Warning Label Placed on Cigarette Ads

The advertisements in Life magazines of the sixties through the eighties consisted of many cigarette advertisements which were predominant in the later decades yet missing in earlier ones such as the sixties. Throughout the seventies and eighties cigarettes plastered page after page yet in the sixties these were shown only once or twice every article. The change in quantity of cigarette ads resulted from the different forms of advertisement which became illegal around the seventies. As cigarettes once graced many shows and were sponsors for many shows that form of promotion became prohibited causing these companies to search for other ways to endorse their product, leading to an increase of cigarette ads in magazines.




Although the types of cigarette ad did not change much through the decades, what they said did. One ad I found in a Life magazine from 1962 shows a woman smoking a cigarette with her husband shielding her eyes and at the bottom mentions the research done to achieve this new level of cigarette. The research they mention is interesting because it is not about what cigarettes can do to a person but instead the research done to create mild, non-filtered cigarette. This shows the ignorance, or lack of willingness to accept, the damage that accompanied cigarettes. There was not much being done to prohibit the different ways cigarette companies were taking advantage of their buyers as well as no understanding of the increase in cancer related deaths of male smokers. All of this is demonstrated in the 1962 advertisement which focuses solely on the acheivement of successfully making a mild, non-filtered cigarette.



Then as the years pass these advertisements begin to express a new form of research which consists of the dangers of smoking. Thousands of studies were done which resulted in scientific articles linking tobacco use to cancer and other forms of diseases. These results caused a warning to be put on all tobacco products which increased from “Caution: Cigarette Smoking May be Hazardous to your Health” in 1966 to “Warning: The Surgeon General Has Determined That Cigarette Smoking Is Dangerous to Your Health,” in 1970. It became illegal for cigarette companies not to put this warning on tobacco products which caused a decrease in the number of cigarette users and a decline in cigarette related deaths. This new form of ad is represented by a Marlboro ad in 1982 with a cowboy smoking a cigarette and a small white box in the corner of the page stating the warning. Although small, this box represents a new time in which advancements in the real issues of tobacco are being realized and dealt with in a professional manner. Now it is considered public knowledge what a cigarette can do to a persons body causing a decline in those who choose to take a puff of tobacco in the first place.



These two different advertisements of cigarettes show that while the basic idea of an advertisement may not change, a simple addition of a warning label may alter the success of a product. The changes, in this case, resulted from an increase in knowledge and research on the dangers of tobacco creating a more educated population who could prevent diseases from taking their lives.

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