Yes, as a recent ad boasts to lady smokers, “You’ve come a long way, baby.” Historians credit addiction, advertising, and wars with winning public acceptance of tobacco. “After addiction, advertising is the industry’s most powerful ally in its battle for the hearts and minds of the smoker,” reports a recent investigator.

And tobacco companies are big spenders. Worldwide, they spend $2 billion (U.S.) a year on advertising​—dwarfing the combined $7 million that the American Cancer Society and the American Lung Association spend on antismoking education.