In a new online exhibition, The University of Alabama Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society spotlights tobacco advertisements and promotional artifacts from presidential election campaigns.
As political ads inundate the media in the final weeks before the 2024 election, this collection invites you to reflect on how the advertising landscape has changed.
Ranging from promotional booklets, campaign pins, branded packaging, and even Sunday “funnies,” the common theme appears to be: no matter your party, just keep smoking.
“Toward the close of the 20th century, the combination of restrictions on cigarette advertising and the approval of political action committees by Congress enabled cigarette makers to donate directly to Presidential candidates and lessened the need for cigarette product advertising,” writes Alan Blum, director of the Center.
While ads like these likely won’t dominate your screen this election season, two stand out as being particularly timely.
In 1970, a Virginia Slims campaign spoke to a future with a woman running for president, and a 1976 ad built on the theme: “Back then, on election day, men chose the leaders, women chose the meals.”
As voters flock to the polls, with early voting now open in 41 states, some may—like it or not—resonate with the Virginia Slims slogan: “You’ve come a long way, baby.”
A Vote for Cancer: Tobacco Advertising and Presidential Elections
By The Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society, Oct. 25, 2024
Tobacco was America’s first cash crop and a mainstay of the U.S. economy for 300 years. So, it’s no surprise that manufacturers of cigars, chewing tobacco, and cigarettes have had a presence in presidential and other electoral campaigns since the mid-19th century.
“By the election of 1860, parades, banners, and music were part of the political landscape, as were newspapers that openly supported political parties. Advances in printing technology by the mid-19th century allowed Americans to express their political sympathies through their choice of cigars and stationery.
“Cigar box labels in 1860 included images of Republican presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln and his democratic opponent, Stephen A. Douglas. For those who might have heard of ‘Honest Old Abe’ and the ‘Little Giant’ but had never seen their likenesses in print, the cigar box label introduced the candidates’ faces to the public.” (Source: “Campaigning for President” by Julie Miller, Barbara Bair, and Michelle Krowl, LCM [Library of Congress Magazine], Jan./Feb. 2017)
Nearly a century later in the 1952 presidential election campaign, both major political parties gave away packs of cigarettes with the respective likenesses of Republican incumbent Dwight Eisenhower and Democratic challenger Adlai Stevenson.
Presidential election booklets published by Liggett & Myers Tobacco Company appeared in the 1890s:
“The political information given [in this] book [‘Political Information for 1896’] is published in the hope that it may prove of interest and service to all citizens, as well as to those who desire to become citizens, and our statements related to Star tobacco and also our two brands of cigarette—Sweet Moments and Crimps—presented for the information of tobacco chewers who have not yet used Star, and to cigarette smokers using other than the above-named brands…”
The company would publish these booklets for the next 30 years.
Read more on the Cancer History Project.
Related articles by the Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society
- The life insurance industry’s long, strange silence about smoking and cancer, Sept. 13, 2024
- Smoke rings: Tobacco and the Olympics, July 26, 2024
- Tabloids and tobacco: “TRICK CIGAR BLOWS MAN’S HEAD OFF”, April 18, 2024
- The boy who cried vape: Philip Morris International calls for a smoke-free world, Jan. 19, 2024
- How tobacco companies sold women a pack of lies, Nov. 2, 2023
- Like father, like son: How tobacco companies targeted families in the 20th century, June 8, 2023
- Coronations, cigarette companies, and cancer, May 5, 2023
- Exhibit: When cigarette filters were made of asbestos, April 13, 2023
- How a two-faced media covered cancer: Promoting research—and cigarettes, April 29, 2022
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