Tobacco companies took aim at female smokers

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8048928/

Tobacco companies did elaborate research on women to figure out how to hook them on smoking — even toying with the idea of chocolate-flavored cigarettes that would curb appetite, according to a new analysis.

Researchers at Harvard University’s School of Public Health said they examined more than 7 million documents — some dating back to 1969, others as recent as 2000 — for new details about the industry’s efforts to lure more women smokers.

Carrie Carpenter, the study’s lead author, said companies’ research went far beyond a marketing or advertising campaign.

“They did so much research in such a sophisticated way,” she said. “Women should know how far the tobacco industry went to exploit them.”

[MuseRider]

1. You've Come A Long Way Baby

That hooked me, or at least made it look just sooo cool. It took me years to quit.

Funny thing, I quit partly by picturing those type of people as making millions off of me.

[phoebe]

2. try books by Allen Carr - he's 'the' guy when it comes to quitting

n/t

[DeepModem Mom]

3. Not at all surprised -- Joe Camel was meant to hook kids. nt

[LeighAnn]

4. I read an article in 1988 about a study saying smoking

raised a person's metabolism and caused most people to lose 10 lbs. As a weight conscience 21-year old who didn't smoke, it seemed like the ticket to losing those 10 nagging pounds I could never get rid of.

It worked, but I've always suspected that the tobacco industry was responsible for the study and the publicity surrounding it.

[evermind]

5. They were doing this from way back

in the twenties. Arch PR person Edward Bernays was hired specifically to lure women into smoking. In his "Torches of Freedom" campaign, he hired 10 women to pose as suffragettes demanding women's rights to smoke, and staged a march - his fake suffragettes wearing sashes with slogans like "torches of freedom". His excellent press contacts insured the fake event got extensive newspaper coverage.

Bernays (a nephew of Sigmund Freud) constructed the campaign on the advice of his hired shrink, A.A. Brill:

At Bernays’ suggestion, Hill paid for a consulting session with the Psychoanalyst A.A. Brill, who established the psychological parameters of the campaign. In a manner more Watsonian than Freudian, Brill linked cigarettes with the new woman. Cigarettes stood for liberation from children and child-rearing. Cigarettes were like contraceptives; they were associated with sex without issue. They appealed to women who were willing to neuter themselves sexually in their admiration of masculine qualities. “It is perfectly normal for women to want to smoke cigarettes,� Brill told Hill. “The emancipation of women has suppressed many of their feminine desires. More women now do the same work as men do. Many women bear no children; those who do bear have fewer children. Feminine traits are masked. Cigarettes, which are equated with men, become torches of freedom.�

(From: http://www.culturewars.com/CultureWars/1999/torches.html )

The techniques Bernays are pioneered in almost omnipresent use today.

There's an interesting article on Bernays and Karl Rove at http://www.americanidealism.com/articles/karl-rove-and-the-spectre-of-freuds-nephew.html and a bio of Bernays, including his involvement in propagandizing war at http://www.everything2.com/?node=edward+l.+bernays

From that bio:

... it seems Bernays' writings and Bernays-style PR played a large part in defining the realities of Nazi Germany, too: according to Bernays' autobiography Biography of an Idea, he was informed by Hans Weigand, respected foreign correspondent, that Nazi propaganda maestro, Joseph Goebbels "was using my book Crystallizing Public Opinion as a basis for his destructive campaign against the Jews of Germany";

[Ian David]

7. Bernays also instructed his children not to let their mother smoke

He told them that if they find cigarettes in the house, they should break them in half and flush them down the toilet.

[UpInArms]

9. Bernays was also known as the father of propaganda ...... eom

[Zorra]

6. Tribute to Elwood P. Schmendrick, inventor of the feminine smoking pose.

:P

edit: Do tobacco companies pay film makers to include filmstars smoking cigarettes in films?

100 to 1 says they do, on or off the books.

[Ernesto]

8. I think this pretty well sums it up for all smokers..........

“We can safely conclude that the strength of cigarettes that are purchased by women is related to their degree of neuroticism,” the report stated.