Update

• In the decade leading up to the debut of “Cartoonists Take Up Smoking” at the 2004 annual convention of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists, efforts to pass clean indoor air laws, raise cigarette taxes, curb tobacco advertising and sports sponsorship, and sue the tobacco industry made front-page news almost every week. the nation’s 130 newspaper editorial cartoonists had a field day. But collecting these cartoons and the headlines that inspired them meant my having to pore over dozens of newspapers every week at libraries and at the handful of once-thriving magazine and out-of-town-newspaper like Hotalings in New York City and SuperStand in Houston, as well as at bookstores like Barnes & Noble and Books-A-Million. Following the Master Settlement Agreement in 1998 between the state attorneys general and the tobacco industry, coverage of anti-smoking activism and the tobacco industry’s circumvention of restrictions on cigarette marketing began receiving less coverage in the mass media, and by the mid-2000s, print newspapers and magazines themselves were losing ground to the internet as a source of news and opinion. Most newspaper editorial cartoonists lost their jobs (there are fewer than 40 such full-time individuals today https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-opinion-editorial-cartooning-end-20211007-nen4hk7vjzfxdhzgzqh5r5omti-story.html), but many have continued as syndicated cartoonists online, primarily via Cagle Cartoons (https://caglecartoons.com/). This gallery of 6 cartoons is selected from more than 200 tobacco-related cartoons identified on Cagle Cartoons since the mid-2000s. The Center thanks Daryl Cagle and Brian Fair for their dedication to promoting the work of the nation’s editorial cartoonists. Alan Blum, MD