I will bow to no one in my distaste for smoking. I quit over thirty years ago, and I advise anyone who smokes to quit and anyone who does not never to start. BUT, I have always found a little ingenuous the huge lawsuits by various plaintiffs claiming that they were deceived by the advertising of the tobacco companies into thinking that smoking was not dangerous. Oh, really? Everyone has ALWAYS known that smoking is very bad for you, and my favorite bits of proof come from popular music. The two that come to mind are, first, a WWI song called "Good Morning, Mr. Zip-Zip-Zip!", which says, in the chorus:

Ashes to ashes and dust to dust,
If the Camels don't get you, the Fatimas must.

One could claim that "get you" merely means "get you hooked" -- except for the funereal opening to the couplet. The other example of the dangers of smoking woven into popular music is Tex Ritter's "Smoke, Smoke, Smoke That Cigarette", from about 1946, I think. The next line of the chorus says "Puff, puff, puff, until you puff yourself to death."

Add to this that every high-school coach since time immemorial has told his players smoking was forbidden, and it makes it difficult for anyone to claim with a straight face that they weren't aware smoking was bad for you, even deadly, long before the Surgeon General's Report and mega-million dollar lawsuits. Anyone else got any musical examples to support or refute this?

[Some song titles in this thread have been converted to links by a Mudelf.]