Healthy Skepticism Library item: 4932

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: Journal Article

Gardner MN, Brandt AM.
'The doctors' choice is America's choice': the physician in US cigarette advertisements, 1930-1953.
Am J Public Health 2006 Feb; 96:(2):222-32
http://www.ajph.org/cgi/content/full/96/2/222

Abstract:

In the 1930s and 1940s, smoking became the norm for both men and women in the United States, and a majority of physicians smoked. At the same time, there was rising public anxiety about the health risks of cigarette smoking. One strategic response of tobacco companies was to devise advertising referring directly to physicians. As ad campaigns featuring physicians developed through the early 1950s, tobacco executives used the doctor image to assure the consumer that their respective brands were safe. These advertisements also suggested that the individual physicians’ clinical judgment should continue to be the arbiter of the harms of cigarette smoking even as systematic health evidence accumulated. However, by 1954, industry strategists deemed physician images in advertisements no longer credible in the face of growing public concern about the health evidence implicating cigarettes.

Keywords:
Advertising/history* History, 20th Century Humans Physicians/history* Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't Smoking/history* Tobacco Industry/history* United States