertising campaigns, has helped create the illusion that these products are safer.