CIGARETTE'S RISE TRACED FROM 1880S MACHINE TO US STAPLE

The cigarette has been nicknamed the "cancer stick", "coffin nail" and "cowboy killer", labels linked to tens of millions of deaths in the United States, according to an account of its history. The cigarette was not invented in America. More than 100 countries manufacture cigarettes today, and the largest producer is based in China, while Marlboro remains a leading international brand. American innovation and culture turned the product into a major global industry during the 20th century. It became a symbol of adulthood in films and media, and a fixture of bars, restaurants, aircraft and hospitals.

Early forms of the cigarette trace back thousands of years to the Mayans, and hand-rolling remained slow and labour-intensive until the 1880s, according to the account. Virginia inventor John Bansack built an automated rolling machine that produced cigarettes 50 times faster than by hand. Tobacco magnate James Buchanan Duke invested in the machine and combined it with more palatable tobacco blends to build cigarettes into a major American industry. By the 1950s, nearly half of American adults smoked, according to K. Michael Cummings, a tobacco history scholar at the Medical University of South Carolina. Cummings recalled making ashtrays as childhood gifts and giving cartons of cigarettes at Christmas, saying smoking was "just part of Americana".

Worries about cigarettes' addictive nature and health risks existed before smoking became widespread, according to the account. Car manufacturer Henry Ford warned against the habit in the 1910s, publishing a 1914 brochure describing cigarettes as "little white slavers". Ford argued they were habit-forming, harmful to health and linked to poor morals. The account identifies 1964 as a watershed moment in the United States, without detailing what changed that year.