Lauren Weinstein on Nostr: It's easy to forget how pervasive cigarette ads and openly available cigarette ...

It's easy to forget how pervasive cigarette ads and openly available cigarette machines were during that era. In the earliest days of mass TV viewing, the line between the show and cigarette firms was often pretty much invisible, as you note. By the 60s, it was getting less so, but the ads were still pervasive. For a short period after TV and radio ads for cigarettes were banned on 2 Jan 1971 (law signed by Richard Nixon), some firms managed to bypass the ban briefly by promoting little cigarette-sized cigars (e.g. Tijuana Smalls - "One for the road, baby!"). These were ultimately banned from radio and TV ads as well.

Now, also as you note, we have the scourge (these are banned in most of the world) of Big Pharma ads one after another after another flooding the country.