In 1950s America cigarette smoking was the epitome of cool and glamour. Hollywood icons such as James Dean and Humphrey Bogart were never without one. Screen beauties such as Audrey Hepburn and Marlene Dietrich made smoking look sensual and sophisticated. Even a future president - Ronald Reagan - was handed free packs of Chesterfield during his B-movie days. By the late 1950s around half of the population of industrialised nations smoked - in the UK up to 80% of adults were hooked. The product was cheap, legal and socially acceptable.
Cigarettes were originally sold as expensive handmade luxury goods for the urban elite. It was not until mass-production methods coupled with aggressive marketing that the industry began to see off traditional pipe-smoking and tobacco-chewing habits, particularly in the United States.
American tobacco firm Philip Morris was particular adept at marketing its cigarettes. It gave us the chiselled looking Marlboro Man who declared: "For man's flavour come to Marlboro Country."
Other brands also sought to allay fears of smoking. Camel famously ran an advert saying : "More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette." But, as early as 1951, pioneering work by UK scientist Sir Richard Doll made a link between lung cancer and smoking.
Still, for years, the tobacco industry appeared to be invincible. Then, in 1994, Diane Castano, whose husband died of lung cancer, sued the tobacco industry in the largest potential class action suit in history.
Soon efforts to protect non-smokers from being exposed to secondhand smoking were championed by politicians in California. This led to the 1995 ban on smoking in most enclosed places of employment. By 2005 less than a quarter of the US population smoked cigarettes, and that is now falling.