{"id":10802,"date":"2017-12-21T06:12:53","date_gmt":"2017-12-21T06:12:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=10802"},"modified":"2017-12-22T06:17:41","modified_gmt":"2017-12-22T06:17:41","slug":"who-forced-the-cigarette-companies-to-run-those-anti-smoking-ads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/who-forced-the-cigarette-companies-to-run-those-anti-smoking-ads\/","title":{"rendered":"Who forced the cigarette companies to run those anti-smoking ads?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stanton Glantz<\/a>, University of California, San Francisco<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

You may have seen ads run by the big cigarette companies listing the dangers of smoking and that they manipulated cigarettes to make them more addictive.<\/p>\n

The path to the advertisements the big cigarette companies are now running in newspapers, radio, and television began in New York\u2019s Plaza Hotel in December, 1953.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s when the heads of America\u2019s tobacco companies, their lawyers, and the Hill and Knowlton public relations<\/a> company gathered to craft the tobacco industry\u2019s response to growing public concern about the emerging evidence that smoking caused cancer. They decided that rather than accepting the fact that smoking caused disease, they would create an \u201cindependent\u201d research organization, the Tobacco Industry Research Committee, to fund research to get to the bottom of the \u201csmoking and health controversy.\u201d They announced the creation of the TIRC in full page ads in newspapers and magazines all over the country assuring smokers and policymakers that the companies \u201caccept an interest in people\u2019s health as a basic responsibility, paramount to every other consideration in our business.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

The tobacco companies did no such thing.<\/p>\n

I have spent decades studying and doing battle with the tobacco industry. There\u2019s a backstory about why you are seeing these ads now.<\/p>\n

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