Apparently the military hazing people during WWI contributed to the rise of fraternity hazing and the military giving out cigarettes during WWI resulted in those who tried to warn of the dangers of smoking being declared unpatriotic.
Some people just know how to have a good time...What next? No rum, sodomy, or the lash in the RN? Outrageous!
I'm pretty sure no country had any government healthcare programs before WWI (if any besides the USSR had any before WWII). In fact, America was one of the few countries that allowed people who didn't own property to vote. No wonder Marx thought a workers' revolt was neccesary and inevitable.OTL's anti-smoking* attitudes are imo very contingent on 1) the US's healthcare system being as minimal as it is OTL 2) something like OTL Reaganism popping up to break unions in the early 80s using workplace smoking as a thin end of the wedge 3) all the tobacco companies SOMEHOW in asb-level luck not pointing out nazi antismoking mentalities 4) a southern good ol' boy democrat who was both able to sound like a man of the people(to get away with) and have picked up umc anti-smoking mindsets like OTL Bill Clinton. There's other prudish southern dems ofc but only clinton could have pulled it off, much like how only Ronald Reagan could have gotten away with both amnesty and expanding immigration in the 1980s for another issue.
AH.com's recurring consensus of timelines where the US has if not universal healthcare a significantly broader healthcare system wouldn't see the rise of anti-smoking atittudes to the extent of OTL in the US, and other western nations influenced by them.
* and various other puritanical things like high drinking ages, retaining anti-marijuana laws, having porn technically felony-level illegal outside of california, doing mass incarceration against drugs instead of say rehab type approaches, etc
OTL's anti-smoking* attitudes are imo very contingent on 1) the US's healthcare system being as minimal as it is OTL 2) something like OTL Reaganism popping up to break unions in the early 80s using workplace smoking as a thin end of the wedge 3) all the tobacco companies SOMEHOW in asb-level luck not pointing out nazi antismoking mentalities 4) a southern good ol' boy democrat who was both able to sound like a man of the people(to get away with) and have picked up umc anti-smoking mindsets like OTL Bill Clinton. There's other prudish southern dems ofc but only clinton could have pulled it off, much like how only Ronald Reagan could have gotten away with both amnesty and expanding immigration in the 1980s for another issue.
AH.com's recurring consensus of timelines where the US has if not universal healthcare a significantly broader healthcare system wouldn't see the rise of anti-smoking atittudes to the extent of OTL in the US, and other western nations influenced by them.
* and various other puritanical things like high drinking ages, retaining anti-marijuana laws, having porn technically felony-level illegal outside of california, doing mass incarceration against drugs instead of say rehab type approaches, etc
I'm pretty no country had any government healthcare programs before WWI (if any besides the USSR had any before WWII). In fact, America was one of the few countries that allowed people who didn't own property to vote. No wonder Marx thought a workers' revolt was neccesary and inevitable.
imo citing the nazis doing restrictions to undo government taxes/bans on tobacco and make proposing them radioactive seems far more plausible than OTL. OTL's well on the low probaibltiy on alot -- the fact the US lacks even a low-end of oecd universal healthcare system is one biggie, the sheer level of INCOMPETENCE in the pro-marijuana moement, the tobacco thing, the US "left" such as it is being SO closely friendly with corporate power etc
I don't think WW1 made more people smokers. Most people already smoked before the war (usually cigars or pipes or chew) the war just changed smoking habits because in the trench war a relatively quick and small cigarette was a lot more convenient then having to fill a pipe or smoke an entire cigar.
I wonder if the push for patriotism led to "cowardice" being demonized, which led to hazing, which led to "peer pressure".
FWIW, Woodrow Wilson and FDR were "wets". I wonder if a "dry" President would be more skeptical of handing out cigarettes.
@interpoltomo Didn't C. Everett Koop also play a big role? I'd bet that Koop was motivated by disgust at adults forcing kids to breathe their smoke in. I'd also bet Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" rhetoric helped. As for Clinton, I wonder if his goal was to seem less "neoliberal", to counter the claim that there was "no real difference" between him and Dole, etc.
Luther Terry was the famous Surgeon General's Report that made the dangers of smoking clear, Koop was second-hand smoke and the idea that it's morally wrong to smoke.Yep, Koop sure did play a major role, but he wasn't the only surgeon-general who took aim at smoking. Surgeon General Luther Terry led a committee which published a very notable report against smoking in 1964.
Hazing in the military? During the War?Apparently the military hazing people during WWI contributed to the rise of fraternity hazing and the military giving out cigarettes during WWI resulted in those who tried to warn of the dangers of smoking being declared unpatriotic.
This seems relevant for this thread:
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1942:
"Heil Hitler! You are not allowed to smoke here!"
"Why, this is sheer Fascism!"
As for the OP itself.... With the OTL attitudes to smoking in the 1930s, and with how little joys the ordinary soldiers had on the front, I don't think WWII militaries would have had it easy to enact anti-tobacco policies. To read Finnish wartime stories about the tobacco shortage and the huge effort people went to growing it at home and buying it from the black market, I'd say that not giving tobacco to the troops would seriously lower morale in comparison to the OTL situation. Forcing the men to fight at the front and risk their lives daily, and not even allowing them the luxury of a quiet smoke now and then? It would be bound to cause trouble among the troops.