ABSTRACT

The effort to inculcate positive images of the relationship between smoking and athletics has become a major strategy as the adverse health effects of tobacco become more widely known. The tobacco industry has reinforced its link with sports through official sponsorships, lending brand names and large subsidies to tennis, golf, motor racing, and other events. A young, well-dressed couple sit on the deck of a large yacht; as the woman’s dress blows in the breeze, she holds a package of ‘Tuxedo’ tobacco away from her companion. Print advertising of tobacco boomed with the introduction of color printing at the end of the nineteenth century. In the 1920s the American Tobacco Company’s ‘Lucky Strike’ brand launched a campaign that has only been rivaled for its cynicism and dishonesty by the ‘Virginia Slims’ advertisements of recent decades. Tobacco companies exploited the American male’s new-found interest in spectator sports to promote their products.