Angry Planet - What Cigarettes Tell Us About the Military-Industrial Complex

Episode Date: February 1, 2019

Drugs and the battlefield go together like peanut butter and jelly. The Third Reich’s soldier ran on methamphetamine and American soldiers smoked like chimneys. The picture of the US GI with a burning cigarette pressed between their lips is so iconic that few people question it...or realize how young the image really is.Joel R. Bius, assistant professor of national security studies at the U.S. Air Force Air Command and Staff College, is here to help us dispel the myth of the great American military cigarette and walk us through the fascinating history of how cigarettes ended up in the US military kit, and how they left. It’s the subject of his new book, Smoke Em If You Got Em: The Rise and Fall of the Military Cigarette Ration.You can listen to War College on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is warcollegepodcast.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/warcollegepodcast/; and on Twitter: @War_College.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast? Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. The Marshall Plan included $1 billion in American cigarette aid and represented a third of all monies earmarked for food in 7.7% of the entire aid package. You're listening to War College, a weekly podcast. that brings you the stories from behind the front lines.

Here are your hosts. Hello, welcome to War College. I'm Matthew Galt. And I'm Derogana. Drugs in the battlefield go together like peanut butter and jelly. The Third Reich soldiers ran on methamphetamine, and American soldiers smoked like chimneys. The picture of the USGI with a burning cigarette pressed between their lips

is so iconic that few people question it or realize how young that image really is. Joel R. Bias did question it. He's the assistant professor of national security studies at the U.S. Air Force Command and Staff College, and he's here to help us today dispel the myth of the great American military cigarette and walk us through the fascinating story of how cigarettes ended up in the U.S. military kit and how they left. It's the subject of his new book, Smoke Em If You Got Him, the Rise and Fall of the Military Cigarette Ration. Joel, thank you so much for joining us. Hey, guys, it's good to be here. Thanks for having me. All right, well, let's start with some really basic stuff. It was one of the really things that I thought was really interesting about the, especially the beginning of your book, is that pre-World War I, America had a really different relationship with cigarettes and nicotine.

Can you talk about that a little bit? Sure, guys. First, for I start, general disclaimer, these are my views and other views of the Department of Defense, United States Air Force, and I'm happy to talk to you about the book. So the question about World War I, yeah, that was as I started digging into this, One of the interesting things I found, because you make assumptions, is that smoking a manufactured cigarette, but we know of today something that comes out of a pack with a filter on. Of course, I didn't have a filter back then. But the idea of smoking cigarettes before World War I was considered dandy or effeminate or not masculine in one category or also considered something not desirable for a,

a gentleman to do. I was considered an immigrant, city dweller, something that weak people did, you know, not virile manhood and things like that, was kind of the thoughts on the cigarette prior to World War I. Okay, well, what happened in World War I

that kind of changed the history of cigarettes? In World War I, you're talking war and society here. We go to war as a society, So whatever is going on in society at the time is brought into the war and vice versa. So America was in the progressive movements during this period of American history. So as America began to see the war clouds and then mobilized for war in the winter, spring during World War, during 1917 and leading into that, they did it as a progressive nation.

So as they thought about the idea of bringing millions of conscripted soldiers into arms, they had to come to grips with the fact the predominant theme in soldiering, the trope for going back centuries, had always been vice, you know, that when you send your child off to join as a conscript or be in the military, it's not necessarily a positive transaction. You don't expect that son to come back clean as a whistle, singing hymns and saying yes man and no man and things like that so the progressives were very aware of this and so when they started mobilizing they realized that the evils were liquor and women and so vice

when it came to you know prostitution and liquor and so they really went hard after those there's many books on that making men moral and when you talk about this era you know shutting down brothels within 10 miles of any, you know, of New Orleans, making it illegal to sell or give alcohol to a soldier, even if you had them over for Sunday lunch or something like that. So they really clamp down on the two main vices of alcohol and prostitution and venereal disease is what they're looking at too. So that was a progressive era issue that was brought to four during the war.

So, you know, talk about this in the book with the Wyman and the committee on training camp activity. So they really work hard building these camps. Newton Baker says that he wants to give men an invisible armor, and he's not talking about something that will deflect shrapnel or bullets. He's talking about a moral armor that he's delivering to them in these camps. So when they send the expeditionary force over and they begin fighting in Europe, they are exposed to all these things,

and they're seeing the British soldiers with their rum rations, the French soldiers with their brothels, and then even the German soldiers, you mentioned earlier, they had a significant amount of cigarettes, and they were already smoking. So it was almost like the army, the moralists, the progressives had to make a choice. You know, the soldiers wanted to have,

they wanted to smoke, they wanted to do something in their off time, they wanted to do something that would assuage their kind of nerves and to, you know, have those social interactions that come with having a drink, or sharing a smoke. And so in a way, the army and the progressives kind of started to give a pass to the idea of a cigarette ration. So they still clamped down on liquor and prostitution, but they threw a process that they slowly started to realize that a cigarette ration was a

possible way to kill two birds of one stone, kind of, give soldiers kind of a masculine kind of advice, but the one that wasn't the liquor or prostitution. Well, how do the cigarette companies feel about all this? Okay. So, yeah, I mean, that was one of my research objectives as I started really laying out this research agenda was I wanted to go into the National Archives and also the archives at the University of California online archives they have on the tobacco, the legacy tobacco documents and any kind of cigarette company archives I could get my hands on and try to

find that because most of the time when you think of the cigarette in the 20th century you think a big tobacco and some kind of which emerges later in the book some kind of political economic kind of behind the scene shadowy puppet to some degree and so I went into the archives kind of thinking I would start to see that I would see the industry or cigarette companies recognizing this this pool and marketing to it and seeing this is a lucrative business venture, but I did not find that. What we find here is that the manufactured cigarettes was still relatively new, almost like I reckon it today, the jewel, the electronic cigarettes and things like that.

It was still a new thing. I mean, the Duke company, they didn't really start manufacturing large amounts of manufactured cigarettes until the late 19th century. And then they connected that with a marketing program just before World War I. So there was really the first mass marketed manufactured cigarette was just about four years before we enter World War I. And they had not like mobilized to form this monolithic lobby yet either. That doesn't happen until the 1950s. So these are just small, tiny, relatively speaking, considering how big the companies came. These are small, almost, I won't say mom and pop, but like, you know, small e-cigarette companies were a few

years ago, upstarts. And the military, my argument, the military found them, a general March, went into the trenches. He was recalled to be chief of staff, and he did a kind of final inspection tour. And he heard all of this clamoring about soldiers wanting cigarettes and now they had to pay exorbitant prices for them to Wyman. And other soldiers had a ration. Why couldn't they? So he brought that back with him as chief of staff. And I just found it fascinating that he records in his memoir. I mean, he didn't know 100 years later we'd be writing about this or inquiring about

it. But he made a point of it in his memoir to write that one of the very first things he did when he took on the reins of chief of staff is to institute a cigarette ration, a four cigarettes a day and then force his staff and I'm a you know I'm a staff officer now I've just come from meetings where I'm getting direction from higher headquarters and general officers forces staff to then do the work to make that happen so I argue that and I that the the general staff then went out to the companies and I mean in the first year they procured I think I I um the number is like 52% of camels run for that entire year the military. The military

just procured in order to fill out this cigarette ration. So to answer your question, how did the cigarette companies feel about it? It was a great thing for them, obviously. But remember, they were still very new and they had not necessarily united. And there wasn't any, there was no pressure to be fighting against any really big anti-cigarette or environmental health or health issue lobby. It was just, man, we're making cigarettes. And now we're, we're have this huge windfall in our lap, and they pretty much ran with it. So the cigarette companies were actually approached by the military. They did not the other way around.

Like they didn't come to the Pentagon and say, hey, this is. No, they, they did not. I mean, the numbers don't lie. There was only at the turn of the century about two billion manufactured cigarettes smoked in the United States. And I think as we lead into World War I, that number had increased. but not what it grew to to where by the time we get to World War II,

the numbers are astronomical. I have not, I'm sure if I, you know, at some point you got to write the book and close that if I continue to just, you know, do intense research and could find some, you know, archive somewhere, maybe that's another project to find the other end of this, but I have not been able to find that yet

to where there was a mobilized push that then made the military turn their heads towards the industry and say, oh, these guys that are, you know, because that does happen in the military industrial complex, for sure. We have this wear that you want. The things I found in the archives indicated the other way around, the military said, wow, there's all these cigarettes in Europe.

Now, manufacture, people were smoking, manufacturing rolled cigarettes, you know, a lot in Europe for decades leading up to World War I. But that craze had not hit the United States yet. the numbers are, you know, the vast majority of tobacco intake in America, as it had been for centuries, was cigars, chewing tobacco, and pipe tobacco. And those men who did that, I did find, you know, lots of evidence where those men would talk about, you don't lose any of your manhood if you smoke a cigar. You know, cigar is something you smoke inside in a club with men.

pipes denote some level of social standing because it's, you know, expensive to get a pipe, to maintain a pipe, to carry it around. And then if there was any kind of lower class form of tobacco, it was main, you know, the numbers of people that smoked, or the chewing tobacco was incredible. I mean, you couldn't go anywhere without finding a spatoon somewhere in America during this time. And then, you know, the thing in World War I was imagined in a trench where there's already is a very disgusting, which I discussed in the book, type existence, if everyone had chewing tobacco in their mouth, spitting it in the bottom of the trench. I mean, it would be a disaster.

Or if everyone had to clank around with all the makings of pipes and things like that. So the cigarette really became a, you know, met the war where it was. It was a way, and also the industrial, you know, industrialism that's going on at the time. The cigarette is perfectly designed for a 10-minute smoke break. So as during the, during the, you know, industrialism, you know, industrialism that's going on at the time. So as during the progressive era, as you're bringing in regulation of work, so you know, ages that you can work or not work, you know, standard work day, days off and things like that, also standard work periods. And so the cigarette was perfectly designed to match that work battle rhythm of, you know,

50 minutes to 10 minutes smoke break and then you're off and running again kind of thing. So it was really a confluence of all those things right there at the first two decades of the 20th century to set the foundation for the cigarette to take off. And what I agree, one of the biggest ones being millions of soldiers, you know, I'm here in Montgomery, Alabama, and, you know, there's great pictures of the units from Alabama coming back into the city. If these guys walking in and you're watching all these guys smoking cigarettes, which is not something they did when they left, and all of a sudden instantly, you have a masculine picture of these war, grizzled war heroes, you know, kind of that masculine thing.

And it just takes off from there. No cigarette is no longer seen effeminate at all after that. So basically, these guys came home from World War I, not smoking. And then they came home and they were smoking cigarettes. So do you think that in general, you think these soldiers from World War I kind of turn the United States or Americans in general into smokers themselves? They see this masculine figure smoking a cigarette. So do you think they want to try to recreate that themselves? I surely argue that.

I mean, you know, history could have, who knows, if there hadn't been a World War I would the exact same thing happen just because industrial workers smoking? I don't know because the negative connotations connected with immigrant-type city-dweller, lower-class workers smoking cigarettes. You know, maybe it would not have taken off in the same way. but the image of America, because they really sold it. Newton Baker was, hey, moms and dads, I'm recruiting the best, the brightest I want.

You know, all of your best coming into the Army about the millions. And he wrote in his speech, his Invisible Armour's speech, I'm going to return them home to you better than when they came in the Army. And any of you that study military history, I teach electives on American military culture. That had not necessarily been the transaction for millennia, you know. Newton Baker and the progressives were going to turn this. on his head. So they returned these guys. You know, look at the pictures. These guys are in uniform. You know, they probably gained on average 10 or 20, 30 pounds, as opposed to today, you know,

youth have to lose weight to make it in the military. At the time, it was really bad in England. These guys come back. They're fit. They're in shape. They look good. The white men have taught them how to sing together, how to work together. They've accomplished a great national pride of aiding in the, you know, victory in Europe. And on top of that, they've got cigarette in their mouth. So, you know, that's, that's a marketer's dream right there. So, yeah, I argue that, well, the numbers don't lie. I mean, from that day forward, smoking increases astronomically all the way through 1980, year after year. You know, the numbers go really, really off the chart. Was there any difference between how it was handled in World War I and World War II, or was it just kind of supercharged?

So at World War II, what happens is, is if we enter World War I, not a cigarette smoking nation, nor a cigarette smoking military. And we enter World War II, a cigarette smoking nation and a military that has a cigarette ration in place. So there's no argument we enter World War I. The expectation is there. Whereas in World War II, in World War II, in World War I, we declare war in April 1917. you know, we don't get really, really, you know, hardcore combat forces on the ground in any large, you know, large numbers until the next year. And we institute the cigarette ration in the spring of 1918, and it really starts arriving in the summer of 1918. So, you know, it was only half the war did we have really any kind of cigarette ration. And whereas World War II, you know, it's from the very beginning. They, they instate, a lot of my big research came from the armies. Basically, their cigarette procurement branch within the logistics department, the service of supply department.

It was headed by a full colonel, and he had an entire staff. And the same way one of his buddies was over getting rubber tires or bullets or tank treads, he was, you know, projecting and procuring. cigarettes and that became part of his testimony in 1944 was just fascinating to sit and read because it's you know read through that three or four hundred pages

of documents that relate to that so that'd be the difference we entered the nation as a cigarette smoking nation during World War II as opposed to World War I Did the tobacco industry did they re-approached the Pentagon during around World War II to force cigarettes or were they

they just learned from World War I You know, in my reading of it, which it is the rise and fall, and I try to make very clear in the intro, I cover about 1918 to 86, but there's, you know, without writing a 2,000-page book, there's no way you can cover every year. And there's other books that fill the gap out there. But basically, yeah, the 1930s was the heyday for cigarette advertising with no clamps, you know. That's the doctor, what brand do you smoke? You know, cigarettes make your teeth whiter. You know, cigarettes, you know, you know, and they testify.

in 1944 during the war that the cigarette industry and their representatives testify that they foresee no end to the cigarette demand. And they call it infinite. They say there's no ceiling in sight. And so the, so, you know, really they're not, you know, you're a going concern. You're always searching for more customers. But I don't think they think that there's all of a sudden this point where the pond's going to, you know, run dry.

and they're going to run out of gas. And World War II is just another big step in that direction. Now, I do argue in the book abbreviated, but I'm a part of another book project that'll come out next year out of a chapter in that about the environmental history of World War II, that the New Deal, so as much as I was telling you the progressive era

was going on during World War I, but we've got to remember that the Great Depression and the New Deal, preceded World War II. And one of the hallmarks of the Great Depression was limiting crop production so you could keep prices high because farmers for centuries have been chasing up and down the supply chain, you know, pricing index. And so what I'm saying is, is the new deal in legislation like the Agricultural Adjustment Act

and its following the Civil Conservation Act limited the amount of tobacco that you could produce. It had to be rationalized, right? So you couldn't just do maximum production and just put every acre you could into tobacco. So they did run into that World War II. They were able to meet the demand. But I argue as the war went on in 1944, there's actually the Truman Committee was a committee that was formed to do oversight of the business of war to make sure there was no, you know, graft and profiting and things like that as it happened or argued people argue happened in World War I. And one of their hearings over three separate hearings was on the cigarette shortage. And so there was a perceived cigarette shortage in World War II in 1944 on the domestic side

because soldiers were getting trillions of cigarettes, you know, peeled right off the soldiers in Europe and the Pacific were serviced first. And domestically, America was a smoking nation working in factories, nicotine, you know, addiction, and just declares. culture of smoking cigarettes had really taken hold. And there was a fear that America would, you know, either run short domestically or started to run short with your soldiers downrange. And so they have hearings in 44. And one of the things they're talking about those hearings is, you know, more pro-business Republicans at the time who didn't like some of the New Deal strictures on the, you know, the horses of capitalism. We're trying to roll back those crop restrictions during that time so that they could just produce as many as much tobacco as they wanted to.

So that had to be rationalized through a process. But we never ran out of cigarettes in war. If the war would have continued to 45, 46, which in 44, they thought it would, with the possible invasion of Japan and the years it would take for that, they would have run into some serious problems about, because it takes three years to age tobacco. So you might be okay now, but if you don't rationalize, this out, you're going to run out. Let's start talking about how all this winds down and ends.

Like, when did the Pentagon figure out that maybe cigarettes are bad for people? I guess now that you ask it that way, at the front end, I argue that it was the military pressing downward on the cigarette to get cigarettes. And then as this story marches on, it's really an outside push in that gets cigarettes kind of extracted from the military culture in broad terms. So, Florence, America, by 1950, around eight out of every 10 American males are taking in tobacco in some way. And about 70% of them, so seven out of 10 are smoking cigarettes. So, you know, we go from a very smaller percentage, and then by middle of the 20th century, it's incredibly enormous.

1952-ish, you know, there's different scientific studies, but about 1952, cigarette smoking is proven cancerous. It will kill you. So that's the first time that, you know, is let out from under the circus tent. By 1954, now the industry has now realized we've got to get together to some degree to form a lobby, or this is going to be the end of us. And so I talk about the frank statement that's the largest newspaper advertisement in American history, to that point, maybe ever, where the industry says, here's the frank statement. We have all our customers' concerns in mind.

we're going to, you know, cigarette is not when I kill you and things like that. So the industry starts, when we think a big tobacco, think 1954. That's when the industry forms the Tobacco Institute and a huge, incredibly well-funded lobbying arm. All right. 1964, the Surgeon General of the United States says that cigarette smoking is dangerous to your help. All right. 1968, the Federal Trade Commission starts putting mandatory labels on cigarette packs, but we're still handing out cigarettes as part of rations, you know, all the way through Vietnam War. Vietnam War ends in 72. Nixon pledges to end the draft and as part of his platform and his campaign.

So in June of 73, the last soldier is drafted, but at the same time, the Congress, from Florida by Bennett, he introduces legislation that same month in the requirement of the military to provide cigarette rations. So first of all, he said it was for fiscal reasons, meaning he was a fiscal conservative. And he said it's no longer should be acquired for the American taxpayers to fund giving cigarettes to soldiers when they can buy them themselves. you know, if they discretionary income. Fiscally, he was also, because he had served in the military, was aware that we're moving from a drafted to a professional all-volunteer force because that's the argument we've got to modernize in the 70s and into the 80s.

And you've got to have a professional, long-serving soldier to do that. No longer is it going to be like Elvis, you know, you do a couple of years, you do your service and you get out, kind of you get a replenish, drafted force every year that you don't necessarily have to maintain them with their health throughout their career and then into their retirement years. And so he was saying that, listen, when this group that we're recruiting now and in this professional volunteer force, they're going to pay more money, we're going to give more benefits, they're going to be married, they're going to have children, and we're going to guarantee their, you know, health care

for 20 years through 93 and then 20 years beyond that through, say, you know, 2013 and in his thing, it's going to be an incredibly huge expense because now they've had, you know, years of knowledge of the, and they're just now, you know, we're realizing the 70s, the expense, health care expenses associated with poor lung health and heart disease and things like that and loss in production. So fiscal first, and then I argue physical second. And he says, oh, by the way, it has been proven that it is dangerous to health. So I don't think we as a country should be in the business of giving soldiers. or something for free that is dangerous to their health. And also creating the culture. And I talk about that in the book, that smoke them if you got them. That comes from the military culture, especially in the 30s, 40s, 50s of when you're in training,

if you take a break, the drill sergeant would say smoke them if you got them. And so if there's 100 soldiers out there and 80 of them were smoking, the 20 that didn't had to go work. They had to clean up shells. They had to sweep. So quickly, everyone learned to smoke cigarettes. And so Charles Bennett is saying in 1973 that, you know, we've got to kind of end that culture for fiscal and physical reasons. So that starts the ball rolling.

But as I talk about, and you wanted to talk about political economy, that also opens up a huge beltway battle, a political economy in the 70s all the way to 1986 between the organized industry, the lobby. those in Congress who were not from tobacco states, who were willing to sponsor legislation that continue to ratchet down the industry, and then very powerful people from the tobacco states like Jesse Helms, Dan Daniels, and other powerful congressmen who were in influential seats in Congress

that stood against that. Are you, I'm curious, are you, or have you ever been a smoker? I'm not a cigarette smoker. I enjoy a good, pipe or a cigar every once in a while, but I've never been a cigarette smoker. Why was this a subject to study for you? Well, like a lot of books you read in the preface, the author says, you know, it's kind of

strange, and I have, you know, that kind of strange. I mean, I went to the Air Force sent me. I went on a DOD fellowship to do some study, work on a PhD in history, and I went to do Civil War because I had done a master's degree work in Civil War history and over at Southern Miss. and after a semester there, I realized, because I only had three years to do this work, and I realized I needed to find a topic, it was a little more doable, and I happened to take an elective class, a graduate elective class from Dr. Lewis Curicudos, who's an expert in

the cigarette industry and tobacco history in America on that topic. And so, you know, like what started out as a conversation after class, and then a small research project grew into, wow, there's a real incredible story here that's just not anecdotal. You know, this isn't just, hey, let me show you some cool pictures of cigarette ads from World War 2 and tell you some funny stories because that stuff is in there. But to me, it's huge because it tells the story of the 20th century, which is the rise of special interest in a unique political economy that emerged throughout this century. And, you know, it's a classic war on society topic that war drove society.

And then to some degree, society has turned around and pressed onto war expected norms and things like that. Because you just don't find many soldiers, especially officers in uniform smoking cigarettes today. I mean, you can't where I work at on Air University campus. So yeah, that's how I arrived at that. I just, my intuition saw that there was a story here that needed to be told. that we possibly walk by a lot like a good painting. And I dug in and told the story.

I found a bookend in 1918 and I found a bookend in 1986 and I tried to talk about change over time a time when America didn't smoke cigarettes to a time when we issued trillions of cigarettes to a time when we fight to remove the cigarettes which happens with official DOD policy in 1986. So we removed in 73.

and in my 86, the Casper Weinberger, and starting with the Army, calls cigarette smoking incompatible with military service. And they issue guidance 1010.1, I think, that says smoking cessation is now the policy of the United States Army and then the other branches followed behind. Derek, were you smoking? I wasn't smoking. I was a big copenhay.

I was a smokeless tobacco guy. I dipped a lot when I was in, like a lot. Yeah, so dip has gone astronomical now. So my colleagues, especially the Army guys, they all have a Coke can and I just left work. And, you know, several of them, you know, my good Ranger buddy, he knows he switches from the top of his lip to the bottom to the other side to the top.

He's always moving that thing around. So you could argue as cigarette smoking has decreased, and smokeless tobacco is surely increased. And I get into that, and Derek, I know maybe you can speak to this. And I know when I was down range, it helped me before convoys, et cetera, to sit back and smoke a good cigar. I get into a little bit of the pharmacology, the research on why cigarette smoking was so appealing or tobacco, whether it's dip or cigarettes.

And especially, you know, in war type environments, World War I, War II, it's one of those drugs that it calms, but yet heightens awareness, right? Some drugs will calm you, but then you're not aware. But somehow nicotine relaxes you, but makes you more receptive and more, and also assuages boredom. I mean, as much as you would, you know, think that cigarettes is going to calm me, you know, and I do write about that during, you know, artillery barrages or whatever. But it's also, you've got to remember these guys are entrenched.

or in fobs or wherever for days and hours on end with nothing to do and cigarette smoking kind of becomes as a time filler and also a way to social a social capital there you meet a guy on a sea one not on a plane but on a convoy and you're like share a cigarette share names things like that so i don't know if you're going to speak to that derrick at all yeah i mean it's it's kind of turned from sharing a cigarette to hey do you got any copenhagen and if you do then you just kind of give, you know, you, the guy packs a lipper and you end up probably talking to him. I can, I can, I think it was the third tour I did, maybe, second or third tour I did when I was in Missoule that literally, I don't think maybe there was one or two guys on the team that didn't dip. And you're right, it's one of those things that we would throw it in right before we would leave the wire. Everybody would. I don't know. And it's weird. It's there's something satisfying about spitting on the ground. There really is. I don't know what it is. just something satisfying about it.

Plus, there's so many activities with dipping. Like, people are going to spill their dip spitters, which are gross. I mean, the whole process is disgusting. But, I mean, there's just... It sounds like nicotine is here to stay, even if smoking is on the way out. I was thinking that, yeah. I'm like, I'm wondering, do you know how much... How powerful did the tobacco industry become just from rationing cigarettes in the military from World One and World War II?

I mean, how powerful did these people become because of that? I mean, the industry becomes incredibly powerful in the 20th century. I mean, that's been proven, right? No one even questions that. When you talk about the amount of money that is out there that is made, that is, you know, wealth transferred, wealth made, up and down the chain. And you just see that I was just, I mean, I'm not, I guess I was kind of maybe slightly a little naive. but when you really dig into the congressional records

and you see how deep the power was in terms of the lobby. And this is, you know, this happens, you know, all the time today. But they were able to spend incredible amounts of money to keep this thing going because it made credible amounts of money. And so when you see, like I, you know, when Weinberger is confirmed in 1981 as Reagan Secretary of Defense, you've got a landslide Republican victory, and so it should just be a rubber stamp.

You might get one or two Democrats to vote against them. No, it's two Republicans from North Carolina, Jesse Helms and Senator East of North Carolina. It's a 97 to two vote, and two members of Reagan's own party vote against Casper Weinberger because Weinberger had an established history of being anti-smoking. He was the one of the FTC that pushed warning labels back in 1968. And so that was another thing my radar scope went up was, man, the political economy here of a powerful Republican in a landslide victory with a Republican president, but yet willing to part with the herd to vote against the Secretary of Defense was incredible to me, you know.

And so, yeah, to me, soldiering in the rise of the cigarette industry, it's not the issue, but it certainly is one of the issues of the 20th century. that leads to this huge story that happens from 1918 to 86. And look, even though in 1986, the guidance was issued that smoking cessation was now the norm, you know, the industry was very powerful, and it took till 2002. So I've been in since 94-ish. It took since until 2002 to where you could not get cigarettes on base or on post half off. So most of half of my career, you could buy, you know, cigarettes on the commissary or in the PX for half of, because they were subsidized. So they were proven deadly in 52, 64, surgeon general,

73, removed, 86, removed from the culture cessation, but all the way until 2002, the industry's able to hang on to that huge subsidy to drew in, you know, thousands of retirees and soldiers. a month to go in and buy cigarettes in the commissary. Half off. If you want to talk about the power of the industry and capitalizing upon this swell, this huge swell of cigarette smoking in America and Europe, the Marshall Plan included $1 billion in American cigarette aid

and represented a third of all monies earmarked for food in 7.7% of the entire aid package. So if that's not military, connected to policy and economy, than nothing is, you know. The fact that, and the industry worked that. Now, they were involved in that,

the companies in North Carolina, or, you know, tobacco state politicians and getting that into the Marshall Plan. Now, what does that do for you? Well, Europeans are smoking like crazy, right, before Americans ever did. But after World War II, they began, they craved American brands.

So this made sure that Europe would continue to smoke American cigarettes and after all the millions of soldiers are removed out of Europe, which was a huge economic prosperity windfall for the cigarette industry all the way for the next half century. So just a little anecdotal story there. One of the things I think is really fascinating about all of this is kind of like you said, it really is a microcosm for the military industrial complex, right? which is the quote, the famous quote that you open the book with.

And thank you so much for coming on to War College and walking us through all of it. You bet, guys. Thanks for having me. That's all this week, War College. Listeners, thank you so much for tuning in. War College is me, Matthew Galt, and Derek Gannon. No Dell produces and helps keep his honest. Jason Fields co-created the show with me. Now he's lost in time and space.

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