Mad Men and the End of Cigarette Advertising

Remember in season four's "Blowing Smoking" when Don bought that full page The New York Times ad, promising SCDP would no longer be in the cigarette business? It was a big deal to the agency, especially considering that in 1969, tobacco companies were the single largest product advertisers on television.¹  Listen to the above audio sample from that era, brought to you by Caviler Cigarettes.

Don's decision may just have presaged one of the biggest changes in the ad industry at the time: the passage of the  Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act, signed by Richard Nixon on April 1st, 1970, which officially banned all cigarette advertisements on radio or television.

Advertising for Benson and Hedges cigarettes in February 1970. The 1970 act did not ban magazine ads.

(Apic/Getty Images/Getty)

We've seen Don deal with small restraints in advertising cigarettes throughout the series. In the pilot episode, researcher Dr. Greta Guttman warns him that the desire for cigarettes is actually a death wish, a notion that he throws away quite literally in the trash. In season 4, we've also seen Draper try to calm down Lee Garner Jr., owner of Lucky Strike cigarettes, when new restrictions banned using role models like celebrities and athletes in advertisements, for fear that it encouraged youth smoking.

As Mad Men approaches its end, critics have been wondering if the series will end on a uplifting or cynical note.  Don hasn't stopped puffing away in the mid-season premiere, but it's obvious that the popularity of one of the show's central characters is coming to an end.

Annual adult per capita cigarette consumption

(Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)

 
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/nixon-signs-legislation-banning-cigarette-ads-on-tv-and-radio