Cigs...

With the snap announcement by K Rudd & Co Canberra that ciggie prices will rise by 25% from midnight and that plain packaging will become mandatory from 1 July 2012, the radio shock jocks and their callers were in talkback frenzy. More than once the ironic term “anti-smoking Nazis” was used.

In the past I have sometimes posted cigarette ads as examples of vintage advertising. Here are some more American examples, using everything from sex, to health, to science, to babies to promote and sell gaspers…

(Click on the pics to enlarge).

K Rudd estimates that the extra ciggie slug will generate $5bn over 4 years, which he will then inject into the hospital system (my bit of humour ha ha). This is a break with past Australian governments and indeed governments throughout the world which decry smoking but have soft-pedalled stronger action as they rake in billions of dollars in excise. According to K Rudd: "There’s a whole lot of smokers out there and I don’t think it’s going to be greeted with dancing in the streets."

Our PM is walking in the steps of another leader and government which was the first to mount a nation-wide anti-smoking campaign. Which leader and which government?

Some clues:

- This country’s doctors were the first to identify the link between smoking and lung cancer.

- Following that discovery, a strong anti-tobacco movement developed, which in turn led to the first anti-smoking campaign in modern history.

- There were other anti-tobacco movements in other countries from the beginning of the 20th century but this country had the only success, the campaign having been supported by that country’s government.

- The government condemned smoking and tobacco consumption.

- The government sponsored research on smoking and its effects on health.

- Anti-smoking measures introduced included:

smoking being banned on public transport;

health education being promoted;

raising of tobacco taxes;

restrictions on tobacco advertising;

limiting cigarettes to the armed forces;

restrictions on smoking in public places, restaurants, coffee houses, schools, hospitals and public offices;

- Certain occupations were banned from smoking whilst on duty: teachers, police and midwives, as examples.

- Pregnant women were encouraged not to smoke.

- Films were made encouraging everybody, but especially women and children, not to smoke.

If you said Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, take a bow, you are correct.

Some Nazi posters:

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

The comment below the poster, being the commentary of the author of the book from which the poster has been printed, is:   "The Nazi Party banned smoking in many public places, including party offices and waiting rooms (Dienstraume).  Note the negroid head on the cigar;  Nazi antitobacco activists tried to characterise smoking as the vice of degenerate Africans."

A Nazi antismoking advertisement captioned "The chainsmoker".  The additional words read "He does not devour it [the cigarette], it devours him."

 

The translation:

“Attack vices rather than complain about ‘burdens.’ 2 million KdF cars [the Volkswagen] up in smoke. Excessive use of tobacco costs the German people 2.35 billion marks annually, enough for around 2 million KdF cars, or enough gas for those cars to drive 50 billion kilometers (not million, dear proofreader)! We need to rationalize our people’s economy!”