Why do people think that the Boomer generation wasn't aware of the dangers of smoking.?

Question

humanity has known this forever we just didn't have the crazy smoking n***s like we do now... I mean seriously they called them coffin nails in the 1800's for a reason.

Answer 1

whatever

Answer 2

They weren't aware at all, and they were never convinced it was bad, because they were never informed that they had cancer. It didn't even occur to that generation of people to check that they had cancer, and even if they did have it, it didn't even occur to them that it would be because of smoking.

Answer 3

i think they (for the most part) were aware, its common sense whether you are a modern doctor or not, you are sucking in smoke, that can;t be good

Answer 4

You had some zealots saying cigarettes were bad for you early on (including Thomas Edison!) but most people didn't take them seriously because there just wasn't any real evidence of that -- cigarettes didn't start becoming popular until the late 19th century and it takes years for lung cancer to show up, so it wasn't until the 30's that evidence started to come in.

Dr. DeBakey, the famous heart surgeon who died not long ago, recounted that he wrote an article then about the cancer risk then and was laughed at by his peers! No one really wanted to hear bad news about a drug they used.

Meanwhile, the tobacco companies did their best to suppress the news and run phony ads, like the infamous "More Doctors Smoke Camels." By the 50's, most people knew that there were allegations about smoking and lung cancer, but the tobacco companies countered by introducing filter cigarettes, which weren't actually safer but gave that appearance. (They did the same with "light" cigarettes a few years later.)

Anyway, it wasn't until 1964 with the publication of the Surgeon General's Report on Smoking and Health that most Americans were convinced that it was seriously bad for you. I was ten at the time and had read about the report in the newspaper but it didn't keep my from getting hooked -- smoking wasn't considered addictive back then so it was natural for a kid to try it to see what it was like. And I was a late boomer. I'm guessing that some older boomers really didn't know when they started. An adult might have, but most people first try smoking when they're kids and with no anti-smoking education or warnings on the packs, many kids wouldn't have known it was bad for you.

Of course, once we were older teens, most of us knew, but by then we were hooked -- and if we weren't, we didn't much care. A few goody-goodies, perhaps, but most of us were out to have fun and were doing worse things than cigarettes.