Tobacco was accepted, celebrated before health worries

This post was originally published in the Wilson Times Jan. 18, 2020.

Recent news stories about a deadly vaping illness have reminded me of how much tobacco intertwined with my newspaper career. I edited newspapers in Wilson and Danville, Va., cities dependent upon tobacco growers, tobacco warehouses and tobacco factories. Both cities proclaimed their superiority as tobacco markets. The dominant radio station in Danville, where I worked 1977-79, was WBTM, “World’s Best Tobacco Market.” The dominant radio station in Wilson when I arrived in January 1980 was WGTM, “World’s Greatest Tobacco Market.” Tobacco prices during the market season were front-page news in both cities. The market’s opening was a Big Event drawing crowds of buyers, growers, politicians and others. President Jimmy Carter attended the market opening in 1978.

The two editors who preceded me in Wilson were chain smokers. Newspaper staff members were allowed to smoke at their desks. “Thank you for not smoking” signs were not found in the newspaper office or in many other businesses in town.

The 1964 surgeon general’s scathing report on cigarette smoking and its link to lung cancer marked the beginning of the slow erosion of tobacco empires, although tobacco and smokers held on for decades. Congress fought an extended battle over price supports and Depression-era tobacco allotments (essentially a license to grow and sell tobacco, which turned into a valuable asset for shrewd investors in farmland).

To counter government studies linking tobacco to various diseases, the tobacco industry created the Tobacco Institute, which financed “studies” that cast doubt on the tobacco-disease links and promoted smoking. The Tobacco Institute was eliminated in the Master Settlement Agreement that settled lawsuits brought by 46 states against tobacco companies in 1998.

Eventually, messages about the health hazards of smoking began to take hold. State, federal and local taxes on cigarettes soared, discouraging (somewhat) sales of cigarettes. But the addictive power of nicotine in tobacco made it nearly impossible for smokers to quit. Non-smokers became aware that “secondhand smoke” was affecting their health, too.

The percentage of adults who smoked peaked in1954 at 45 percent and is now around 18 percent. That drop resulted from efforts to curtail tobacco use by limits on advertising, laws prohibiting tobacco sales to minors, and a long-delayed public recognition that cigarette smoking is not healthy, sexy or sophisticated.

For more years than I had realized, I tolerated cigarette smoke at public events, in my office, in classrooms, in stores and other people’s offices, in restaurants (“smoking or non-smoking?”) and waiting rooms. Friends with asthma or allergies complained about smokers invading their space, but it didn’t seem to bother me until fairly recently. Like many other people, I’ve developed a sensitivity to cigarette odors.

I can remember when heavy smokers would come into my office at the newspaper, and the smoky odor would linger for a long spell after the visitor had left.

The impact of smoking goes beyond the 440,000 Americans who die from smoking-related illnesses every year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The litter of cigarette papers and filters, the ashes (and yucky ashtrays), the accidental fires, the cigarette smoke odor that permeates clothing, upholstery and vehicles are also part of tobacco’s history.

Tobacco made many people filthy rich, from the farmers who knew that tobacco had a greater profit margin than any other crop they could grow to the tobacco corporations that inundated television, radio and magazines with costly advertising to promote their products.

Most Americans, predominantly non-smokers, will not mourn the decline of the tobacco industry even as new products aim to hook new generations on vaping  products that send a heated mist into their lungs and emit a cloud that looks a lot like cigarette smoke. Lung damage, leading to some deaths, have been linked to this new substitute for cigarettes.

Knowing tobacco’s history, Americans should be more skeptical about this new, widely promoted habit that clogs their lungs.
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Smoking is no longer socially acceptable

Over a period of more than two decades, I edited newspapers in two cities whose economies were dependent upon tobacco. As such, I frequently defended tobacco farmers and the tobacco industry against regulatory restrictions, taxation and social stigma. My arguments were not that there's nothing wrong with or unhealthy about smoking; rather, I argued that smoking is a rational choice (even if it's an unhealthy choice — one of many unhealthy choices people make) and that over-taxation threatens to destroy the tax base. If higher taxes discourage people from smoking, tobacco tax revenues will drop, leaving federal, state and local governments with budgetary holes.

In the early years of my newspaper career, smoking was prevalent. All of us put up with the smoke and the ashes and the butts and the fire hazard. We made do by seeking places to eat or to read or do other things away from the smokers and the odor that followed them. When restaurants began offering non-smoking tables, we rejoiced, though some non-smoking sections still exuded the foul odor of ashes. Smoking sections were not sealed off from the non-smoking. When restaurants began banning smoking and when state laws made it illegal to smoke in restaurants and office spaces, we rejoiced.

The smoke and ashes that had not bothered us so much years before suddenly became a major annoyance. When the smoke cleared (literally and figuratively), we recognized the odors left by cigarette smoke. Now, years after smoking was  banned in nearly all indoor public places, I can quickly identify smokers who come into my office or pass me in a hallway. The smoking odor stays with them. It's in their clothes, their hair and their skin, making them immediately identifiable to non-smokers.

In the past three or four decades, smoking has gone from an accepted practice in homes, offices, workplaces, schools and even hospitals and doctor's offices to an anomaly practiced by less than 20 percent of adults in this country. Those smoking adults, unless they are especially discreet, may be shunned by the non-smoking majority. It's not just the smoke and the ashes and the butts and the health risks. It's the offending odor and the obvious bad choice smoking proclaims.

When we were married 45 years ago, one of our wedding gifts was an ash tray, though neither of us smoked. But as congenial hosts, we would be expected to provide an ash tray in our home for our guests. No more. If you see an ash tray in a store these days, it's a strange anachronism.

 

FDA gets into growing, marketing tobacco

Thursday's vote to allow the Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco is a watershed event, even though it has been a long time coming. Although the lopsided 79-17 vote in the Senate to let the FDA decide how cigarettes are made and marketed indicates a widespread distaste for smoking, the benefits of this seismic shift may not materialize, and the economic cataclysm critics have predicted could.

I'm not a smoker and don't like to be around people who are smoking. I own no tobacco stocks, and I don't subscribe to the theory that people have a "right to smoke" when that "right" disturbs the rights of others to smoke-free air. That said, I fear that FDA regulation of tobacco might be ill-advised. Sens. Richard Burr and Kay Hagan of North Carolina proposed an alternative — creating a separate federal office to regulate tobacco. The FDA, they said, is already overburdened and not entirely successful in trying to assure the safety of food and medicine. They have a point.

Perhaps of greater concern is what FDA regulation will do to tobacco consumption. Supporters say it will reduce smoking. But if the FDA cuts the nicotine in cigarettes, smokers who are addicted to nicotine will smoke more, not less, to get their nicotine fix. Some have predicted a black market will develop for old-style cigarettes with plenty of nicotine, and organized crime will benefit from the nicotine prohibition.

Tobacco growers fear that the FDA will ban the farm chemicals they use to keep their tobacco free of insects and other pests and to ensure a hardy, productive crop. Fields around Wilson are turning green with newly planted tobacco, which will stand four or five feet tall with broad, bright green leaves in a couple of months. Tobacco is sensitive to a variety of diseases and pests. Without proven and long-used farm chemicals, those wide green fields of healthy tobacco could be yellow or brown. The new legislation could get the FDA into the farming business, with disastrous effects on the income of farmers who have invested millions of dollars in specialized tobacco planting, harvesting and curing equipment.

The legislation also increases taxes on the most-heavily taxed commodity in America. States facing budget deficits are likely to increase their own cigarette taxes. At some point, if it hasn't already, taxation of tobacco will reach a tipping point. Cigarettes will become so expensive that sales will fall to the point that tax revenue, despite higher rates, will decline. Reducing cigarette sales is one of the aims of the legislation, but achieving that goal will deny state, federal and local taxing authorities the revenues they want.

Let's face it, even without FDA regulation, cigarette smoking is in rapid decline in this country. Once as common as sweet tea at a church social, cigarettes are now banned from most indoor gatherings. Office workers are forced outside to feed their habits. Cars are no longer equipped with cigarette lighters and ash trays. Ash trays have disappeared from homes and offices. Even North Carolina, which grows more tobacco than any other state, will ban smoking in all restaurants. Those who persist in the "nasty habit" must do so furtively, almost shamefully. Smoking is withering away. FDA regulation might speed up its disappearance from polite society, but the once-stylish habit is on its way out anyway. Federal regulation amounts to kicking a dying horse.

Legislators push restaurant smoking ban

North Carolina is a step closer to abolishing the "smoking or non-smoking?" question. The N.C. House Committee on Health on Tuesday approved a bill that would prohibit smoking in restaurants and bars, as well as in other workplaces. The bill now goes to another House committee for consideration. A companion bill in the Senate is dormant at the moment.

Although this legislation still has a long way to go, Tuesday's passage is a staggering development. Twenty years ago, few people could have imagined that North Carolina would ban smoking in any place. Tobacco was king, both on the farm and in the legislature. Since then, the health risks of smoking (and of second-hand smoke) have become more widely recognized, and social mores have changed to the point that smoking is no longer acceptable in social situations. Remember when Johnny Carson, Garry Moore and other television hosts would puff away during talk or quiz shows? Viewers would be aghast at such behavior now.

A recent Elon College poll found widespread support in the state for a ban on smoking in restaurants and bars. With less than a quarter of adults smoking and the vast majority of North Carolinians tired of smoke odor tainting their enjoyment of an expensive restaurant meal, it's no wonder that smoking bans have boosted some restaurants' popularity. Although restaurants divide their sections into smoking and non-smoking areas, smoke doesn't abide by those boundaries. Patrons at non-smoking tables are often treated to uninvited whiffs of smoke.

A statutory ban on smoking in restaurants and other places still has a long way to go. Tobacco is still a $550 million crop in this state, which leads the nation in tobacco production, and tobacco interests can hire good lobbyists and persuade legislators. But if the "Act to Prevent Smoking in Public Places and Places of Employment" were put to a statewide referendum, I have little doubt that it would pass by a wide margin.