WI Cigarettes Had Not Been Popularised By WW1?

My understanding is that cigarette smoking reached epidemic levels among men for the first time during this conflict, in fact the British army sold tobacco bonds for the troops at home to gain money for the vile product.
Where would we be today without this - well obviously alot more people alive, it's one legacy amongst others from that madness that still haunts us, perhaps even more then the middle east, Yougoslavia and Ireland all of whom had their borders established by it!
Of course people were encouraged to smoke then because it was considered healthy, especially for the lungs!
It took until Ed Murrow to prove otherwise on a grand scale!
No doubt some enterprising capitalist scumbags would have found away to get people addicted on a grand scale anyway.
By the way, I regard smoking as a personal choice, just don't do it in my face and there is an element of taxes on it being a tax on idiocy!
 
Men were forced to smoke. It was considered the only way to neutralise the stench of the unburied corpses.
At least in the German army there were requests for delivery of more cigarettes just for that reason.
Even ardent non-smokers would become passionate smokers after few days in the trenches.
 
Is it the greatest legacy, we still have to endure from the madness of WW1, it has certainly killed more in total than that war, the wars it caused in its aftermath and the Spanish flu!
 

Germaniac

Donor
Well, other than the "tax on idiocy" which I take kind of personally... Smoking may not have become so universally accepted during most of the 20th century.

Had this not happened maybe I would have written a longer response instead of going out for a smoke.
 
Well, other than the "tax on idiocy" which I take kind of personally... Smoking may not have become so universally accepted during most of the 20th century.

Had this not happened maybe I would have written a longer response instead of going out for a smoke.

Haha. Win.

And I would probably be without my herbal cigarettes.... :(

-

Also, please exercise better grammar and punctuation, if you would. It's hard to take you entirely srsly right now.
 
What? Do you want Marijuana as the primary legal drug of choice?

Men were forced to smoke, essentially.

I mean if legendary figures, like all the Western Heroes of the Movies didn't smoke, there would be a handful of less smokers, but not affecting the total in the long run. Parents saw no harm in smoking back then, and atleast from what my grandfather says, they allowed their children to try it from an early age.

Perhaps if subcultures like (just throwing it out there) Blacks, or Jew, or Fundementalist Christians looked disapprovingly upon smokers or Smoking, perhaps there would be signifigant numbers of smokers lost.
 
So, more people smoke pipes and cigars instead. People smoked tobacco for centuries before WWI, and they will probably still be smoking it centuries from now. The health effects from smoking stem more from greed (the manufacturers made the things much more addictive so that they could sell more of them) than from the tobacco itself.
 
It may not be as 'popular' in the cultural mindset, or have the image that it did in popular culture, but vast volumes of people will still smoke, as they did before and after.

Maybe there is a larger market for Cigarillos?
 
The consumption of tobacco didn't vary that much due to World War One, what changed was the method of consumption, cigarettes overtook pipe's which prior to 1914 had been the more popular of the two.
 
You seem to be assuming that WWI made tobacco consumption take off- that's a different thing from popularizing cigarettes. Before the war people smoked just as much- they smoked cigars/cigarillos or bought loose tobacco for pipes or roll-ups. What the War popularised were specifically industrially-made, pre-rolled cigarettes. Previously pre-rolled fags were bespoke items made for the upper classes. The War turned them into a mass-produced, cheap and convenient way for smokers to buy tobacco. The only difference is to the soldier and later the civilian- keeping a pack of cigarettes safe and relatively dry is a bit easier than with loose tobacco.
 
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