Smoking expanded over the early decades of the 20th century mainly due to lax attitudes towards the dangers of smoking. Then again, many people were complete unaware of the dangers and since these dangers were unknown it was assumed that cigarettes were harmless.

Of course, anyone with common sense did not need to know that ingesting smoke into the lungs will have certain problems associated with it, but then there were those who did not know any better. Often, it was children who lacked the sophistication to understand this and this is why many smokers started at a young age. In some instances, tacit approval of kids smoking was sent to children in the early days of tobacco advertising.

A “Classic” Commercial

In the early 1960’s, there was once a sentimental television commercial where a young child is walking along the beach with his grandfather. The grandfather is smoking a cigar and then takes the band off the cigar and presents it to his grandson, who promptly places it on his finger.

The commercial concludes with voice over narration from the child (now an adult) reminiscing that this is how he discovered this particular brand of cigars and how his has an almost sentimental attachment to them. While this may have seemed like a benign commercial when it was first released, in retrospect we can see that such a commercial is harmful as it can directly contribute to kids smoking.

Now, if the aforementioned commercial had the potential to subliminally suggest it was ok to smoke there was another commercial that did much more than suggest. In fact, it may have been the single most devastating (or successful?) cigarette commercial in history to expand kids smoking.

This commercial was the notorious Flintstones’ Winston Cigarette commercial. This commercial had long since been forgotten until worn prints of it started airing on YouTube.com. Basically, it is a simple minded commercial featuring Fred and Barney puffing away and extolling the virtues of Winston Cigarettes. Needless to say, the use of such cartoon characters had a massive effect on kids smoking.

In today’s day and age (actually, it started in the 1970’s) there has been a protracted effort to discourage kids smoking. In fact, this effort has been so protracted that we forget about the era when it was encouraged. Now, in retrospect, we shake our heads at the thorough irresponsibility that advertisers once embodied. Mercifully, that era has been reduced.