Posted on December 4, 2001 at 11:30 a.m.
BIRMINGHAM, AL — Once upon a time, more doctors smoked Camels than any other cigarette. At least, that’s what the RJ Reynolds tobacco company claimed. From the 1920’s through the 1950’s, many cigarette manufacturers used images of medical professionals and their implied endorsements to help sell their products. Tobacco companies even advertised in the New England Medical Journal and other respected medical journals.
The Alabama Museum of the Health Sciences at UAB’s (University of Alabama at Birmingham) Reynolds Historical Library presents a display of cigarette advertising titled “When 'More Doctors Smoke Camels'… A Century of Health Claims in Cigarette Advertisements.” The exhibit was prepared by Dr. Alan Blum, professor of family medicine and director and founder of the Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society, part of the University of Alabama College of Community Health Sciences, Tuscaloosa.
“Ads from this period often carried wide-ranging medical claims and depicted cigarette-touting physicians in the company of endorsers such as movie stars and sports heroes,” says Blum. “Some ads paid tribute to medical pioneers in an effort to associate themselves with great advancements in science.”
The museum display features 25 ads selected from thousands that Blum has collected. One 1946 ad tells you “24 hours a day, your doctor is on duty ... a few winks of sleep, a few puffs of a cigarette …and he’s back at the job again.” Other ads claim cigarettes promote good digestion, or beat stress.
The exhibit also includes examples of cigarette advertising aimed directly at physicians. A 1949 ad in the Journal of the American Medical Association boasted that scientific studies showed Phillip Morris cigarettes were less irritating, and suggested that physicians should recommend them to their patients.
“In the early 1950’s, 67 percent of physicians smoked,” says Blum, “although they were among the first group to quit as the scientific evidence of health risks began to mount. But cigarette advertising appeared in medical journals as late as 1983.”
The last ad in the exhibit is for Omni, introduced in 2001 by the Ligget Company and advertised in People magazine as having less carcinogens.
“This is just the latest incarnation in a long line of false advertising,” noted Blum. “It’s pure, unadulterated hokum and just as deceptive as Ligget and Meyers ads from the 1950’s that proclaimed, ‘Stay safe, smoke Chesterfield’ and ‘L and M, just what the doctor ordered.”
The exhibit will run through January 31, 2002, in the gallery between the Reynolds Historical Library and the Ireland Room, on the third floor of the Lister Hill Library for the Health Sciences, 1700 University Boulevard. Call (205) 934-4475 for more information.