Tobacco Advertising Exhibit at UCSF

The University of California, San Francisco’s Library and Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education are hosting “Not a Cough in a Carload: Images from the Tobacco Industry’s Campaign to Hide the Hazards of Smoking.” This exhibit of historic cigarette advertising and promotional items was curated by Laurie Jackler and Robert Jackler and Robert Proctor, two Stanford University experts on the tobacco industry’s marketing of their disease-causing products.

The exhibit shows --principally through advertising images-- how, between the late 1920s and the early 1950s, tobacco companies used deceptive and often patently false claims in an effort to reassure the public of the safety of their products. Images of physicians were frequently used to sell cigarettes: Doctors were depicted as satisfied and enthusiastic partakers of the smoking habit. Images of medical men (and a few token women) appeared under soothing reassurances of the safety of smoking. Liberal use was also made of pseudo-scientific medical reports and surveys.

The exhibit will run through February 29 at the UCSF Library, 530 Parnassus Avenue, Fifth Floor, San Francisco. The Library is open M-Th 7:45 AM – Midnight; Fri 7:45 AM - 8:00 PM; Sat 10:00 AM - 8:00 PM; and Sun 10:00 AM - Midnight

An online version of the exhibit can be seen at http://tobacco.stanford.edu