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The Case Against Virginia Slims

The landmark Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Health, released in 1964 by Dr. Luther Terry, was intended to dispel all lingering doubts about cigarette smoking as a leading cause of death and disease–and to set the stage for campaigns by the federal government and the American Cancer Society to encourage adults to stop smoking and to educate teenagers never to start. Undeterred, cigarette maker Philip Morris, which in the 1950s had transformed its flailing Marlboro cigarette brand from the essence of femininity (“Mild as May–Red Tips to Match Your Pretty Lips”) into the image of rugged masculinity (and the most popular cigarette among men by 1964), determined to recapture the women’s market. Thus, just as the first anti-smoking messages were beginning to appear on TV in the late-1960s, Philip Morris was seeking to tie the women’s liberation movement to its newest brand, Virginia Slims, with far more eye-catching commercials. With the announcement in 1970 of Virginia Slims’ sponsorship of the women’s professional tennis tour, the die was cast for devastating health consequences among women for decades to come. While smoking rates among men began slowly declining in the 1970s, women’s smoking rates continued to rise. By 1987, lung cancer surpassed breast cancer as the leading cause of cancer deaths among women. Although lung cancer rates among men have been declining for the past 20 years, lung cancer among women has not declined. Today more cases of lung cancer are identified in women than men. The evidence of Philip Morris’ cynical and successful targeting of women with Virginia Slims was documented in detail in the two theme issues on the world cigarette pandemic published by the New York State Journal of Medicine in 1983 and 1985. This section includes several articles from those issues, the first of which was republished in 1985 as The Cigarette Underworld (Secaucus: Lyle Stuart).

Click the image of the articles to view enlarged PDFs

Cigarette Smoking Prevalence and Lung Cancer Death Rate in US Women, 1920-1995

The decline in American women’s cigarette smoking that had just begun in the early-1960s was reversed in the years immediately following the launch of Virginia Slims cigarettes in 1968 and the Virginia Slims Women’s Tennis Tour in 1970.” Source: Weiss W: Cigarette smoking and lung cancer trends. A light at the end of the tunnel? Chest 1997;111:1414-1416. https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Cigarette-smoking-and-lung-cancer-trends.-A-light-Weiss/3c6304fed7f722a8a52858cdfcd247c1611faedf

Trends in Age-adjusted Cancer Death Rates by Sites, Females, US, 1930-2016

Source: Cancer Facts and Statistics, American Cancer Society, 2019

“After the report was published [the 1964 Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General on Smoking and Health], the tobacco companies announced [in a “code of ethics in advertising”] that they would no longer use prominent sports figures or sporting events in their advertising. This…has been violated at every turn, as a look at professional soccer, tennis, auto racing, or football will confirm.

“In 1970, when cigarette advertising on the broadcast media was banned, the industry spent about $300 million to promote smoking. Today [in 1983], the six American cigarette companies spend $1.5 billion annually for advertising on billboards, in newspapers and magazines, and on countless promotions, many of which are televised. There is heavy targeting of cigarette advertising toward teenagers, women, blue-collar workers, and cultural minorities-vulnerable groups that now have the highest level of smoking and the lowest rate of smoking cessation. The hirelings of the advertising industry are out to get them at any price…”

“There was a time when it appeared that women were less susceptible than men to the health hazards of smoking. More recent evidence has indicated that women are as vulnerable and that in certain circum- stances, such as while taking pills for birth control or during pregnancy, women face a more serious risk than do men. The comment of former Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, Joseph Califano, Jr, rings in my ears: ‘Women who smoke like men, die like men!’ I would only add that women who smoke during pregnancy not only carry the same personal risk to their health, but that they are imposing an additional risk to their unborn child. In other words, cigarettes are child abuse.”

The Surgeon General’s First Report on Smoking and Health: A Challenge to the Medical Profession

Luther L. Terry, MD (Surgeon General of the United States Public Health Service, 1961-1965) in the New York State Journal of Medicine first theme issue on “The World Cigarette Pandemic,” 1983;83:1254-5. (2 Pages)

Women and Children Last?

Jessie L. Steinfeld, MD (Surgeon General of the United States Public Health Service, 1977-1981); excerpts of a speech on January 11, 1971 at a meeting of the Interagency Council on Smoking and Health, summarizing the updated findings on smoking since the 1964 Surgeon General’s Report; published in the New York State Journal of Medicine first theme issue on “The World Cigarette Pandemic,” 1983;83:1257-8. (2 Pages)

Ending the Cigarette Pandemic

Julius B. Richmond, MD (Surgeon General of the United States Public Health Service, 1977-1981) in the New York State Journal of Medicine first theme issue on “The World Cigarette Pandemic,” 1983;83:1259.

“Precious Baby!”

Mary Ann Cromer, MD (Pediatrician in Somerville, MA), in the New York State Journal of Medicine first theme issue on “The World Cigarette Pandemic,” 1983;83:1292. (2 Pages)

Women, Smoking, and Lung Cancer in Connecticut

Douglas S. Lloyd, MD, (Commissioner Connecticut State Department of Health Services, 1973-1987) in the New York State Journal of Medicine first theme issue on “The World Cigarette Pandemic,” 1983;83:1271.

The Evolution of the Female Cigarette and the Silence of the Women’s Movement

Bobbie Jacobson: The Ladykillers–Why Smoking is a Feminist Issue, London, Pluto Press, 1981 , pp 60, 78- 79.
(Also cited in the New York State Journal of Medicine first theme issue on “The World Cigarette Pandemic,” 1983;83:1258.)

Cigarettes and Sports Stars

Renée Richards, MD in the New York State Journal of Medicine first theme issue on “The World Cigarette Pandemic,” 1984;84:162.

The Rare Courage of Public Role Models

Rita Addison (Group Against Smoking Pollution (GASP) in the New York State Journal of Medicine first theme issue on “The World Cigarette Pandemic,” 1984;84:162.

“Work by [Dr. Elizabeth] Whelan and colleagues suggests that the editorial policy of women’s magazines that accept cigarette advertising is restrained in reporting the health hazards of smoking. Her group counted the number of articles about smoking that appeared in such major women’s magazines during the period from 1967 to 1979; the number ranged from zero in some magazines to a maximum of two in others…

“Philip Morris has offered clothing (including a rugby outfit and a T-shirt that reads “You’ve come a long way, baby”) and calendars (The Virginia Slims Book of Days) in exchange for money and proof of cigarette purchase. Philip Morris sponsors the Virginia Slims professional women’s tennis tour. Cigarette samples are given away at the entrance to the tennis matches. Leading professional women’s tennis players have not taken public positions opposing cigarette promotions.

“The industry has succeeded in being associated as a financial benefactor of the women’s movement. Ms. Magazine accepts a sizeable share of its advertising budget from cigarette companies and has yet to print a story on smoking, despite its inclusion of many health-related articles. The National Organization for Women has had its meeting program partly underwritten by Philip Morris and recently refused to print in its national newsletter an advertisement taking Ms. to task on the cigarette advertising issue (Polly Strand, personal communication). By their silence on the issue of tobacco company exploitation of women, even when challenged, these representatives of the women’s movement, as well as the publishers of women’s magazines, must be viewed as accomplices in what has come to be called an ‘equal opportunity tragedy.'”

Mixed Messages for Women: A Social History of Cigarette Smoking and Advertising

Virginia L. Ernster, PhD (then-Associate Professor of Epidemiology and International Health, University of California at San Francisco School of Medicine; in 2021, Emeritus Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics) in the New York State Journal of Medicine second theme issue on “The World Cigarette Pandemic,” 1985;85:335-340. (6 Pages)

Match Point

On August 29, 2021, The New York Times Book Review published an adulatory review of Billie Jean King’s autobiography All In. One letter to the editor was published on September 12, 2021, pointing out that numerous women athlete activists preceded King. One notable example is Wilma Rudolph, an African American who overcame polio as a child and in 1960 became the first U.S. woman to win three track-and-field gold medals at an Olympics.

The following letter to the editor by Alan Blum, MD, written at the urging of Ron and Barbara Bloomberg (https://csts.ua.edu/interviews/bloomberg/) was not published:

Net Gains

Review
Caitlin Thompson
The New York Times
August 17, 2021

Billie Jean King autobiography: Self-serving

Editor

The New York Times Book Review

To the Editor:

In her review of Billie Jean King’s autobiography All In (Aug. 29), Caitlin Thompson lauds King as the first female athlete-activist. Led by King, the “Original 9” players who formed the Virginia Slims Women’s Professional Tennis Circuit certainly succeeded in getting more equitable prize money,

But what effect did their deal with a tobacco sponsor have on women’s health? The advertising slogan of the circuit’s namesake cigarette brand, “You’ve come a long way, baby,” led young women by the hundreds of thousands to take up smoking or switch to the brand their tennis idols were endorsing. Sales of Virginia Slims cigarettes shot up, as did the lung cancer rate among women who smoked.

Has King ever shown any regret over championing this silent killer? To the contrary, in 1999 (the year that The New York Times stopped accepting cigarette advertisements), she joined the board of Philip Morris, maker of Virginia Slims, for a four-year term.

Sincerely,

Alan Blum, MD
Director
University of Alabama Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society
https://csts.ua.edu/
Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35401

The articles above are from the two theme issues of the New York State Journal of Medicine on the world cigarette pandemic, published in 1983 and 1985. To read the full issues and to learn how they came about, visit the exhibit below.

Medical Journal Editorship Collection of Alan Blum, MD