As evidence about smoking’s harms became undeniable, governments started implementing restrictions and advertising bans. The backlash was massive, well-funded and coordinated, and included many of the same voices that later downplayed or denied the evidence for global warming as a consequence of burning coal, oil and gas.
Many of us remember the unpleasant experience of trying to enjoy a meal next to a table of smokers. Now, far fewer people smoke. And most have accepted that smoking is bad for the health of smokers and those around them, and that there should be limits on where and when people can partake. We’ve also accepted — to some extent — that advertising a product that can seriously damage health and even kill should be restricted or banned.
But we live under a consumer capitalist system, so we’re still subjected to ads — some false or misleading — for harmful products. Cars, trucks and SUVs and the gas they burn are polluting air, water and land and fuelling a climate crisis that puts our survival at risk. Yet their ads are ubiquitous.
As Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway wrote in Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, tobacco interests and later fossil fuel promoters hired scientists, including Frederick Seitz and Fred Singer, to cast doubt on the mounting evidence of the harms of tobacco and then climate change.