How Cigarettes Disrupted the Tobacco Industry
One person “almost single-handedly invented the modern cigarette”.
With the inescapable presence of cigarettes amongst society throughout the entirety of living memory, it’s natural to assume they’ve always played a major role within the tobacco market since the dawn of the industrial revolution.
But, you’d be wrong.
I’ve been reading a book authored by Allan M. Brandt, Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University, that details the extraordinary rise of cigarettes in the 20th century from obscurity to ubiquity.
It’s titled The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product That Defined America and is a totally fascinating read.
Of particular interest to me were the underlying set of changes and mechanics of society and industry that combined together to create the perfect set of conditions for cigarettes to explode in popularity.
Lets put this into context.
By the 1950s cigarettes generated more than 90% of all tobacco industry revenues in the United States. But, just fifty years earlier, it was just 2%.
This alone grants cigarettes disruptor status.
