For decades, people were told that smoking was harmless. Doctors appeared in cigarette ads, and official institutions assured the public there was no reason for concern. Today we know how that story ended.
This short film doesn't hand you ready-made answers. It asks questions – about who we trust, why we trust them, and who benefits from what we believe.
The facts from the film
- 1950 – The first major studies link smoking to lung cancer.
- 1964 – The U.S. Surgeon General's official report: smoking causes lung cancer.
- 1971 – Cigarette ads are banned from U.S. television.
- 2011 – The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), part of the World Health Organization, classifies radiofrequency electromagnetic fields as Group 2B – "possibly carcinogenic to humans".
More than twenty years passed between the first warnings and the ban on TV ads. And today?
Will we find out too late again?
Listen. Verify. Think. Ask questions.
We're not asking you to believe us. We're asking you to check – for yourself, from more than one source – and to reach your own conclusion.
Note: the scenes with officials in this film are an AI dramatization. The officials shown are AI-generated and their statements are reconstructions, not real quotes. Archival advertisements are shown for commentary and criticism.
Sources
- Doll R., Hill A. B. – Smoking and Carcinoma of the Lung, British Medical Journal, 1950.
- Smoking and Health – Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General, 1964 (U.S. National Library of Medicine)
- Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act – TV cigarette ad ban from January 2, 1971
- IARC Press Release No. 208 (31 May 2011) – radiofrequency electromagnetic fields, Group 2B