The last 75 years haven’t been kind to the tobacco industry. In 1940, nearly half the nation were smokers. Then came a barrage of health studies that linked smoking to lung cancer. By the time the Surgeon General released the 1964 Report on Smoking and Health, cigarette companies were reeling.
Smoking rates held for another decade, but anti-smoking advertising and legislation began to chip away at the industry. In 1965, Congress required warning labels on all cigarette packages. In 1970, TV and radio cigarette ads were banned. By the 1980s, less than one in three Americans were still smoking. By the 1990s, it was one in four.
Along the way, the cost of a pack of cigarettes rose sharply, outpacing inflation. The team at MooseRoots, a Graphiq site, set out to track the changing price of cigarettes since 1940. To do so, they used a 2014 cigarette cost estimate from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, then extrapolated 75 years of cigarette prices using the "Tobacco and Related Products" bucket from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' consumer price index.
New federal and state tobacco taxes — which are factored into these price estimates — can help explain the dramatic rise of cigarette prices. Studies show a 10 percent increase in cigarette prices tends to reduce cigarette consumption by 3 to 5 percent. Naturally, the government has only been too happy to raise more money in the name of public health, multiple times.
Still, cigarette prices have risen even faster than cigarette taxes, particularly since 1990. Here, it’s likely that big cigarette makers have relied on the most loyal smokers to make up for a decrease in total customers. In order to drive growth, Big Tobacco needs the remaining smokers to pay even more.
Let's break down the cost of a pack of smokes for each year since 1940. Along with price, the list will also feature an iconic or memorable smoking-related photograph from that same year in history.
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