A Brief History of Tobacco and Implications for New Tobacco Products

This chapter provides a brief review of the modern tobacco epidemic, from the onset of the automatic cigarette rolling machine, through the marketing to US troops and youth through movies and glamorization of tobacco, the master settlement and release of the industries documents demonstrating decades of lies about the harms of tobacco, FDA’s Family Tobacco Prevention and Control Act, and the continuing loopholes that the electronic cigarette industry is using today to avoid meaningful regulation and addict a new generation of youth. We set the background in place for other chapters in this book that address clinical practices and policies, and the health effects of e-cigarettes and other tobacco and nicotine products on users, children, and nonsmokers and nonvapers exposed to the secondhand effects of these toxic products.