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Tuesday 15 April 2014

Cigarette

The cigarette lighter was invented in 1816, while the match was invented eleven years later in 1827.


Candy Cigarettes were introduced in late 19th century. They were wrapped in paper and packaged to resemble cigarettes. Some contained powdered sugar, allowing users to blow and produce clouds of sugar, imitating smoke. Candy cigarettes are currently banned in many countries including the UK.

Philip Morris launched the Marlboro brand in 1924.  The name was taken from a street in London where PM's British factory was located.

In the late 1920s, Lucky Strikes marketed their cigarettes as a route to thinness for women. One typical advert said, "Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet." Sales of Lucky Strikes increased by more than 300%.

While filming The Wizard of Oz, 16-year-old Judy Garland was put on a strict diet that included smoking 80 cigarettes a day to suppress her appetite.

Marlboro cigarettes were originally designed as a women's cigarette, based on the slogan "Mild As May". The iconic red stripe was intended to hide lipstick stains, thus making it appealing to women. When it failed to attract women, the company changed the filter color to a muted brown, slapped a cowboy on it and marketed it to men.

In the 1950's Kent Cigarettes used asbestos filters, claiming these filters offered the "greatest protection in health history". It has been suspected that many cases of mesothelioma have been caused specifically by smoking these Kent cigarettes, and various lawsuits followed over the years because of it.

The Flintstones was originally aimed at older viewers, airing at 8.30pm on Friday nights. And in the early days it was sponsored by Winston cigarettes - so Fred and company could occasionally be seen relaxing with a smoke over the closing credits.

A still photo of a Winston advertisement featuring Fred and Wilma Flintstone Wikipedia

The earliest e-cigarette can be traced to American Herbert A. Gilbert, who in 1963 patented "a smokeless non-tobacco cigarette" that involved "replacing burning tobacco and paper with heated, moist, flavored air". This device produced flavored steam without nicotine.

In 1964 US. Surgeon General Luther Terry issued the first government report saying smoking may be hazardous to human health.

President Lyndon Johnson signed legislation in 1965 requiring cigarette packages and adverts to display a health warning from the US. Surgeon General.

Throughout the 1960s Michael Caine was by his own estimation smoking at least eighty cigarettes a day. He quit smoking cigarettes following a stern lecture from Tony Curtis at a party in 1971.

John Wayne smoked six packs of cigarettes a day.

President Richard Nixon signed the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act into law on April 1, 1970, requiring the Surgeon General's warnings on tobacco products and banning cigarette advertisements on television and radio in the United States. The last cigarette ad appeared on the New Year’s Day football games in 1971.

Surgeon General's warning on a cigarette pack, 2012.

US presidents used to give out special presidential packs of cigarettes to guests boarding Air Force One.  In 1988, at the behest of Nancy Reagan, they were changed to packs of presidential M&M's over health concerns.

Daniel Radcliffe was nicknamed "Harry Puffer" by his Harry Potter co-stars for having the so-called "20-a-day cigarette habit."

Sales of Lucky Strike cigarettes experienced an increase of 10 billion packets a year after being featured on the television series Mad Men, in which it was a major client of Don Draper's advertising agency and his cigarette brand of choice.

The top five countries for cigarette smoking per head of population are Montenegro, Belarus, Lebanon, Macedonia and Russia.

A monkey was once tried and convicted for smoking a cigarette in South Bend, Indiana.

Some urban birds like finches and sparrows have learned to line their nests with cigarette butts. Nicotine is a powerful insecticide that wards off mites, lice and fleas.

One cigarette contains enough toxic ingredients to kill a person if those ingredients were directly injected into bloodstream.

Research has indicated that approximately eleven minutes are cut off the life of an average male smoker from each cigarette smoked.


Second hand tobacco smoke contributes to more than 50,000 deaths per year in the US alone.

In the United States cigarette smoking is thought to be responsible for nearly half the cancer cases considered to be environmentally caused and for almost one third of the cancer deaths overall of men.

The color used for cigarette packaging in Australia is called "Pantone 448 C"; it was chosen after researchers determined that it is the "world's least attractive color."

The country with the greatest cigarette consumption in the world is China where there are 350 million smokers. One million deaths a year there are attributed to smoking, according to the World Health Organisation.

The average adult in China smokes 4,124 cigarettes a year, the world’s highest figure.

In China, cigarette companies are allowed to sponsor schools, with slogans like "Genius comes from hard work. Tobacco helps you become talented."

In 2014 alone, smokers lit up more than 5.8 trillion cigarettes. 1.7 trillion cigarettes were consumed by Chinese smokers alone. .

Not accounting for inflation, a person who smoked a pack a day for 51 years would spend $111,690 on cigarettes.

Cigarettes are the single-most traded item on the planet, with approximately 1 trillion being sold from country to country each year

Source Daily Express

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