In short
Stuff You Should Know: Episode Summary
Episode Title
The Humble and Deadly Cigarette
Episode Description This episode focuses on the cigarette itself, exploring its history, construction, and the cultural implications surrounding its use, rather than discussing smoking-related health issues or legal matters.
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Key Concepts and Discussions
Introduction to Cigarettes
- Cigarettes are discussed as a uniquely destructive invention, with a history that predates their popularity.
- Originated in Spain during the early 16th century, where cigar remnants were repurposed into smaller, hand-rolled smokes (cigarettes).
The Anatomy of a Cigarette
- Standard cigarettes are approximately 84 millimeters long and typically sold in packs of 20.
- Officially classified as "heated tobacco products."
- Contains cut tobacco, various additives (over 599), and is wrapped in porous paper.
Smoking Mechanics
- Mainstream Smoke vs. Side Stream Smoke:
- Mainstream smoke is inhaled through the filter, while side stream smoke comes from the burning end.
- Filters are designed to give smokers a false sense of security regarding harm reduction.
Environmental Impact
- Cigarette butts are the most littered item globally, with 4.1 trillion discarded annually.
- Common misconception: many smokers believe filters are biodegradable, whereas they are actually photodegradable.
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Historical Context Rise of Cigarettes
- Cigarettes gained popularity during wars, providing comfort and a quick nicotine fix for soldiers.
- Post-World War I, cigarette consumption skyrocketed, leading to the establishment of major companies like Philip Morris and the introduction of mass production techniques.
Cultural Perception Changes
- Initially associated with juvenile delinquency among youth in the U.S.
- Eventually became glamorized through advertising, particularly targeting women.
Advertising and Marketing
- Notable campaigns portrayed smoking as a symbol of independence and glamour.
- Cigarette brands like Marlboro were originally marketed toward women but shifted to appeal to men with the "Marlboro Man" campaign.
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Health and Addiction Recognition of Health Risks
- Early warnings about the dangers of smoking emerged as early as the 1760s.
- Significant studies in the 20th century established a strong link between smoking and serious health issues, including lung cancer.
Legislative Responses
- Surgeon General reports and mandates on warning labels began in the 1960s, gradually leading to restrictions on advertising and smoking in public places.
Decline in Smoking Rates
- Smoking rates have significantly declined over the past decades, with a drop from 42% of adults in 1965 to about 11% in 2023.
- New generations, particularly Gen Z, are showing lower rates of smoking and vaping.
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Current Trends and Issues Menthol Cigarettes
- Menthol cigarettes are heavily marketed to African American communities, with 85% of black smokers preferring menthols.
- The exemption of menthol from flavor bans illustrates ongoing targeting and public health challenges.
Modern Anti-Tobacco Efforts
- The episode notes a significant reduction in youth vaping rates over a short time frame, possibly due to increased awareness and anti-vaping campaigns.
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Conclusion The episode concludes with a reflection on the complex history of cigarettes, highlighting their transition from luxury items to widely consumed products, the controversies surrounding their marketing, and the ongoing efforts to reduce their use in society.
Key Takeaways
- Cigarettes are a product with a rich historical background, significant environmental impact, and serious health risks.
- There has been a notable cultural shift in the perception of smoking, especially among younger generations.
- Ongoing health campaigns and regulations are shaping the future landscape of tobacco consumption.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.
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1:01John Polk story on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
1:19Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here too, and we're just smoking, smoking, feel all right, just keep on choking. And this is Seppie Cheney. Boston. Yeah, okay. Yep, that's right. That was in my head. I was getting there. I thought you were going to go with Smoking in the Boys Room. No, I always thought that was just kind of lame. Yeah, that was a remake, you know, Motley Crue. Covered it. I don't remember who did the original, do you? No, I don't remember. You don't need to email in and tell us. That's all right. If we're curious enough, we'll go look it up.
1:58Or you can. Feel free. Okay. Okay, tell someone not to email Now I do want to know I'm going to look while you talk Well, I think you should wait for the email Maybe the writer of that song is listening Brownsville Station Okay, there you go I never in a million years would have come with that Because I've never heard those two words together as a band name Oh, well, you've never taken a train there then Have you ever heard of Brownsville Station? Just when I took a train to Brownsville Station That's gross, I think I know what you're talking about Oh, God. All right. Let's get off this and get on something even grosser, which is cigarettes.
2:37Nice. And this was from our from our pal, Julia. And I just sort of I commissioned this one because I was like, you know what? Let's just do one on the cigarette itself. Not like smoking and not the lawsuits and all that stuff or lung cancer, but just on the thing, the object. and Julia sent us an article called The Cigarette Itself, appropriately titled. And I learned a lot in this one, chiefly, that the cigarette was born in Spain in the early 16th century when cigar smokers, cigars were around and it was sort of a luxury item for the wealthy at the time because they were hand-rolled and imported from Mexico and South America.
3:17But when they would stub out that last half inch of a cigar or whatever, people that didn't have as much money would come along, grab that thing, and take out the tobacco, you know, grind it up and pick it apart a little bit, and wrap it in paper and smoke it. And that was a little cigar or a cigarillo. Isn't that amazing? Yeah. I mean, I never thought about the word cigarette being a play on cigar. Oh, really? Like a tiny cigar. Like, because I always heard cigarillo, but like a kitchenette, a cigarette is just like the same sort of version of that. Ironically, I never thought of a kitchenette as a small version of a kitchen.
3:59Come on. So, Chuck, let's just hold our horses here. Before we go any further into the history, let's give a few basics about the cigarette. Great. So they're about 84 millimeters long, a standard cigarette. and for reference, that's about the length of a cigarette. They're sold in packs of 20. And if you really want to get technical about a cigarette next time you're at a party and you're bumming one from somebody or castigating somebody for smoking, even better, you can say that a cigarette is also technically known as a heated tobacco product. That's right. As we'll see, a camel first started putting them in packs of 20.
4:43and I could not find out if, I think they did that to match the number of matches in a matchbook, which is 20. Oh, really? I'm pretty sure that's the story. I wish somebody would have told the hot dog makers that because, you know, you get the buns of eight or the pack of eight hot dogs and buns of six. I can never keep up these days with witches. Yeah, that just still doesn't make any sense at all. But yeah, I'm pretty sure that they put it in a pack of 20 eventually to match the matches in a matchbook. But that may also be apocryphal. Who knows? That's a good one, though. But what cigarettes are for is to deliver nicotine to your body, which is a feel-good chemical that is naturally occurring in tobacco.
5:26And the whole point is to, with a pipe, a cigar, a cigarette, or anything like that, an e-cig, is to get you that nicotine, to get you addicted to it, to eventually kill you from it. Yeah, it's crazy. but that's essentially the point. And I think before the advent of mass-produced cigarettes, maybe you had a lesser chance of developing all sorts of hideous cancers and other diseases, but even if that's not true or even if it is true, it doesn't matter because we live in the age of mass-produced cigarettes and these things are exquisitely engineered products that so much time and money and effort has gone into and so much research that most of what we know about cigarettes, what cigarettes do to the human body, how addictive they are, comes from the research the tobacco companies did over the decades that they kept that eventually had to be handed over to the state attorneys general who sued them back in the 90s.
6:29Yeah, it's crazy how it all panned out. If you're looking at, you know, and Julia kind of breaks it down with the white end and the brown end, but there are plenty of cigarettes that are white through and through, meaning the filter end is the same color. But the tobacco end is a filler of cut tobacco leaves and then plenty of additives. I think, how many did they admit? 599. $699. Yeah, they wanted to get to$600 so bad. But they finally, in 1994, released their additives, and it was a list$599 long, which is crazy to think about. I think they had$600, but some very sharp-eyed tobacco lobbyist was like, uh, uh, you got arsenic in here twice.
7:13So it says cut tobacco leaves. It's held in a porous wrapped paper that is sealed by an adhesive. and if you'll look closely, there's printed information on that paper that you're also smoking and you're going to be burning when you're smoking that tobacco, that paper, those additives, that ink, that adhesive, and everything. And the smoke that comes out, and these are words I did not know, the smoke that comes just from a burning cigarette sitting there is called side stream smoke. The stuff that you inhale is called mainstream smoke. Yeah, the mainstream smoke comes out of the filter in. You draw through the filter and the smoke that comes out.
7:51That's the mainstream smoke. The filter, as we'll see, it does something a little bit here or there, but not really. It's essentially to give smokers the illusion that they're preventing some sort of harm to themselves when they actually aren't. Another illusion is that these cigarette butts, which are the most littered item in the entire world. I saw something like 4.1 trillion cigarette butts are littered, not thrown away, littered every year around the world. And a common misconception among smokers is that they're biodegradable. They're not. They're photodegradable, not biodegradable, which is a real problem because they kind of, well, they litter all over the place and they're a type of plastic.
8:38Yeah, those filters are cellulose acetate. And there are companies that put charcoal in there, but because charcoal is a great filter generally, naturally. But there aren't any studies that show that charcoal in a filter helps at all. as far as like health outcomes or anything like that. There are two paper wraps on the filter and there's a plug wrap around the actual filter. And then there is, if it's a brown filter, there's the brown, it's called tipping paper around the plug wrap. And that is also sealed up so that, you know, you don't want that smoke coming out of the side of the filter. You want it going into your mouth.
9:14And then that filter is also treated. They changed the pH on that filter to purposefully turn it brown as you smoke. So you look and you see, man, look at all that brown stuff that's not getting into my lungs. It fooled me for 20 years. Up until a couple days ago, I had no idea that that was the case. Yeah, just one of the dirty tricks that cigarette manufacturers use and still use. That's just nuts. So let's go back to the cigarillo, shall we? Let's do it. So the Cigarillo, I think you said it was the early 16th century, so the early 1500s, right after the Age of Discovery kicked off, right? And it took all the way to the late 1700s before it really started to spread outward into Italy and Portugal, which are not that far away.
10:04Apparently, people didn't think that much of the Cigarillo by then. But as Europe started to go to war with itself, the cigarillo kind of hitchhiked to the fronts and was like, hey, what do you guys think about me? Pretty great, huh? Yeah, I mean, it's crazy. The rise of the cigarette is tied directly to the various wars over the years. And the fact that soldiers wanted to smoke, it helped calm their nerves. I think it was a comfort piece. I bet a cigarette, and kids, don't ever try it. Don't ever even try it. But I bet when you're a war, sitting in a foxhole in miserable conditions, I bet that cigarette is one of the few pleasures that comes your way.
10:47you know yeah i bet that's a great cigarette to smoke i would think so too yeah so anyway uh french and british soldiers discovered them in the early 1800s during the napoleonic wars and this is where the french came up with the word cigarette instead of cigarillo and the crimean war uh around the middle of the century came along a new generation of british and French soldiers got this you got these cigarettes with that that pretty harsh Turkish tobacco. They said we love this stuff. They brought it home and there was a tobacconist named Philip Morris that had a shop on Bond Street in 1847 where he was selling cigars and tobacco products and he was like I'm going to start making cigarettes.
11:35So yeah okay so Philip Morris the The Philip Morris Company, one of the largest producers of cigarettes in the entire world, is directly related to Philip Morris? It's not just like a shout out or something like that? Oh, I never looked that up, but I just assumed that it was eventually became the big company. I mean, it would make sense because a lot of a lot of these companies did grow out or were consolidated by larger companies. A lot of the original cigarette companies. So it's entirely possible for sure. But regardless, he was one of the people who brought it to London and made it kind of like a fancy thing, which is really surprising because, Chuck, in America, it went a totally different way when it really became a thing in the United States.
12:24as we'll see, it became associated essentially with juvenile delinquents at first. It was not a fancy, like a Bond Street type thing to do. It was kids playing craps rather than going to school were smoking cigarettes too. Yeah. Ne 'er-do-wells. Yes. Ne 'er-do-wells. So at Philip Morris's Bond Street tobacco store, they started making their own cigarettes. They were not mass produced, Obviously, he had people hand rolling just like they did with cigars, but they were pretty good. They would get out. They would pump out like three or four a minute, which is pretty fast. They were pretty expensive as a result.
13:04And a couple of things happened that really made cigarettes, you know, way more widespread. One was the invention of a rolling machine, like a machine that could pump out, you know, eventually like two hundred and fifty thousand a day for a company. and the American cigarette, which used a combination sometimes of Turkish tobacco or sometimes just straight up American tobacco that was a lot less harsh and more palatable for, I guess, American appetites. Smooth, mild. So, yeah, there was a guy named James Duke who was a Durham, North Carolina tobacco heir. And I think I remember correctly when we went to Durham for our show recently, I think both times, They have like a big Duke stencil on a like a smokestack at some place.
13:52Oh, that's funny. I'm pretty sure. On a smokestack? Yeah, he created W. Duke Sons and Company in 1883 to start making cigarettes. Sorry, 1881. By 1883, he was making$250 ,000 a day thanks to the invention of James Bonsack, who created that cigarette rolling machine that you mentioned earlier that could roll 200 cigarettes per minute. Yeah, that's quite an increase from three or four over there on Bond Street. So Duke said, hey, give me a deal. I'll buy a few of those things if you give me a good price on them. He's like a wrong. Yeah, exactly. And he said, sure. And he said, all right, all you cigarette rollers, you're out of business.
14:36And they said, no, you can't hire a machine to do work that humans do. And he said, watch me. And so he put these machines in. All of a sudden, they were a lot cheaper to sell, to make and to sell. They were readily available. And like you said, they were smoother and they got popular, at least with the juveniles. But that would be the first step toward making them a little more mainstream. But it is interesting that they were, I think in 1900, 2 % of the market was tobacco market with cigarettes. People were still really into chewing tobacco at the time and dipping snuff. Yeah, people love that kind of stuff.
15:13So by the 1890s, though, this was enough of a thing that kids were smoking cigarettes that as early as the 1890s, states started to pass bans on selling cigarettes to minors. Isn't that interesting? Yeah. I mean, I think I didn't think they cared about children at all back then. Apparently, they're they're like, hey, this this doesn't look good. These kids walking around smoking like they're seven years old. They're like, what are you doing out of the coal mine? Right. Exactly. Do you want to keep going and talk about where the cigarette really broke out in America, or do you want to take a break first?
15:46I think it's break time, buddy. Okay. We're going to take a break, everybody. We just decided. Not a smoke break, just a break. New year, new goals, and in this economy, a better money plan is more necessary than ever. I am Matt. And I'm Joel. We are from the How to Money podcast, and every week we help you to spend smarter, save more, and make sense of what's going on out there. If you want 2026 to be the year you finally feel in control of your money, we're here to give you the tools and advice to help you make it happen. Listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
16:21Hi, I'm Dr. Priyanka Wally. And I'm Hari Kondabolu. It's a new year, and on the podcast Health Stuff, we're resetting the way we talk about our health. Which means being honest about what we know, what we don't know, and how messy it can all be. I like to sleep in late and sleep early. Is there a chronotype for that or am I just depressed? We talk to experts who share real experiences and insight. You just really need to find where it is that you can have an impact in your own life and just start doing that. We break down the topics you want to know more about. Sleep, stress, mental health, and how the world around us affects our overall health.
17:00We talk about all the ways to keep your body and mind inside and out healthy. We human beings, all we want is connection. We just want to connect with each other. Health stuff is about learning, laughing, and feeling a little less alone. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey there, this is Dr. Jesse Mills, director of the Men's Clinic at UCLA Health and host of the Mailroom Podcast. Each January, guys everywhere make the same resolutions. Get stronger, work harder, fix what's broken. But what if the real work isn't physical at all? To kick off the new year, I sat down with Dr.
17:38Steve Poulter, a psychologist with over 30 years' experience helping men unpack shame, anxiety, and emotional pain they were never taught to name. In a powerful two-part conversation, we discuss why men aren't emotionally bulletproof, why shame hides in plain sight, and how real strength comes from listening to yourself and to others. Guys who are toxic, they're immature, or they've got something they just haven't resolved. Once that gets resolved, then there comes empathy, as in compassion. If you want this to be the year you stop powering through pain and start understanding what's underneath, listen to The Mailroom on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows.
18:41So just like in Europe, Chuck, war helped cigarettes just blow up, basically. And World War I in particular brought cigarettes to America by introducing it to American troops. And like you said, the men fighting World War I in the trenches were like, we need something. Somebody give us something to smoke. And the U.S. government was like, that's fine, but cigars are kind of pricey. I don't know if you guys have been to a cigar shop lately. We can't really give all of you cigars all the time. What about these cigarettes that are being made that are pretty cheap? and the men in the trenches said, whatever, we just need to smoke something.
19:20So very quickly, a steady, never-ending stream of packs of cigarettes started being sent to the boys on the front in Europe. And also, like, businesses, individual citizens, the government, they were all paying for it. And they just smoked, smoked, smoked out of the trenches in World War I. And when they came back, they were like, you guys, you got to try these. They're amazing. Yeah, I mean, it was kind of perfect for a foxhole because it was much quicker than a cigar. Like, you know, you said you can smoke a cigar for an hour and you didn't have that kind of time. If you just wanted a quick nicotine fix, the cigarette was kind of perfect for wartime.
20:05And, buddy, did they explode? Camel cigarettes in 1913 sold about a million packs of cigarettes. Or is that a million cigarettes? A million packs. A million packs of cigarettes. In 1914, they sold 425 million packs. And by 1919, they sold 21 billion packs of cigarettes. Yeah, which not coincidentally was after World War I ended and all of those men fighting in World War I came back with pretty healthy little cigarette. habits by then. That's an astounding number. And I knew it was going to be a lot, but that kind of jump, I mean, can you imagine the kind of money they were making? I know. And that's just camel cigarettes.
20:48That's not all cigarettes. It's just camel. Yeah. Another thing World War I did was kind of change the United States' view on life and was like, OK, a lot of people just died and maybe we should start thinking of life as a little more valuable and precious and relax a little bit and enjoy ourselves. So we'll smoke and kill ourselves. One of the upshots of that was that, I guess, norms and expectations around women really loosened up. And one of the things that women did almost immediately was they started smoking. It became socially acceptable for women to start smoking. And the tobacco companies clapped their hands together and rubbed them and just started drooling at the jowls.
21:29Oh, yeah. All of a sudden they were targeting with advertising campaigns about how glamorous it was, how feminine it was, how independent you were if you were a smoker as a woman. This is also a very fun fact. Philip Morris, the Marlboro cigarette, which I have always associated with like - Cowboy killers? Yeah, like a dude cigarette, cowboy killers, that the Marlboro Man and the famous Sunset Boulevard, you know, cut out that was there forever. And Kramer. Don't forget Kramer was the Marlboro Man for a minute. That's right, he was. But the Marlboro cigarette, I have such a hard time saying that.
22:05It's hard to say. It was launched as a women's cigarette. It was known as Mild as May. And I'm not sure when that switch, but that's kind of a fun little fact. I vow to pick up Mild as May as a phrase I'm going to start using. I like that. Lucky Strike was also like, hey, rather than reaching for a sweet, which will eventually disappoint your husband, reach for a Lucky Strike instead. Just smoke anytime you have a chocolate craving. Yeah, and all those accessories that, hey, listen, again, kids, don't smoke. But I'd be a liar if I didn't say in an old movie when someone took out one of those little slender cigarette cases and popped out a cigarette from that neat row and tapped it on the outside of that metal case.
22:54I don't know. That was pretty cool looking to young Chuck. Yeah, I recently read Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. Have you ever read that? no, was it the Rebecca Hitchcock movie, Rebecca? I think Hitchcock may have made it. Yeah, and that tracks because I think it was written in the early 30s. Have you seen the movie? Was it about a woman who is basically living in the shadow of her husband's first wife? Yeah. So that's the book. But people... Great undervalued Hitchcock movie, by the way. It's a great book, too. But people bust out cigarette cases like every couple paragraphs in there and offer cigarette and everyone smokes after tea and all this stuff.
23:34So I know exactly what you're talking about. It just stuck out to me. I think, I guess, as a 21st century person, knowing what smoking does, looking at people who were living at a time when they didn't know what smoking did, it's kind of not funny to see, but it's just bizarre to look back like that. Yeah. I mean, I remember in college in Athens, it was always one classy co-ed who carried her cigarettes in a case and maybe even had one of those little cigarette holder extenders or whatever. Oh, yeah. Yeah, because, you know, they were like, hey, look at me. I'm different. And, you know, I'm an art major.
24:08So this is what we do. I'm like frigging Audrey Hepburn here. The other thing that happened was they started putting cigarette lighters in cars in, I think, 1925, 1926 is when they became standard. Oh, yeah. In cars, a little push button cigarette lighter. So now they're saying, like, smoke everywhere. Yeah, and it just so happens 1925, 1926 is when the first cars came up, basically. So right out of the gate, they had cigarette lighters, huh? Yeah, and right out of the gate, movie stars started smoking on screen, men and women, and started getting deals, started getting sponsorship deals with certain cigarette companies.
24:48Yeah, you could get$150 ,000 plus a year's supply of Lucky Strikes if your smoking was sponsored by Lucky Strike, which I think Joan Crawford, Spencer Tracy, Gary Cooper, they all had those deals with Lucky Strike. So they would out in public be smoking Lucky Strikes, but during interviews, they'd also stop and be like, wow, this Lucky Strike is so mild, smooth, or whatever. Like they would talk about it like as if it were, you know how people try to place ads or they used to, I don't know if they still do, in podcasts where suddenly we'd just be talking about a product and it'd take you a second to catch up?
25:22That's what they used to do with Lucky Strikes. Yeah. And they're like, they sent me a year supply. So they sent me 1 ,000 packs of cigarettes. Exactly. It was nuts. So there's just tons of stars smoking. They were literally sponsored by tobacco companies. And even if you weren't, you could still be pitching them in regular ads. And there's a push today to, I think, retroactively and moving forward, give our ratings to movies that have smoking in them, which I hadn't heard of. I ran across that recently. Yeah, I heard about that. Much different back then, obviously. By the middle of the 20th century, cigarettes had 81 percent of the tobacco market.
26:03So people really ditched the chaw and the snuff for cigarettes, generally speaking. And people, you know, pregnant women were smoking. You smoke in the movie theater, smoke on planes, on buses, in the office. Your doctor would smoke in front of you during an appointment. People reading the news on TV would be smoking while they were giving you the news. It's crazy when you look back at old like TV show either, not just episodes, but like Dick Cavett show and stuff like that. Just like everybody was smoking all the time. Yeah. I mean, there were ads that were doctors recommending a certain kind of cigarette because they were smoother.
26:40They made you cough less or something like that is just absolutely crazy. But eventually, people started getting hip to the idea that these things might kind of be bad for us. I think as far back as the 1760s, there was a doctor named John Hill who wrote Cautions Against the Immoderate Use of Snuff because he'd noticed that people who were using snuffed tobacco, which is exactly what it sounds like. It's powdered tobacco. You sniff like it's a bump of cocaine. He had observed nasal swellings and excrescences. in snuff users. What even is that? It's, I think, puffy, pussy lumps in their noses. And he's like, I think those are probably cancerous.
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27:24And this is back in the 1760s. Yeah, so that's super early on. In 1900, they finally put, like, tobacco extract. They did, like, official scientific tests. They put tobacco extracts. They applied it to guinea pigs, of course. and they saw cellular activity associated with cancer development. They linked it to cheek cancer as early as 1928. And then about a decade after that, they said, you know what, if you smoke, you're not going to live as long. No. And then I think by 1950, they started having enough studies that they could do meta-analysis essentially and say, if you smoke, you have a higher chance of getting lung cancer than somebody who doesn't smoke.
28:09Four years after that, the British Medical Journal published a study that said that cigarettes were killing doctors in significant numbers, too. And the fact that doctors are now dying from smoking cigarettes, that kind of got people's attention. Yeah, and these were all unfiltered basically up until 1950. In 1950, the Winston cigarette was the first one to come out as a mass-marketed filtered cigarette. And again, you know, it helps a little bit. It's not like the filter is completely useless, but it's not filtering out. It was largely a ruse to say, hey, they're saying smoking is bad for you.
28:49So now we've added a thing to make it safe. Yeah, I read that initially it was an earnest attempt to create a healthier, less deadly cigarette. And they were just like, well, we failed at this. But now we've basically fooled people into thinking that filters are actually doing something. We have to keep filters on forever. And, yeah, it very quickly just became a device rather than something that actually worked. It can catch some particulate matter, but it's doing nothing to the gases in the smoke. They're just coming through fully toxic. But, again, smokers were like, okay, great, we've got that licked.
29:28We have filters now. let's all go back to smoking as much as we want. Yeah, I think by year 1965, 42 % of American adults smoked. In 1980, it went down to 33. By 95, it was down to 25. 2010, 19%. And just a couple of years ago in 2023, 11%. But that's nuts. Close to half of American adults in the 60s were smoking. Well, it's funny. is based on old movies and TVs and books and stuff like that, or TV shows and books. That seems low to me. Yeah, it looks like 100%. Yeah, it really does for sure. I wonder who didn't smoke. Half the people probably just were like, I mean, I'm sure some people were like, this seems really unhealthy, but some people, you know, they make your fingers smell nasty.
30:20They make your breath gross. That probably had a lot to do with it. I would guess so too. And then also, I mean, if back in the 20s, they were like, you can get mouth and cheek cancer from it. It's probably trickled out to some people more than others, you know. For sure. So they add the filter, but a lot of R &D and money was spent because all of a sudden you're adding this barrier between the smoker and the smoke. And so they had to invest a lot of money into making sure like the draw was correct and that you weren't, you know, what they didn't want was for you to lose any of that habit forming nicotine.
30:59So they put a lot of dough into, I guess, like you said, probably earnestly trying to reduce some toxins, but also make sure that experience stayed the same to keep people smoking cigarettes. Yeah, and they spent billions of dollars figuring this out. Because if you're a smoker and you have to, like, if you have a crushed filter, it makes it hard to draw through. And it's essentially a ruined cigarette. Because you don't want to have to exert any kind of effort in smoking. And if you do, it's just not worth it. So they could not mess with the smoking experience. They had to make it as good or better while also preserving all the best parts of an unfiltered cigarette.
31:41What they essentially came up with was to use more porous paper than actually poke like little tiny holes in the seam where the tobacco comes up against the filter, which is sealed, as you talked about by that tipping paper. But they poked little holes in that end of the tipping paper so that more outside air could be sucked in and mixed with the smoke. So it was a milder smoke. And from what I can tell, light cigarettes, that's it. They have more tiny holes than a non-light, a regular cigarette. That's the only difference. Yeah, it's not like lighter chemical additives or lesser chemical additives and stuff like that, right?
32:22But the big tobacco companies are very happy for you to walk around thinking that that's what it means. But all it means is it just hits you lighter because it has more little micro holes in that tipping paper at the end. new year new goals and in this economy a better money plan is more necessary than ever i am matt and i'm joel uh we are from the how to money podcast and every week we help you to spend smarter save more and make sense of what's going on out there if you want 2026 to be the year you finally feel in control of your money we're here to give you the tools and advice to help you make it happen listen to how to money on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
33:04Hi, I'm Dr. Priyanka Wally. And I'm Hari Kondabolu. It's a new year. And on the podcast Health Stuff, we're resetting the way we talk about our health. Which means being honest about what we know, what we don't know, and how messy it can all be. I like to sleep in late and sleep early. Is there a chronotype for that or am I just depressed? We talk to experts who share real experiences and insight. You just really need to find where it is that you can have an impact in your own life and just start doing that. We break down the topics you want to know more about. Sleep, stress, mental health, and how the world around us affects our overall health.
33:43We talk about all the ways to keep your body and mind, inside and out, healthy. We human beings, all we want is connection. We just want to connect with each other. Health stuff is about learning, laughing, and feeling a little less alone. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey there, this is Dr. Jesse Mills, director of the Men's Clinic at UCLA Health and host of the Mailroom Podcast. Each January, guys everywhere make the same resolutions. Get stronger, work harder, fix what's broken. But what if the real work isn't physical at all? To kick off the new year, I sat down with Dr.
34:21Steve Poulter, a psychologist with over 30 years experience, helping men unpack shame, anxiety, and emotional pain they were never taught to name. In a powerful two-part conversation, we discuss why men aren't emotionally bulletproof, why shame hides in plain sight, and how real strength comes from listening to yourself and to others. Guys who are toxic, they're immature, or they've got something they just haven't resolved. Once that gets resolved, then there comes empathy as in compassion. If you want this to be the year you stop powering through pain and start understanding what's underneath, listen to The Mailroom on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows.
35:03Uh, should we take another break? Yes. All right, we'll be right back right after this.
35:31So there are different, you know, sizes of cigarettes. If you've ever been a smoker or worked in a convenience store or something like I did at the Golden Pantry in Athens, Georgia, you learn a lot about cigarettes and what kind of people smoke what kind of cigarettes. It's pretty interesting, actually. Yeah, I worked at a last chance gas station and liquor store and we sold cigarettes for$1.25 a pack, which is far and away the cheapest cigarettes in all of Athens. So we had a lot of people come in there, too. What was the cheapest brand? I totally remember the ones that we had. I don't remember what they were back then.
36:06the cheapest cigarettes and these are the people this is the stuff i always felt the worst about was when people were like i can only afford to buy the bare bones swept off the floor tobacco cigarette brand uh that was just more depressing to me even uh and in our store they were bucks i don't remember those at all had a big antler deer on the front of it and bucks were really cheap compared to the other one so i can't imagine what was in those that sounds very scary But there are different links, different kinds of filters. I remember the Parliaments had the recess filter. Occasionally when I had cigarettes here and there.
36:41In New Jersey, that's a lot of people smoke Parliaments. You can have those long 120s. They're called extra longs. And different diameters, including something I tried in college occasionally, was the old Camel Wide. Oh, I forgot about those. Remember those plugs? Yep. I went the opposite direction. I smoked Capri Ultra Slim 120s for a little while. Are you serious? They were essentially as big around as like a popsicle or a sucker stick. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I remember my friend Justin's mother smoked those. And I never saw anyone that wasn't a mom smoke those. Yeah, I took a lot of crap back in the day because I would smoke those.
37:21I smoked Virginia Slims for a while. That's really funny. I don't remember how either of those came to be my brand. But I would guess that I started smoking capris because I like the watercolor design on the box. That's probably what first caught my attention. You always have marched to the beauty of your own drum. So I could see Josh Clark doing that just to be different. They were good, though. I liked them. Wait, let me rephrase that. Kids, kids, please don't listen to any kind of nostalgic tone in anything I'm saying. Because if I could go back and do it again, I never, ever, ever would have smoked.
37:55Of course. Quitting smoking was the single hardest thing I've ever done in my entire life by far. It is definitely not worth it. Yeah, totally. I was the dreaded social smoker who all my smoker friends hated because I could always take it or leave it. Oh, yeah. It never got its hooks in me as far as an addiction goes. That just did not compute with me. But I was always in awe of people like you. Yeah, I was the one who would bum the cigarettes off my smoker friends. Right. And they were always nice about it. I was not the guy at the party who let the filter in because I had too much to drink. I was the guy who would smoke with the flu.
38:36Or the guy that if the cigarette broke, the tobacco and broke a little bit, you would hold your finger around that part just so you can still not waste that cigarette. But again, we're not waxing nostalgic, everybody. So where are we, Chuck? Oh, we were talking about some innovations at the time, I guess. Yeah. I mean, one innovation and by innovation, we means terrible things cigarette companies did to make them worse and more addictive, basically. So like innovation for them was what's called puffed or expanded tobacco. And that's when they soak tobacco leaves in ammonia and freon to make them puff out and increase their volume.
39:17They swell up some and then they freeze dry that and they do that. So then get more cigarettes out of less of a tobacco purchase or harvest. Yeah, it's just a space filler. And from what I saw, Freon, they only use that only for about 30 years. That just continued a couple decades ago. But ammonia is still very, very much an ingredient in cigarettes. One of the big things ammonia does is it allows you to absorb free-based nicotine more easily. So you get more nicotine out of each puff of cigarette, which a lot of observers point to is clear evidence that tobacco companies went out of their way to make their products more addictive.
40:00Yeah, for sure. Also, we should mention while we were kind of talking about what kinds of people smoke what cigarettes, and if you work at a convenience store, you kind of see repeated patterns. It's clear if you've ever sold cigarettes that African-Americans tend to prefer menthol cigarettes. I think more than 85 percent of black smokers smoke menthols. And once again, the tobacco companies found this out kind of during the civil rights movement. And they're like, hey, we found a new target demographic of people that we can try and kill and market to. Yeah, because about the same time as the civil rights movement was just barely starting and the black press became an actual viable outlet for national brands to advertise in all of a sudden, menthol cigarettes became a thing.
40:47Salem, Newport, Cool, Alpine all came out within a year or two of each other. Alpine's not around anymore. And so just by essentially, I guess, targeted happenstance, the tobacco companies started heavily advertising menthols in the black press. And so that eventually came to be the favorite kind of cigarette among black people in America. And I read an article by a guy named Alan Blum, who is the director of the Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society. And he kicked out an estimate that about a third of the ads in some issues of Ebony and Jet magazines, black oriented national magazines in the U.S., were for tobacco products, mostly cigarettes, mostly menthol cigarettes.
41:31Yeah, I mean, that's that's crazy. A third. And then in 1990, some people say like peak targeted advertising and branding came when R.J. Reynolds was going to release their Uptown menthol cigarette. the first cigarette made like specifically targeted toward black americans they did a bunch of market research and rjr was like hey you know what they'll really like is this classy black and gold package and the name uh uptown cigarettes uh they were the only cigarettes with um had the filters down in the pack uh because the company found through research that black smokers open packs from the bottom so they could grab the tobacco in to avoid crushing that filter or to keep their fingers moving on it because that's the part that went into their mouth.
42:23So they literally flipped how they packaged cigarettes to appeal to black customers. Yes. And this did not land well with people in the United States. There happened to be a black a health and human services secretary at the time named Louis Sullivan. And he bucked tradition and directly targeted Uptown cigarettes and R.J. Reynolds as basically a vial product that needed to be removed from the shelves. It hadn't been released yet. The release was targeted for February of 1990, not coincidentally, Black History Month. And enough of a protest erupted in the U.S. led by Louis Sullivan that R.J. Reynolds withdrew it before they could ever roll a mountain and sell uptown cigarettes.
43:11Hurrah for them. But the upshot of this is that, like you said, 85 % of black smokers smoke menthols. And because of the apparent feeling of menthols, it feels nothing like you're killing yourself. In fact, it almost feels refreshing in some cases. The black press relying so much on tobacco advertising that they didn't tend to cover the dangers of smoking like mainstream press. Heavily targeted advertising in black communities. By 1990, black Americans had a 58 percent higher rate of lung cancer than white people. And it still goes on today. There is a national ban on flavored cigarettes, but menthol got exempted because black led community organizations tend to lobby the White House to prevent menthols being taken out of circulation because those groups tend to be funded by tobacco companies.
44:10So essentially their fronts for the tobacco company lobby. And this one 2012 study found that nearly 40 percent of black smokers said they would quit if there weren't menthols any longer. So the tobacco companies have a lot to lose and half of an entire market if menthols are done away with like all the other flavors. It's the only flavor still allowed in the U.S. Pretty despicable stuff. So you're probably wondering like, hey, smoking so terrible. Surely it started to wane. And I gave you some stats earlier and it has. And that's because in the 1960s, we started slow rolling a little bit more warnings, Surgeon General warnings.
44:53In 64, the Surgeon General released smoking and health. This is a report that basically said it's the single largest contributor to lung cancer in men. It's linked to premature birth. It'll increase your risk of a fatal heart attack by 70%. In 65, just a year later, they started mandating warning labels on PACs. In 1970, they said you can't advertise on TV and radio, even though in print you still could. And then in 1972, finally, the Surgeon General said, and this was really the beginning of the change of how they were viewed and like public smoking. In 72, they said involuntary smoking, which is secondhand smoke.
45:38It's also really bad for you. We're just going to leave it there. And 14 years later in the mid 80s, they said it can actually give you lung cancer. Like you can not smoke at all and be around smokers and get lung cancer. Yeah, that happened to Screech from Saved by the Bell. Dustin Diamond died of lung cancer and he never smoked a cigarette in his life. Apparently, he attributed it to staying in cheap hotels where you could smoke still. Oh, interesting. I mean, I remember my parents never smoked or anything, but I remember having friends whose parents smoked in the car with the windows rolled up.
46:12Yeah, that's nuts. I lived in college with a guy who did that. I was just I even as a smoker, I was like, this is wrong. There's something really wrong with this. Oh, God, in the car. Like, good luck selling that. But yeah, also your kids in the backseat like that was definitely a thing. Yeah. I mean, well, the other thing we should mention that I never really thought about until this is that smoke is even going through a filter. So what little work the filter is doing, that side stream smoke is just going right into your lung. Yeah. And even your exhaled smoke contains a lot of toxins that are just getting right back out that are part of secondhand smoke, too.
46:49So, yes. Yeah, for sure. That definitely changed the calculus of how people viewed smoking. It wasn't like a you're killing yourself thing anymore. It was a you're killing all of us thing now. And that definitely led to bans in restaurants, movie theaters, all over the place. I remember I was, I think I've said before, I was one of the last smokers on an international flight in the 90s on the way to the Netherlands. That just seems bizarre to me now, too, especially that it was that recent. But finally, America came around and was like, you can't smoke indoors anymore in public places. And another thing simultaneously was people started banning smoking in their own homes.
47:28that was simultaneous to government-mandated smoking bans in public places. People were making that choice as well. So smockers were getting pushed further and further out of the mainstream, essentially. Yeah, like literally outside. Like you had to start telling people, like, I'm sorry, there's a non-smoking house. The idea of somebody walking into my house and lighting up a cigarette is so bizarre sounding. Like, it seems like a hundred years ago that people were doing that, but we lived through it. Like, I remember all that. Yeah. Oh, for sure. I had a house that we smoked in and it was, man.
48:05It's crazy how much things have changed in just a couple of decades. Yeah, because now if somebody did that, it's like a hostile act. Like, they're slapping you in the face. Like, they mean to be starting something, as Michael Jackson said. Yeah, I'm going to screw up your house right now. Yeah. What are you going to do about it? I'm going to smoke next to your cat. Poor cat. Although I'll bet cats smoke if they could. Oh, that's true. You're probably right. The other thing that came in the early 90s when everyone said or when all the health experts said, hey, you know, you need to quit smoking if you want to live, is all of a sudden there were nicotine patches and Nicorette gum and stuff like that.
48:46All kinds of quitting AIDS that hit the market that were also big money. Yeah, something else I found, and that stuff worked. And what also worked, I really want to do an episode just on this, was that big tobacco settlement among the state's attorneys general in the U.S. that just crippled the tobacco industry and really helped lead to its downfall. because they had to keep handing over all these documents they had that were so damning. And then the press would just run story after story about this stuff. And it really turned a lot of people off on tobacco. But I remember when vaping started to be a thing and I was like, no, how did this happen?
49:26Like the anti-tobacco forces won. They won. They beat big tobacco. One of the most powerful groups in the world got beaten by the people who were like, no, oh, we shouldn't be smoking. And then vaping came along. So Julia turned up this statistic that I found very heartening. She said that in 2019, 28 % of high school students in the U.S. vaped cigarettes, essentially. Three years later, it was 10%. So it was cut by two-thirds. So I attribute that almost exclusively to our vaping app where we really came out against it. either way whether that had anything to do with it or not i was really happy to see that i think gen z has been known so far for avoiding some of the trappings of these vices of previous generations i've read that they're smoking less and they're drinking less and that's great they seem to be a little smarter um yeah there's another stat here that i thought was pretty interesting was when I was talking about percentage of smokers in 1965, 42 percent smoked.
50:35In 1980, it was 33 percent. But there were more cigarettes sold in the early 80s. In 1965, at 42 percent smoking, they sold 521 billion cigarettes. That dropped to 33 percent of the population smoking, but they sold 637 billion. So fewer people seemingly smoking more cigarettes. I would guess that in the interim, the tobacco companies figured out how to make their product more addictive then. Yeah. That's when it would have happened. That'd be my guess. Yeah, probably so. Well, I can't wait to tee off on that tobacco settlement episode whenever we do it. But this is a good one. I thought this was a good idea, Chuck.
51:16I'm glad you selected it. Thanks. I mean, they're not hurting. 2023, Philip Morris raked in$35, almost$36 billion. So they're doing okay. And people in different countries is different. I think Americans smoke less. I mean, when I've traveled through Europe, a lot of people smoke. I know in Asian countries, there's a lot of smoking. Yeah, it's everywhere. Yeah. Right after I quit, we went to Japan and they smoked during a funeral. Yeah. And I was sitting there like, I want one of those so bad. Yeah. When we were in Vegas collecting our Lifetime Achievement Award a couple of years ago. Yes. I went to a dinner at a really nice Chinese restaurant in one of the casinos.
51:59Unfortunately, it was a smoking casino. And, you know, the restaurants aren't like walled off. It's just kind of part of the casino. There was a group of young Japanese men, probably in their late teens to early 20s, like 13 of them, standing just on the other side of where our table was and just chain smoking. Wow. Over and over and over to the point where I was like, man, this has legitimately ruined this awesome meal. Yeah, that sucks. It does. It definitely can. It can. Just one person smoking can ruin a meal. I can't imagine 13. Yeah, but oh boy, they were loving them. They were pretty happy smoking those cigarettes.
52:39You got anything else? I got nothing else. All right. Well, that's it for cigarettes, everybody. Thanks for listening. And since I said thanks for listening and Chuck's got nothing else, you put those two together and we've just Unlock listener mail.
52:56Correction for Josh during our listener mail. This isn't a big one. Hey, guys, long-time listener, first-time writer. Reference to the listener mail in the USAID episode. Josh mentioned Redtail or Redhawk beer and said it was from Odesto, but the beer is Mendocino. Yeah, I remember now. Given the seminary and those names, it's easy to confuse these very different California towns. I can personally confirm Mendocino Brewing Company was and now still is a great brewery. They ceased operation in 2018, but were purchased and are now back in production in Hopland, which is in Mendocino County. Thanks for everything you do, you guys.
53:34That's from Devin in California. Very nice, Devin. Thank you for that. And yeah, it's still a good beer, even if it is from Mendocino rather than Modesto. Yeah, we just want to shout out the right town. Yeah, but thank you for being gentle. I appreciate it, not calling me a dipstick or anything like that. No, that's not dipstick worthy. Who was it again? I know I just said their name. That's Devin. Devin. Thanks a lot, Devin. And if you want to be like Devin, you can send us an email too. Send it off to stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
54:24Hey, it's Joel. And Matt. From HowToMoney. If your New Year's resolution is to finally get your finances in shape, we've got your back. Prices, they're still high, and the economy is all over the place. But 2026 is the year for you to get intentional and make real progress. That's right. Each week, we break down what's happening with your money, the most important issues to focus on, and the small moves that make a big difference. Kick off the year with confidence. Listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm John Polk. For years, I was the poster boy of the conversion therapy movement, the ex-gay who married an ex-lesbian and traveled the world telling my story of how I changed my sexuality from gay to straight.
55:11You might have heard my story, but you've never heard the real story. John has never been anything but gay. but he really tried hard not to be. Listen to Atonement, the John Palk story on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Dr. Priyanka Wally. And I'm Hari Kondabolu. It's a new year and on the podcast Health Stuff we're resetting the way we talk about our health. Which means being honest about what we know, what we don't know and how messy it can all be. I like to sleep in late and sleep early. is there a chronotype for that or am I just depressed? Health stuff is about learning, laughing, and feeling a little less alone.
55:53Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.
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