Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:
- Before cigarette advertisements were regulated by the federal government, companies made lots of crack-pot health claims.
- However, one such claim has held up under scientific scrutiny: Smokers are less likely to develop Parkinson’s disease.
- The cause isn't cigarettes, but low-dose carbon monoxide—one of the 7,000 chemicals in cigarette smoke.
Before the federal government required stark, black-and-white warning labels on cigarette packaging, tobacco companies often marketed their addictive wares with laughable health claims by modern standards. In 1930, a doctor named Edward Roehrig claimed that Thompson’s Mell-O-Well cigars were the “health cigar” (he later tragically died of lung cancer).
A 1937 advertisement by Philip Morris claimed that their cigarettes cleared up “every case of irritation of the nose and throat due to smoking” caused by other brands. And a 1946 ad said Camels were supposedly the brand of choice for doctors nationwide (and the same ad also perplexingly proclaimed that cigarettes were good for your “T-zone”).
