Using the Medical Profession to Sell Cigarettes

The Left image is an ad in the Wall-street Journal 1930 showing a doctor offering a pack of Lucky Strikes.

Trust Me I’m Your Doctor, and Why Not Have a Cigarette ?

Here is a Camel Cigarette television ad, part of an advertising campaign from the year 1949,  which used the medical profession to convince the American Public that smoking is actually good for you.

More doctors smoke Camel than any other cigarette…

The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) started published cigarette ads in 1933 until 1953

Chesterfield Ads:

In 1933, Chesterfield began ads in the New York State Journal of Medicine stating their cigarettes were “Just as pure as the water you drink… and practically untouched by human hands.”

Camel Ads:

The campaign began in 1946 and ran for eight years in magazines and on the radio. This ad appeared in medical journals and mass media: ” More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette.”

Another ad said:   “Family physicians, surgeons, diagnosticians, nose and throat specialists, doctors in every branch of medicine… a total of 113,597 doctors… were asked the question: ‘What cigarette do you smoke?’ And more of them named Camel as their smoke than any other cigarette! Three independent research groups found this to be a fact. You see, doctors too smoke for pleasure. That full Camel flavor is just as appealing to a doctor’s taste as to yours… that marvelous Camel mildness means just as much to his throat as to yours.”

Trust Me I’m Your Doctor, Have Another Cigarette.

For more on this see: “The Doctors’ Choice Is America’s Choice”  The Physician in US Cigarette Advertisements, 1930–1953

References

1) http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pubmed&pubmedid=16434689

Am J Public Health. 2006 February; 96(2): 222–232.
“The Doctors’ Choice Is America’s Choice”  The Physician in US Cigarette Advertisements, 1930–1953 by Martha N. Gardner, PhD and Allan M. Brandt, PhD

Advertisement: “20,679* physicians say ‘LUCKIES are less irritating.’ ”Source. Magazine of Wall Street . July 26, 1930.

FIGURE 2—
Advertisement: “A report on the findings of a group of doctors.*”Source. Saturday Evening Post. October 16, 1937.

FIGURE 4—
Advertisement from the Camels “More Doctors” series: “I’m going to grow a hundred years old!”Source. Good Housekeeping. July 1946.

Advertisement: “How mild can a cigarette be?”
Source. Ohio State Journal of Medicine. July 1949;45:670.

FIGURE 6—
Actor Fredric March in an advertisement for L&M Filters: “This Is It.”Source. Life Magazine . February 22, 1954.

2) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-y_N4u0uRQ

1949 TV commercial from Camel cigarettes. What cigarette do you smoke Doctor? Doctors, American Medical Association hawked cigarettes as healthy for consumers

The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published its first cigarette advertisement in 1933, stating that it had done so only “after careful consideration of the extent to which cigarettes were used by physicians in practice.” These advertisements continued for 20 years. The same year, Chesterfield began running ads in the New York State Journal of Medicine, with the claim that its cigarettes were “Just as pure as the water you drink… and practically untouched by human hands.”

In medical journals and in the popular media, one of the most infamous cigarette advertising slogans was associated with the Camel brand: “More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette.” The campaign began in 1946 and ran for eight years in magazines and on the radio. The ads included this message:

“Family physicians, surgeons, diagnosticians, nose and throat specialists, doctors in every branch of medicine… a total of 113,597 doctors… were asked the question: ‘What cigarette do you smoke?’ And more of them named Camel as their smoke than any other cigarette! Three independent research groups found this to be a fact. You see, doctors too smoke for pleasure. That full Camel flavor is just as appealing to a doctor’s taste as to yours… that marvelous Camel mildness means just as much to his throat as to yours.”

Jeffrey Dach MD (c) 2013 This article may be reproduced on the internet, provided a link is given to the original article.

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