ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

A Global History of Smoking on Submarines

• In Event: Technology and Management in Modern History

English Abstract

How could it be that, for more than a hundred years, from 1900 until 2011, smoking was allowed on submarines of the U.S. Naval Fleet? Especially given that, in countries like Germany and France, smoking was never allowed on submarines? Here we look at the cultural forces keeping cigarettes on American submarines, long after smoking was proven to cause deadly harm. We document how, in 1964, when the U.S. Navy first considered banning cigarettes on submarines, Philip Morris sought to block that policy and proposed a redesigned cigarette that would be submarine-acceptable. We describe how American submarines came to be outfitted with custom-built ashtrays and special scrubbers designed to eliminate some of the poisons emitted from cigarette smoke. Cigarettes smoked on subs may be particularly toxic due to low O2 and high CO2 in the submarine atmosphere--which in at least one case was manipulated to prevent sailors from being able to light their cigarettes. This history is remarkable, given that at least five countries never allowed smoking on their submarines. Archival tobacco evidence and interviews with submarine officers of fourteen nations suggest that the American delay can be explained by a Naval culture of technical fix, a libertarian streak in US society, indigenous techno-optimism, and most notably, the corruption of tobacco health science and public health policy by cigarette manufacturers. We show that the modern submarine was designed to accommodate the modern cigarette, not only in its physical equipment but also in its operating procedures and human culture.

Authors

• Timothy Michael Henderson, Cypress Group

• Robert N Proctor, Stanford University