AHC and WI: earlier knowledge of CTE, graceful phase-out of U.S. college football from 1945 to 1960

"The Quiet Victory of the Cigarette Lobby — How It Found Its Best Filter Yet — Congress"

The Atlantic, Elizabeth Drew, Sept. 1965

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazin...it-found-the-best-filter-yet-congress/304762/

' . . . Behind the facade of a requirement for printing a warning on cigarette packages (which is not expected to deter smoking much), Congress tied the hands of the Federal Trade Commission by forbidding it to proceed with its own plans to apply much more stringent regulations. Had it not been for Congress, the FTC, which is charged with preventing unfair and deceptive trade practices, would have required a warning both on cigarette packages and in cigarette advertising. The effect of the advertising regulation is what the cigarette industry most feared; Congress obliged by forbidding it for at least four years.

'In another remarkable provision, the law prohibits state and local governments from taking any action on cigarette labeling or advertising. It is one thing for Congress to prohibit the states from enacting legislation which overlaps and is inconsistent with its own requirements, as in the case of the labeling, but it is a far different thing for Congress to refuse to act, and to prohibit the states from acting, as in the case of cigarette advertising.

'The tobacco industry's success at winning from Congress what it wanted while still providing the lawmakers with an opportunity to appear to be all in favor of health was a brilliant stroke. . . '
Masterful on the part of the tobacco industry, and piss poor that our elected officials let them pull it off.

But doesn't mean that every defense of entrenched interests is going to be this successful.
 
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And the GI Bill (Serviceman’s Readjustment Act) of 1944 was a big reshuffle. A lot more people went to college because of this.
 
And the whole immediate post-war period was a reshuffle.

There were a bunch of strikes in '46, there was inflation in 1946-48, and we also came a heck of a lot closer to full employment that people thought we would in the post-year years. I even entertain fond hopes that the competition between the United States and Soviet Union could have mainly been over who could do a better job in assisting with genuine economic development in the Third World and only secondarily over competing on propping up dictatorships and arming rebel factions, but alas, that's probably too idealistic.

But I do think if football and brain health had struck the public fancy in any of several different ways, yeah, we probably could have phased out football.
 
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