'Inherently Bad, and Bad Only' A History of State-Level Regulation of Cigarettes and Smoking in the United States Since the 1880s Volume 1 An In-Depth National Study Embedding Ultra-Thick Description of a Representative State (Iowa)

Abstract

This book lays out empirical and methodological underpinnings for studying the early period of anti-cigarette legislation in the United States by overcoming the lack of primary source-based historical scholarship. Constantly repeating wildly erroneous claims at second, third, and more remote hand, anti-smoking academics and pro-tobacco apologists have fundamentally distorted history, on the one hand by dismissing the early anti-cigarette movement as merely religiously and morally motivated and the legislation it secured as unenforced exercises bereft of historical relevance, and, on the other by absurdly magnifying its achievements. Reconstruction of the national scope of the real course of the passage and repeal of statewide legislative bans on cigarette sales to adults from the late 1880s until 1927 pays special attention to the non-governmental driving forces of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union’s health-based support of and the monopolistic American Tobacco Company’s opposition to such interference with consumer freedom. In this panoramic analysis is embedded ultra-thick description of the enactment, enforcement, and repeal processes in Iowa as a representative state. In order to present the full sweep of tobacco control regulation, the narrative continues into the present, under the new circumstances of a mass movement and monolithic scientific warnings of secondhand smoke exposure’s lethality, by capturing the shift in focus to anti-public smoking legislation - which had, ironically, originated just as sales ban repeals were spreading in the wake of World War I - again using developments in Iowa, interpretatively enriched by interviews with numerous legislative, executive, administrative, and nongovernmental actors, as a sequence of microcosms.

Errata for “Inherently Bad, and Bad Only”

Page xiv line 13: “1915” should be “1917” Page xvii line 25: “2137” should be “2237” Page xxii line 10: “R..J.” should be “R. J.” Page lxxxiii 5th line from bottom 4th word: delete “men” Page 23 note 9 last line: “health” should be “healthy” Page 28 n. 28 3d line from bottom: insert "the smoke" at beginning of line Page 45 Table 1 line 2 beneath table: the “****” after “MN” should be deleted. The symbol indicating that the governor vetoed a bill that both houses had passed was based on an erroneous press account. In fact, the House amended the Senate bill, but the Senate did not concur in the amendment, which did not affect the core sales prohibition provision. Page 79 footnote 131 line 3: insert “be” between “to” and “giving” Page 242 n. 541 line 6: “Gastonites” should be Gastonites” Page 248 line 4: “House” should be “Senate” Page 372 bottom line: insert “not” between “advance” and “to” Page 396 4th line from bottom: “;” should be “,” Page 404 line 10: “first a” should be “a first” Page 408 line 4: insert “the” between “that” and “House” Page 488 n.847: 175-76 should read 275-76 Page 597 n. 1330 1st line: substitute NYT for CT and substitute Times for Tribune Page 804 n. 37 last line: (1895) should be (1897) Page 804 n. 38 last line: (1895) should be (1897) Page 1506 2d line from bottom: “1915” should be “1917” Page 1513 6th line from bottom: “44-year” should be “44-year-old” Page 1526 3d line from bottom: insert “7” after “February” Page 1549 line 12 1st word: “that” should be “than” Page 1814 6th line from bottom: insert “began” after “battle” Page 1832 n.272 line 1: delete italics in “Heidi Osselaer” Page 2031 n. 322 line 10 6th word: delete “a” Page 2152 n. 3 line 1: “Her[man .” should be “Herm[an .” Page 2159 bottom 11 lines: should be in 12point font Page 2160 lines 1-2: should be in 12point font Page 2516 13th line from bottom: delete “of” Page 2842 2d line 3d word: “the” should be “that” Page 3222 n.4 line 4: “fire-safe” should be “non-fire-safe”

Keywords: Smoking, State Law, Tobacco industry, Cigarettes, Woman's Christian Temperance Union, Tobacco Trust