Some people knew that smoking was dangerous. Everyone knew it was unhealthy, unless they were blind. The cigarette companies covered it up and kept promoting it. Kind of like goyslop is promoted now, even though it kills you.
You know, it's less dangerous when you don't live very long anyways. All cancer is kind of like that. We hear about children's cancer a lot, and breast cancer, but most cancer affects old people. And often you don't treat it because they're too weak to survive the treatment. So oftentimes, you just make people with cancer comfortable at the end, and they die.
Back in the day of unfiltered cigarettes, most people had the basic intellectual capacity to figure coughing brown-black mucus after smoking, and coughing more and more, with more and more blood, over the years, means smoking is bad for you.
Only delusional retards would tell themselves ''ça fait sortir le méchant'' ( ''nu-uh, my smoke sticks actually make the bad stuff come out!'' ).
Non-smokers don't cough the black goo, obviously.
This made filtered cigarettes universal to assuage people's rational fear that smoking would make them sick and die from inhaling smoke. ( Of course it didn't eliminate tobaco-caused diseased, only delayed onset. )
This and ''light'' labels on packages to make people think this box wouldn't make them sick.
People knew. And advertisement campaings were started to make people believe lies, but the truth was always out there and common knowledge.
The thing is, you don't need to work very hard to convince people to keep doing something that feels good. And nicotine causes a dopamine release ( it feels good ). So people who don't want to stop will cling to whatever delusion to rationalize why it's okay. I hate people who do that.
Just own your bad habit instead of trying to make me believe bullshit.
Like fat people. You're fat because you eat too much for your energy needs. STFU with your hormones, metabolism and glands. Own your overeating problem.
Right it's not like top athletes smoked like chimneys. It was a vice that a lot of people had -- people who were still used to dying in ways that were fairly mysterious to them. Smoking was a competing danger of killing a person. Depending on how far back you go, there was a lot of competition.
I was just thinking about all the fat smoking cricketers too. They ate and drank like shit some of them. And it didn't matter all too much, particuarly for baseball and cricket. Yes you need to run a bit, but just hit it pretty good and you're fine.
There's also an effect where it wasn't treated as seriously back in the day, less competative and athletic science wasn't as developed. World class means something new and more elite now.
First 4 minute mile was in 1952. Nearly 2000 people have done it since then.
There's a reason I was a baseball player. I tried soccer. But that involved running ass off all day. Outfield not so much. Batting only in short spurts.
To this day, if I play soccer with people they run their ass off for an hour. I don't know how they do that.
The fight for smoking, like drinking (and to a lesser extent dietary control - fat, sugar, etc) is part of social control and almost always has been.
People knew it was bad in the 50s when it was advertised heavily on tv (do a search on YouTube for flintstones Winston cigarette ads).
That the same people telling you itobacco is evil and should be eradicated from existence are the same people demanding smoking pot be legalized and how helpful it is should tell ya something. It’s not about the science.
While I’m sure there’s a moral/ethical component to some anti-smoking campaigns, I suspect it’s always been more about being an attack on the Tobacco companies who were quite powerful at one time. Same as Code Pink (which disappeared when Obama took office and kept increasing war attacks and then opposed Trump… who actually pulled back on the wars.)
That the same people telling you itobacco is evil and should be eradicated from existence are the same people demanding smoking pot be legalized and how helpful it is should tell ya something. It’s not about the science.
Theoretically someone could be anti-smoking and still pro marijuana since marijuana is used in many forms in medicine and in recreation. If you can still vape, it's hardly different.
but they still want tobacco banned and pot promoted.
Well, yeah, that's dumb. I'm not there; I've just heard the anti-smoking people go on when they wanted to ban it in public. I think everyone has just as much right to the public air. Which basically means you can smoke where you want in public within reason.
That's fine with me. I love pot, and quit cigs 6 years ago. The edible option is great if you have the time and space for a mini psychedelic trip followed by an insatiable appetite and a deep sleep.
Smoking makes you cough, coughing is never associated with a good thing and never feels good either.
Only absolute morons would begin to think something that makes you cough as one of its primary effects isn't bad for you. Which is why the idea that people in history were so stupid only took off once someone that fucking stupid (potheads) started to become common place.
Because I don't think its so much government interference, and more people moving into "science based thinking." So instead of being able to make reasonable conclusions based on obvious and observable reality, they need "Science" to confirm and explain it to them.
And since the way "Progress" works is we must be smarter now than those in the past, it became a quick assumption that anyone prior just didn't know and that's why they did it while we are too enlightened to fall for Big Tobacco's tricks. It can't be a nuanced and complex relationship with something people know is bad but still brings them peace in some way, because then people might start to think that applies to other hedonistic pleasures like sex which is double plus always a good thing.
I think like most things in history, it was exaggerated over time. A pretty good and clear cut example of that, and one that has mostly been shown to have been an overblown myth, is the reaction to the War of the World radioplay and how it "lead to mass hysteria", when it reality they got about a thousand angry letters, of which only about a quarter had actually listened to said radioplay.
Were there people who thought smoking wasn't bad? Sure. And I wouldn't be surprised if many that did recognise smoking was bad didn't realise just how bad. But the idea that it was ever thought of as good is almost definitely revisionist utilising a very small subset of very deluded people that don't represent any larger demographic in any meaningful way.
one that has mostly been shown to have been an overblown myth, is the reaction to the War of the World radioplay and how it "lead to mass hysteria", when it reality they got about a thousand angry letters
This one makes sense, as modern journalism also considers "5 tweets from someone with no power or authority" to be "MASSIVE FAN BACKLASH!!" Most of which have also not seen whatever they are attacking.
More proof that history hasn't changed and people aren't any smarter or dumber, they are just louder and able to organize better.
the idea that it was ever thought of as good is almost definitely revisionist utilising a very small subset of very deluded people that don't represent any larger demographic in any meaningful way.
Maybe the dumb inference was made on the basis of old cigarette commercials with slogans like "Nine out of ten doctors smoke Camels."
People of the past weren't dumber than people of today, they just knew different stuff. But basic-bitch level stuff like "coughing up blood = bad", they knew from the stone age. Women miscarried when they partook too much of the peace pipe, therefore, the gods clearly mean for women not to smoke, it is bad for them. It's not rocket science, it's basic observational skills, and then the society adjusts around it.
Why doesn't everyone just take the spirit-seeing plants all the time? Because they KNEW it wasn't good for long-term societal or personal health. Knights and monks alike would drink just water instead of ale, because they knew that, at the very least, hangovers were a thing. It wasn't some mystery to them, Ancient Egyptian farmers at the cradle of civilization knew that "alcohol -> next day feel sick" was a sequence of events.
I'm addicted to caffeine and refined sugars. I make no illusions that either of them are in any way healthy to me in the amounts and regularity I intake them. 30 years from now when they ban caffeine, they'll say "oh, we didn't know back then", but bullshit. I know it causes heart disease, blood pressure issues, insomnia issues, stress management issues, bloodflow issues, etc etc. Smokers of the bygone era were the same way. That's why so many societies had rules along the lines of women and children not smoking.
There were two different types of thoughts from two separate thought camps. And I'll briefly explain why they were both terrible for you, but in different ways.
There was camp 1: "probably bad for you, but no studies existed that were available to the public that could verify the claims without really expensive lawfare to get them to release the info."
And camp 2: "Intentionally withholding evidence that the product is bad, to continue selling it."
Cigarettes, to use the OP's example, was part of camp 1. Probably bad for you, but not a lot of empirical evidence available to the common man to back it up. I think people knew that inhaling smoke is bad for you, after all smoke inhalation killed more people than fire ever has. But nicotine is in the top 10 most addictive chemicals on the planet, so quitting isn't exactly easy.
Talcum powder is in camp 2. They knew it was bad in the 1920s, because it naturally forms almost always near asbestos. And thinking of that, they knew asbestos was bad in the 20s, but didn't really do anything about it until the 1960s. And even then the idea was "Don't disturb it if the asbestos wrapped pipes are fine". Wholesale removals and replacements didn't start happening until the late 1980s into the 2000s.
Talcum powder on the other hand was found to contain much higher traces of asbestos than they ever let on. Because of the lawsuit, we now know of an in house study by Johnson & Johnson done in 1972 or 1973 (I forget off hand which) that there was dangerous levels of asbestos in their talcum powder. J&J chose to hide that info from consumers until 2018 when an independant lab was tasked in testing it, because of the cancer and death thought to be caused by the product, and got red flagged.
Between these two products alone, there are at least 7 different types of cancers you could have.
Not to mention lead in everything from paint to gasoline. And all the other things out there just waiting to attribute to your death if you're near it/get it on you/use it without being told of the risks/etc.
At this point, I think just being alive is incredible in the age of "Who cares if your loved ones died, we made enough money to have a healthy profit margin and a compensation fund."
"We didn't know" is the ultimate cope of the normie NPC.
Addressing the NPC: what do you mean, "we"? You chose not to know. You chose to listen to some guy who got out in front of a camera wearing a white coat, or a news anchor suit and tie, or a reflective vest and hard hat -- specifically to trick you into thinking he's somehow more than just a mere human -- and believed what he had to say.
No no no, of course it's not your fault that drinking 2L of soda a day gave you diabetes because it wasn't a newspaper headline. Of course it's not your fault for marrying that whore because billboards didn't show that chart of prior partners and satisfaction in marriage. Of course it's not your fault you got cancer from that pill that was advertised on CNN 24/7. "We didn't know."
They didn't know because they didn't care to know. Using their brains is just as painful as some soyboy carrying a 50 pound box up a flight of stairs. They won't do it. So they turn to the social circle as an excuse paying no regard to how utterly pathetic the message "we didn't know" actually sends.
Some people knew that smoking was dangerous. Everyone knew it was unhealthy, unless they were blind. The cigarette companies covered it up and kept promoting it. Kind of like goyslop is promoted now, even though it kills you.
You know, it's less dangerous when you don't live very long anyways. All cancer is kind of like that. We hear about children's cancer a lot, and breast cancer, but most cancer affects old people. And often you don't treat it because they're too weak to survive the treatment. So oftentimes, you just make people with cancer comfortable at the end, and they die.
Cancer is forked.
Genetic cancers present young and in middle-aged.
Garden variety cancers kill the old and are more a function of damage build-up and just living too long.
Back in the day of unfiltered cigarettes, most people had the basic intellectual capacity to figure coughing brown-black mucus after smoking, and coughing more and more, with more and more blood, over the years, means smoking is bad for you.
Only delusional retards would tell themselves ''ça fait sortir le méchant'' ( ''nu-uh, my smoke sticks actually make the bad stuff come out!'' ).
Non-smokers don't cough the black goo, obviously.
This made filtered cigarettes universal to assuage people's rational fear that smoking would make them sick and die from inhaling smoke. ( Of course it didn't eliminate tobaco-caused diseased, only delayed onset. )
This and ''light'' labels on packages to make people think this box wouldn't make them sick.
People knew. And advertisement campaings were started to make people believe lies, but the truth was always out there and common knowledge.
The thing is, you don't need to work very hard to convince people to keep doing something that feels good. And nicotine causes a dopamine release ( it feels good ). So people who don't want to stop will cling to whatever delusion to rationalize why it's okay. I hate people who do that.
Just own your bad habit instead of trying to make me believe bullshit.
Like fat people. You're fat because you eat too much for your energy needs. STFU with your hormones, metabolism and glands. Own your overeating problem.
Right it's not like top athletes smoked like chimneys. It was a vice that a lot of people had -- people who were still used to dying in ways that were fairly mysterious to them. Smoking was a competing danger of killing a person. Depending on how far back you go, there was a lot of competition.
This is why you see all sorts of pro baseball players smoking in the dugout until about 1970.
Lol I said athletes.
True. Babe Ruth's diet and John Kruk, formerly of the Phillies, come to mind.
I was just thinking about all the fat smoking cricketers too. They ate and drank like shit some of them. And it didn't matter all too much, particuarly for baseball and cricket. Yes you need to run a bit, but just hit it pretty good and you're fine.
There's also an effect where it wasn't treated as seriously back in the day, less competative and athletic science wasn't as developed. World class means something new and more elite now.
First 4 minute mile was in 1952. Nearly 2000 people have done it since then.
There's a reason I was a baseball player. I tried soccer. But that involved running ass off all day. Outfield not so much. Batting only in short spurts.
To this day, if I play soccer with people they run their ass off for an hour. I don't know how they do that.
The fight for smoking, like drinking (and to a lesser extent dietary control - fat, sugar, etc) is part of social control and almost always has been.
People knew it was bad in the 50s when it was advertised heavily on tv (do a search on YouTube for flintstones Winston cigarette ads).
That the same people telling you itobacco is evil and should be eradicated from existence are the same people demanding smoking pot be legalized and how helpful it is should tell ya something. It’s not about the science.
While I’m sure there’s a moral/ethical component to some anti-smoking campaigns, I suspect it’s always been more about being an attack on the Tobacco companies who were quite powerful at one time. Same as Code Pink (which disappeared when Obama took office and kept increasing war attacks and then opposed Trump… who actually pulled back on the wars.)
Theoretically someone could be anti-smoking and still pro marijuana since marijuana is used in many forms in medicine and in recreation. If you can still vape, it's hardly different.
Theoretically tobacco also has medicinal and recreational uses and can be chewed and also vaped… but they still want tobacco banned and pot promoted.
Well, yeah, that's dumb. I'm not there; I've just heard the anti-smoking people go on when they wanted to ban it in public. I think everyone has just as much right to the public air. Which basically means you can smoke where you want in public within reason.
That's fine with me. I love pot, and quit cigs 6 years ago. The edible option is great if you have the time and space for a mini psychedelic trip followed by an insatiable appetite and a deep sleep.
Smoking makes you cough, coughing is never associated with a good thing and never feels good either.
Only absolute morons would begin to think something that makes you cough as one of its primary effects isn't bad for you. Which is why the idea that people in history were so stupid only took off once someone that fucking stupid (potheads) started to become common place.
Because I don't think its so much government interference, and more people moving into "science based thinking." So instead of being able to make reasonable conclusions based on obvious and observable reality, they need "Science" to confirm and explain it to them.
And since the way "Progress" works is we must be smarter now than those in the past, it became a quick assumption that anyone prior just didn't know and that's why they did it while we are too enlightened to fall for Big Tobacco's tricks. It can't be a nuanced and complex relationship with something people know is bad but still brings them peace in some way, because then people might start to think that applies to other hedonistic pleasures like sex which is double plus always a good thing.
I think like most things in history, it was exaggerated over time. A pretty good and clear cut example of that, and one that has mostly been shown to have been an overblown myth, is the reaction to the War of the World radioplay and how it "lead to mass hysteria", when it reality they got about a thousand angry letters, of which only about a quarter had actually listened to said radioplay.
Were there people who thought smoking wasn't bad? Sure. And I wouldn't be surprised if many that did recognise smoking was bad didn't realise just how bad. But the idea that it was ever thought of as good is almost definitely revisionist utilising a very small subset of very deluded people that don't represent any larger demographic in any meaningful way.
This one makes sense, as modern journalism also considers "5 tweets from someone with no power or authority" to be "MASSIVE FAN BACKLASH!!" Most of which have also not seen whatever they are attacking.
More proof that history hasn't changed and people aren't any smarter or dumber, they are just louder and able to organize better.
Maybe the dumb inference was made on the basis of old cigarette commercials with slogans like "Nine out of ten doctors smoke Camels."
People of the past weren't dumber than people of today, they just knew different stuff. But basic-bitch level stuff like "coughing up blood = bad", they knew from the stone age. Women miscarried when they partook too much of the peace pipe, therefore, the gods clearly mean for women not to smoke, it is bad for them. It's not rocket science, it's basic observational skills, and then the society adjusts around it.
Why doesn't everyone just take the spirit-seeing plants all the time? Because they KNEW it wasn't good for long-term societal or personal health. Knights and monks alike would drink just water instead of ale, because they knew that, at the very least, hangovers were a thing. It wasn't some mystery to them, Ancient Egyptian farmers at the cradle of civilization knew that "alcohol -> next day feel sick" was a sequence of events.
I'm addicted to caffeine and refined sugars. I make no illusions that either of them are in any way healthy to me in the amounts and regularity I intake them. 30 years from now when they ban caffeine, they'll say "oh, we didn't know back then", but bullshit. I know it causes heart disease, blood pressure issues, insomnia issues, stress management issues, bloodflow issues, etc etc. Smokers of the bygone era were the same way. That's why so many societies had rules along the lines of women and children not smoking.
"Opus old buddy, it's possible the American Tobacco Institute's health research is, well, biased..." -Berkeley Breathed
There were two different types of thoughts from two separate thought camps. And I'll briefly explain why they were both terrible for you, but in different ways.
There was camp 1: "probably bad for you, but no studies existed that were available to the public that could verify the claims without really expensive lawfare to get them to release the info."
And camp 2: "Intentionally withholding evidence that the product is bad, to continue selling it."
Cigarettes, to use the OP's example, was part of camp 1. Probably bad for you, but not a lot of empirical evidence available to the common man to back it up. I think people knew that inhaling smoke is bad for you, after all smoke inhalation killed more people than fire ever has. But nicotine is in the top 10 most addictive chemicals on the planet, so quitting isn't exactly easy.
Talcum powder is in camp 2. They knew it was bad in the 1920s, because it naturally forms almost always near asbestos. And thinking of that, they knew asbestos was bad in the 20s, but didn't really do anything about it until the 1960s. And even then the idea was "Don't disturb it if the asbestos wrapped pipes are fine". Wholesale removals and replacements didn't start happening until the late 1980s into the 2000s.
Talcum powder on the other hand was found to contain much higher traces of asbestos than they ever let on. Because of the lawsuit, we now know of an in house study by Johnson & Johnson done in 1972 or 1973 (I forget off hand which) that there was dangerous levels of asbestos in their talcum powder. J&J chose to hide that info from consumers until 2018 when an independant lab was tasked in testing it, because of the cancer and death thought to be caused by the product, and got red flagged.
Between these two products alone, there are at least 7 different types of cancers you could have.
Not to mention lead in everything from paint to gasoline. And all the other things out there just waiting to attribute to your death if you're near it/get it on you/use it without being told of the risks/etc.
At this point, I think just being alive is incredible in the age of "Who cares if your loved ones died, we made enough money to have a healthy profit margin and a compensation fund."
"We didn't know" is the ultimate cope of the normie NPC.
Addressing the NPC: what do you mean, "we"? You chose not to know. You chose to listen to some guy who got out in front of a camera wearing a white coat, or a news anchor suit and tie, or a reflective vest and hard hat -- specifically to trick you into thinking he's somehow more than just a mere human -- and believed what he had to say.
No no no, of course it's not your fault that drinking 2L of soda a day gave you diabetes because it wasn't a newspaper headline. Of course it's not your fault for marrying that whore because billboards didn't show that chart of prior partners and satisfaction in marriage. Of course it's not your fault you got cancer from that pill that was advertised on CNN 24/7. "We didn't know."
They didn't know because they didn't care to know. Using their brains is just as painful as some soyboy carrying a 50 pound box up a flight of stairs. They won't do it. So they turn to the social circle as an excuse paying no regard to how utterly pathetic the message "we didn't know" actually sends.
someone on here once floated a theory that smoking was blamed for the aftereffects of all the nuclear testing.
It astounds me that some people still defend smoking because "it boosts testosterone."
Okay.
At what cost?
I looked it up, seems like a 13-15% increase. 15% T boost is pretty big, and the societal implications of low T are a bigger concern atm.
You've just convinced me on cigars being issued to every adult male. Or snuff or snus.
Smoking probably caused more heart disease deaths BITD that weren't necessarily linked that may have killed off people before cancers could develop.
The treatment of heart disease with stents and bypass surgeries is really a modern postwar invention.
Any heart disease used to just kill people, particularly men.
WWI soldiers called them "coffin nails." I think there's a double meaning there.