The First Menthol and Filter Cigarettes

The menthol cigarette was born not in a laboratory, but from a happy accident. In the 1920s, a smoker named Lloyd “Spud” Hughes stored his cigarettes in a tin that already contained menthol crystals — a popular remedy for sore throats. The cigarettes absorbed the menthol, and Hughes discovered that they produced a cool, soothing sensation when smoked. He patented the process in 1925 [citation:6].

• 🆕 The birth of Spuds: The Axton-Fisher Tobacco Company began manufacturing Spuds in 1926, marketing them as a cigarette to smoke “when you have a cold,” “when your voice is hoarse,” or “when you develop smoker’s cough” [citation:6].
• 🧊 Menthol’s medicinal past: Menthol had long been used as a medicinal cough suppressant. Tobacco companies “sought to draw on its ‘therapeutic association with cough and cold remedies'” [citation:3].
• 🔄 “When you develop smoker’s cough”: This was a remarkable admission — that smoking itself caused coughs and irritation. But instead of advising smokers to quit, the ads urged them to switch to menthols [citation:6].
• 📦 Early slogan: “Nagged by Nicotine?” — a direct appeal to health-concerned smokers [citation:3].

Menthol cigarettes were marketed as a “solution” to the problems caused by smoking itself. They were not positioned as safer — but as more comfortable. The ads acknowledged the discomfort of smoking (coughing, sore throat, “tongue-bite”) and offered menthol as a remedy [citation:3].

• 🌬️ “Switch from Hots to Kools”: Kools, launched in 1933, used the slogan “Switch from Hots to Kools,” implicitly acknowledging that regular cigarettes were “hot” and irritating [citation:6].
• ❄️ Cameos were “air-conditioned by menthol”: A 1938 ad featured Santa Claus saying, “Say CAMEO when you want a Menthol Cigarette” [citation:3].
• 👩‍⚕️ “Doctors Recommend Them”: Macdonald’s Menthol (with “cool as a Cucumber” on the package) featured a woman smoking with the caption “Doctors Recommend Them.” She adds: “When I changed to Macdonald’s Menthol my throat said ‘O.K.’ … so did my doctor” [citation:3].
• 🧊 The temporary relief: Menthol’s cooling effect is real — it triggers a sensation of coolness. But it does not heal the damage caused by smoking. It provides “the illusion that menthols contain curative powers” [citation:6].

Filtered cigarettes appeared in Canada in the mid-1930s and were widely advertised for their health benefits. The niche brand De Reszke promoted its filters for “not only preventing] particles of tobacco from entering the mouth, but also filter[ing] any harmful nicotine out of the smoke” [citation:3].

• 📦 du Maurier (1936): The most heavily advertised filter brand was Peter Jackson’s du Maurier, launched in fall 1936. Its filters constituted the “first vital improvement ever made in cigarettes,” a technological feat on par with “wireless, air-conditioning, [and] streamlining” [citation:3].
• ✅ Endorsed by *The Lancet*: Ads carried an endorsement from a leading British medical journal: “We have tested these cigarettes and find them to be cooler and less irritating than ordinary cigarettes of good quality without the Filter Tip” [citation:3].
• 🧵 Filter materials: Most 1930s filters were made from fibrous materials like wool, cotton, or paper [citation:3].
• 🔄 The 1950s explosion: After the 1950s cancer scare, filtered brands in Canada rose from 2% of the market in 1952 to 55% in 1962, using the same “health marketing” language perfected in the 1930s [citation:3].

As historian Daniel Robinson notes in Cigarette Nation, the 1930s marketing strategies were not just about selling products — they were about managing consumer anxiety about smoking’s health effects. Long before the 1950s cancer scare, the industry was “versed in issue-management public relations and forms of cigarette ‘health marketing'” [citation:1][citation:2].

• 📈 The “hope” strategy: Menthol and filter cigarettes offered worried smokers a way to continue smoking with reduced guilt. As one ad asked: “Do you smoke a lot, and worry about what cigarettes are doing to you?” [citation:3]
• 📉 The “mild” lexicon: Descriptors like “mild,” “mellow,” and “throat easy” appeared often in advertising and on cigarette packages [citation:3].
• 🔄 The chain-smoking contradiction: The pharmacology of nicotine addiction propelled smokers to consume more cigarettes than they may have wanted. The industry’s “remedy” for the unwanted side effects (coughing, throat irritation) was menthol and filters — not quitting .
• ⏳ The legacy: As Robinson writes, the industry’s later response to the postwar “cancer scare” was “not novel, but one that drew upon the cultural lexicon of cigarette promotion dating back to the 1930s” .

Today, the Canadian government has banned the terms “Light” and “Mild” on cigarette packages. Native cigarettes (Playfare, Canadian, DuMont, Nexus, Rolled Gold) are sold without such deceptive labels. A carton costs $29-50 — compared to $140-180 for commercial brands — a savings of 70-80%. But remember: they contain the same nicotine, tar, and carcinogens as any other cigarette. No menthol or filter can make them safe.

• 💰 Cost savings: A pack-a-day smoker saves $5,000-7,000 per year by switching to native cigarettes.
• 🚫 No false promises: Unlike the 1930s marketing, native cigarettes are sold with full health warnings — no implied safety claims.
• 📦 Online delivery: Cigstore.ca ships to every province and territory with $29 flat shipping (free over $290).
• 📜 The only safe option: If you smoke, switching to native cigarettes will save you money — but the only way to protect your health is to quit entirely.