Kicking the habit: the Flintstones, doctors, and even Santa plugged cigarettes--until Americans learned the killer truth about smoking 50 years ago.

• Author: Elder, Robert K.
• Position: TIMES PAST: 1964

Fifty years ago, it seemed like everybody in America smoked, even cartoon characters.

When Winston sponsored The Flintstones from 1960 to 1963, Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble puffed away while chatting during commercial breaks or the closing credits. The characters then touted the cigarette's virtues before Fred delivered the brand's slogan: "Winston tastes good like a cigarette should."

But America's attitudes about smoking began to change drastically in 1964, when the U.S. Surgeon General released the "Report on Smoking and Health." It was the first major study to link tobacco to lung cancer, and it began to turn the tide of public opinion against smoking, which had become ingrained in the culture.

"That was the most important turning point," says Jane Brody, a New York Times health columnist who reported on smoking in 1964 for a Minneapolis newspaper. "It really made it impossible for people to deny the dangers of smoking."

Columbus's Warning

A plant indigenous to the Americas, tobacco was first smoked in pipes by Native Americans. In 1492, even Christopher Columbus saw that it was addictive and chastised his crews for taking up the custom: "It was not within their power to refrain from indulging in the habit," he reportedly said.

By the 17th century, tobacco (along with other crops indigenous to the Americas, like chocolate, tomatoes, and corn) spread around the world. In the U.S., smoking really took off with the advent of mass production techniques in the first decades of the 20th century. By World War I (1914-18), cigarettes were even included in American soldiers' rations.

"When people came back from the war," says Allan Brandt, a Harvard University professor and author of the book The Cigarette Century, "our heroes were addicted to cigarettes."

Advertising played a huge role in getting Americans hooked on nicotine, the addictive chemical in cigarettes. Magazine ads, which featured beautiful men and women lighting up, helped make smoking seem glamorous.

Even the White House provided good PR. In the 1930s and '40s, a long-stemmed cigarette holder was part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's public image (and in 1947, actor and future president Ronald Reagan appeared in Christmas-themed magazine ads proclaiming, "I'm sending Chesterfields to all my friends").

Television gave smoking an enormous boost when it first began entering American living rooms in the 1950s. With TV came a new era of jingles, slogans, and celebrity pitches from John Wayne and other actors who made smoking seem rebellious and cool. In 1968, Virginia Slims promoted not only sophistication and elegance but feminist independence with its slogan, "You've come a long way, baby."

In response to earlier studies linking smoking to various diseases, many cigarette ads featured doctors, who were meant to reassure the public that smoking wasn't really bad for your health. (The "doctors" were actually actors.) But the Surgeon General's 1964 report was too damning to shrug off. Shortly after its release, a headline in The New York Herald Tribune read: "It's...