Gray Matters by Stuart Carlson and Jerry Resler for August 10, 2024

Happened in 1954.

“Nine out ten doctors who smoke, smoke Camel cigarettes.”

“Not a cough in a carload.”

“LSMFT”

“Live modern, smoke L&M.”

“Winston taste good…like acigarette should.”

Kent cigarettes, the company claimed in the 1950s, were “the one cigarette that can show you proof of greater health protection.” Micronite filters used crocidolite asbestos.

After stopping over thirty years ago, I still occasionally crave a Camel straight. When the price went up to $.50 a pack in the public vending machines, I thought ‘Yikes, who can afford that?’.

Actually this was the “Greatest Generation” i.e. WWII. The baby boomers watched their parents, uncles and aunts dying of cancer and learned the lesson.

It went on right into the early ’80s.

Doctor Parkinson declares I’m not surprised to see you here, you’ve got smokers cough from smoking, brewers droop from drinking beer. Industrial disease Dier Straits.

My great uncle smoked unfiltered Camels for decades (and drank room-temp Shaefer beer!). When my great aunt was diagnosed with non-hodgkins lymphoma, he quit that very day, cold turkey, for her. I miss them.