Fag

Fag (pronounced fag)

(1) Something hanging loose, a flap (mostly archaic except in US technical use in industrial production of textiles where, in the process of quality inspections, a fag is a rough or coarse defect in the woven fabric).

(2) Slang for a boring or wearisome task (archaic).

(3) The worst part or end of a thing (mostly UK, now archaic).

(4) Offensive slang for a contemptible or dislikable person (archaic).

(5) Offensive slang for a homosexual male, applied most often to an obvious, especially effeminate or “unusual” one (now regarded generally as especially disparaging and contemptuous although within the LGBTQQIAAOP communities it can be neutral or even endearing).

(6) To tire or weary by labor; to be exhausted (usually in the phrase “fagged out”).

(7) One allocated to do menial chores for an older school pupil (mostly in the English public school system but said to be extinct since the late 1990s although apparently still practiced in some Commonwealth countries with public (private) schools based on the old English model).

(8) Slang for a cigarette (now rare, especially in North America); the Cockney rhyming slang was “oily rag”.

(9) As "fag-end" (as in the last un-smoked end of a cigarette), a remnant of something once larger, longer etc such as the frayed end of a length of cloth or rope.

(10) As "fag-end administration", the last months or weeks of a government prior to an election.

1425–1475: From the late Middle English fagge (flap; broken thread in cloth, loose end (of obscure origin)), the later sense-development to the intransitive verb meaning “to droop, to tire, to make weary; drudgery” apparently based on the idea of “a drooping end” or “something limply hanging” dating from the 1520s.  The transitive sense of "to make (someone or something) fatigued, tire by labor" was first noted in 1826.  Those fagged-out fatiguing labor were in the 1850s said to have been engaged in “faggery” and from the same era “brain-fag described "mental fatigue."  Fag is a noun and verb, fagging or fagged are verbs and faggish & fagged are adjectives.  Apparently un-fagged is a correct construction which may be used to describe the process of cutting the ties binding a bundle of sticks.  Functional forms (fag butt, fag lighter, fag grave (an ashtray) are created as required. Fag is a noun & verb; the noun plural is fags.   

A GIF of Lindsay Lohan enjoying a fag.

The meaning “cigarette” dates only from 1888 and was derived from fag-end (applied to many things and attested since the 1610s) and thus a cigarette butt was one of many fag-ends but “fag” (and the plural “fags”) came much to be associated with cigarettes.  Fag may be variant of the verb “flag” in the sense of “droop, tire” and related (perhaps remotely) to the Dutch vaak (sleepiness).  The use of the term to refer to cigarettes is still heard in parts of the English-speaking world but is almost unknown in the US where use is not advised because there, almost exclusively, it's exclusively a gay slur.

Inhaling a known carcinogen is of course a bad idea and not recommended but Lindsay Lohan did make smoking look sexy.

Faggery (or faggotry) was the system in English public schools in which the younger students acted as servants (there were sometimes other purposes) for the older.  It was part of public school environment which Harold Macmillan (1894–1986; UK prime-minister 1957-1963) said was designed primarily to teach pupils life was “inherently unfair”.  Still, he valued the process and described any chap who hadn't benefited from the experience as having "no background".  The use in English public schools to describe a junior student who performs "certain duties" for a senior seems first to have been used in 1785 although the practice is documented from the seventeenth century.  The schoolboy slang describing the offices of the institution as “fagdom” & “fagmaster” dates from 1902.  In modern use, faggery (less so faggotry but like faggotness, faggotize & faggotism) is used as a gay slur.  The term "faggot voter" was a historic term in the UK & Ireland used when there was a property qualification attached to the electoral franchise.  A legal loophole, it described someone entitled to vote by virtue of holding some form of property title short of freehold, typically to a subdivision.  The origin of the term was based on the idea of “faggot” in the sense of the sticks gathered together and bound to make a whole (ie one property with one title fragmented for electoral purposes while not diminishing the quality of the ultimate ownership).  The “loophole” was one of those things which began as an “unintended consequence” of changes to the rules of real property but it wasn’t reformed until the late 1800s because so many land-owners and members of parliament made use of it to “stack their constituencies” with voters.

As a shortening of faggot, “fag” is documented as being applied as a term of disparagement to homosexual males from 1914, an invention of American English slang, though related to the earlier (1590s) contemptuous term for a woman, especially an old and unpleasant one, in reference to faggot in the sense of "bundle of sticks", ie something awkward that has to be carried in the sense of "worthless baggage” (and therefore “worthless woman").  More speculatively, there may be a link with the Yiddish פֿייגעלע‎ (feygele) (literally "little bird” but used (1) as a term of endearment for a loved one, especially a man's wife and (2) in a derogatory manner: a faggot homosexual man).  There may also have been some connection with the English public school slang noun fag which even then carried the suggestion of catamite (From the Latin catamītus (boy kept as a sexual partner), from Catamītus, from the Etruscan catmite, from the Ancient Greek Γανυμήδης (Ganumḗdēs) (Ganymede), in Greek mythology an attractive Trojan boy abducted by Zeus and taken to Mount Olympus to become his cupbearer and lover (and Ganymede endures as a doublet in that sense)).  The term “faggot marriage” was not a synonym of “lavender marriage” (an arrangement in which a gay man would marry a lesbian for purposes of social or professional respectability) but a disparaging reference to gay marriage.

In the same way the infamous N-word has been re-claimed by certain sub-sets of people of color and is, in context, an acceptable use by or between them, “faggot” similarly, although now regarded generally as especially disparaging and contemptuous, within the LGBTQQIAAOP communities it can be neutral or even endearing.  Two inventive variations were “fag hag” (a heterosexual woman who socializes with homosexual men (1969)) and “fag stag” (a heterosexual man who socializes with homosexual men (circa 1995)).  The less common companion slang for men who have many lesbian friends was “dutch boy”, “lesbro” or “dyke tyke”.  Covering all bases, it transpires that those of both sexes who associate with lesbian, gay and bisexual people are “fruit flies”.  The story that male homosexuals were called faggots because they were burned at the stake as punishment is an urban legend with no etymological or historical basis. Burning sometimes was a punishment meted out to homosexuals in Christian Europe (which relied on the scriptural suggestion invoked as the Biblical fate of Sodom and Gomorrah), but in England, although parliament had declared homosexuality a capital crime in 1533, the prescribed method of execution was to be hanged.  While the inquisitorial and judicial organs of the Roman Catholic Church may over the centuries have burned at the stake a good many homosexuals, that really was incidental to the process (sort of the "collateral damage" of the day), the actual sentence imposed usually for other offences.

Faggot was from the Middle English fagot, from the Middle French fagot (bundle of sticks), from the Medieval Latin and Italian fagotto and related to the Old Occitan fagot, the Italian fagotto & fangotto and the Spanish fajo (bundle, wad).  In Italian a fagotto was (1) a bundle or sack, (2), (figuratively) a clumsy or awkward person; a klutz or (3), in music, a bassoon and was probably from the Italian fagotto (diminutive of Vulgar Latin facus, from the Classical Latin fascis (bundle of wood), or perhaps the Ancient Greek φάκελος (phákelos) (bundle).  The senses relating to persons, though possibly originating as an extension of the sense "bundle of sticks", could have been reinforced by Yiddish פֿייגעלע‎ (feygele) (literally "little bird” but used (1) as a term of endearment for a loved one, especially a man's wife and (2) in a derogatory manner: a homosexual man).  In English, “fagot” was long the alternative spelling.

A sincere form of flattery: North American F-86 Sabre (first flown October 1947, left) and Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 (first flown December 1947, right).

A well-crafted amalgam of technology stolen from the West (the airframe construction techniques from the US, the jet-engine a blatant copy of the British Rolls-Royce Nene and the aerodynamics the result of wartime German research), the USSR’s Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 was a short-range interceptor, the appearance of which in the skies of the Korean War (1950-1953) theatre was such a shock to the UN forces that the US Air Force (USAF) had to scramble to assemble squadrons of North American F-86 Sabres for deployment.  Made in both the USSR and by licensed overseas constructors, the MiG-15 was produced in extraordinary numbers (some sources suggest as many as 17,700) and equipped not only Warsaw Pact (1955-1991) militaries, some three dozen air forces eventually using the type; it remained in front-line service well into the 1960s.  Simple, robust and economical to operate, many still fly in private hands and some continue to be used as jet-trainers, ideal for the role because of their predictable characteristics and good handling.  Soviet consumer goods of the post-war years may have been of dubious quality and often in short supply by the MiGs were well-built and numerous.

The MiG-15’s NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization; the trans-Atlantic alliance formed in 1949 as a defensive system for Western Europe designed (in the phrase of its first secretary general General Lord (Hastings "Pug") Ismay (1887–1965): to keep the Russians out, the Americans in and the Germans down) reporting name was Fagot.  NATO reporting names have no linguistic or etymological significance, being chosen (1) with an initial letter indicating type (B=bomber; F=fighter; C=commercial & cargo; H=helicopter; M= miscellaneous) and (2) a one-syllable name for propeller aircraft and a two-syllable name for jets.  Fagot was just another reporting name picked from NATO’s list of the possible for allocation to fighters:

Fairytale of New York (1987) is a song by the Irish pop-band The Pogues, augmented for the occasion by the late Kirsty MacColl (1959-2000).  One stanza includes the lines:

You're a bum

You're a punk

You're an old slut on junk

Lying there almost dead on a drip in that bed

You scumbag, you maggot

You cheap lousy faggot

Happy Christmas your arse

I pray God it's our last

The "offensive" line obviously was : "You cheap lousy faggot" and for many years, every Christmas, there was in England an almost ritualistic argument about whether it was appropriate to play the piece on radio, a matter of some interest because Fairytale of New York frequently was voted the nation’s most popular Christmas song. something which displease many reverend and right reverend gentlemen although Lambeth Palace seems never to have commented on the matter.

In the late 1980s the BBC seemed unconcerned at the possibility of a gay slur being thought at least implied but found the anatomical slang offensive, asking that "arse" be replaced with “ass” which was a liberal approach compared with the old BBC tradition of outright bans but sensitivities shifted to gender in the 1990s and in subsequent live performances MacColl sometimes adjusted the lyrics further, singing "You're cheap and you're haggard".  Since then broadcasts have varied in the version carried, the BBC even permitting all or some of “arse”, “slut” & “faggot” on some of their stations but not others.  There’s was also use of the old practice “bleeping out” (actually scrambling) “arse”, “slut” & “faggot” as required and it’s now fairly unpredictable just which version will be played.  It did seem one of the more improbable battlefields of the culture wars but was emblematic of the new censorship.  Although, in the context of the song, it was obvious “faggot” was being used in the old sense of meaning “someone worthless” rather than “someone a bit of a homosexual”, the objection was to the very word which many activists demand should be proscribed, the same fate suffered by "niggardly" a form with an etymology as unrelated to the infamous "N-word" as the meaning.

Tobacco

Tobacco (pronounced tuh-bak-oh)

(1) Any of several plants belonging to the genus Nicotiana (of the nightshade family), especially one of those species, as N. tabacum, whose leaves are prepared for smoking or chewing or as snuff.

(2) Any of numerous solanaceous plants of the genus Nicotiana, having mildly narcotic properties, tapering hairy leaves, and tubular or funnel-shaped fragrant flowers. The species N. tabacum is cultivated as the chief source of commercial tobacco

(3) Any of various similar plants of other genera.

(4) The leaves of certain of these plants, dried and prepared, as used in cigarettes, cigars & pipes, as snuff and for chewing.

(5) Any product or products made from such leaves.

(6) To indulge in tobacco; to smoke.

(7) To treat with tobacco.

(8) A range of colors in the brown spectrum, tending to the darker.

1525–1535 (attested since 1588): From the Spanish tabaco of uncertain origin.  It was either from the Arabic طُبَّاق‎ (ṭubbāq) (Dittrichia viscosa) or from one or more Caribbean languages (including Galibi Carib, Arawak or Taíno) from a word meaning “roll of tobacco leaves” or “pipe for smoking tobacco” (there are contemporary reports citing both and scholars tend now to prefer the former), the best known of which was tabago (tube for inhaling smoke or powdered intoxicating plants).  Taino is thought by linguistic anthropologists to be the most likely source.  That the name of the inhaling implement was applied to the leaves was explained by the Spanish assuming it was the name of the plant.  The West Indian (Caribbean) island of Tobago was said to have been named in 1498 by Christopher Columbus (1451–1506) after the tambaku (pipe), a reference to the native custom of smoking dried tobacco leaves.  Derived forms include smokeless tobacco, tobaccoless & anti-tobacco and there are a wealth of slang terms for tobacco and its products (including the tax-evading illicit varieties) including occabot (the backward spelling), baccy, backy, chop chop, durrie, smoke, fag, gasper, ciggy, coffin nail, cancer stick, darb, dart, death stick, bine & stogie.  The spelling tabacco is obsolete.  Tobacco is a noun & verb, tobaccoing & tobaccoed are verbs; the noun plural is tobaccos or tobaccoes.

One difficulty public health authorities had in trying to reduce the use of tobacco was that images of smoking undeniably could be sexy: Lindsay Lohan demonstrates.

One attempt at social engineering began in earnest in the 1980s: Pressure was applied on film & television studios, advertisers and publishers to stop depicting smoking as something “attractive, sexy and cool” but because the creative community had over decades honed techniques to make even the lighting of a cigarette exactly that, success was limited.  What forever changed the environment in the US was when, in 1998, 52 state and territory attorneys general signed the Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) with the nation’s four largest tobacco companies to settle what were by then dozens of lawsuits brought to recover billions of dollars in health care costs associated with treating smoking-related illnesses and eventually some four-dozen tobacco companies settled under the MSA.  Although Florida, Minnesota, Mississippi and Texas are not signatories to the MSA, they all have individual settlements pre-dating the MSA.  What the framers of the MSA worked out was it was better to be realists and, in a sense. “write-off” those adults already addicted and focus on youth by (1) reducing the take-up rate (ie “the first cigarette) and (2) induce them to quit (ie “the next cigarette”).  The most obvious tactic in this was the traditional brute-force approach of increasing the cost of cigarettes by imposing payment obligations on the tobacco companies party to the MSA but more subtle measures also restricted tobacco advertising, marketing, and promotions, including:

(1) Prohibiting tobacco companies from taking any action to target youth in the advertising, promotion or marketing of tobacco products.

(2) Banning the use of cartoons in advertising, promotions, packaging, or labeling of tobacco products.

(3) Prohibiting tobacco companies from distributing merchandise bearing the brand name of tobacco products.

(4) Banning payments to promote tobacco products in media, such as movies, televisions shows, theatre, music and video games.

(5) Prohibiting tobacco brand name sponsorship of events with a significant youth audience (or team sports).

(6) Eliminating tobacco company practices which obscure the health risks associated with the use of tobacco (the history of which is extraordinary).

(7) Providing funds for the settling states that states may choose to use to fund smoking prevention programs.

(8) Establishing and funding the Truth Initiative, an organization “dedicated to achieving a culture where all youth and young adults reject tobacco.”

The National Association of Attorneys-General (NAAG) also established a Centre for Tobacco and Public Health (CTPH) which works with the settling states of the MSA to preserve and enforce the MSA’s monetary and public-health mandates, including:

(1) Representing, advising, and supporting the settling states in MSA-related legal matters, including litigation and arbitrations.

(2) Representing the settling states in bankruptcy cases filed by tobacco manufacturers.

(3) Representing the settling states before the MSA’s independent auditor and escrow agent to ensure that annual MSA payments are properly calculated and disbursed to the states.

(4) Monitoring tobacco companies’ compliance with the MSA’s payment and public health provisions.

(5) Communicating as the settling states’ collective counsel to tobacco companies, federal tobacco regulators and other third parties about the MSA and other tobacco regulatory matters.

A quarter-century on, the operation of the MSA continues to have a profound effect on smoking, particularly among youth.  Between 1998-2019, US cigarette consumption dropped by more than 50% and during that time, regular smoking by high school students dropped from its near peak of 36.4% in 1997 to a low 6.0% in 2019.  Under the terms of the MSA, tobacco manufacturers are obligated to make, in perpetuity, annual payments to the settling states as long as cigarettes are sold in the US by companies which have settled with the States.  The earlier social engineering initiatives were also rolled into the MSA and as well as the nudging of Hollywood, the programmes were cognizant of the changing media ecosystem and as well as movie studios, independent production houses, streaming services and social media platforms were prevailed upon to curb the frequency with which tobacco imagery appeared.

Billboard “welcoming” visitors to Zion, Illinois, 1919.

Eighty years before the attorneys-general secured the MSA, at least one local government knew smoking was dangerous.  Zion is a township in Lake County, Illinois and it's population in 1919 was declared to be  5460.  Named after Jerusalem's Mount Zion the settlement was founded in 1901 by a faith healer who ran Zion as a personal fiefdom though it later fell into the hands of a proponent of “flat earth theory” who maintained control until forced out when the extent of his corrupt activities became known.

When smoking was socially acceptable and some brands were marketed as "prestige products": Triumph Stag and Benson & Hedges cigarettes.  An advertisement from 1971 run in the FRG (Federal Republic of Germany, the old West Germany) which was a cross-promotion by B&H (Benson & Hedges) and Triumph, then part of the doomed British Leyland conglomerate.

Triumph never quite fixed the flaws in the Stag's unique 3.0 litre V8 (some were so fundamental they couldn't be fixed: only managed) but when the range was revised in 1973 (informally known as the "Mark II"), the parsimonious provision of ashtrays was improved, a central unit added for the rear-seat passengers who previously had none.  Triumph may have claimed the rear seat was intended for "children" and indeed leg room was a little "tight" but their in-period advertising sometimes featured four adults sharing the topless experience the Stag offered and it used to be that in a convertible, having a cigarette while enjoying the fresh air was all part of the fun.   

Because cigarette smoke is known to be carcinogenic and sustained use typically reduced the human lifespan by about a decade it was an admirable target in public health programmes and with big data sets assembled, things became more exact.  In December 2024, after running the numbers, a team at University College London released a report which concluded (on average) a single cigarette robs some 20 minutes from a person’s life; that means each pack can shorten life expectancy by about seven hours.  Historically, the term “pack-a-day-smoker” was based on the pack of 20 but those who buy the bigger packs can do their own math.  In theory, the report added, should a smoker quit on 1 January, they would by 8 January have extended their life-span by a day and if they avoid tobacco until 31 December, they’d have gained 50 days.  Explaining the findings, the team noted smoking usually “doesn’t cut short the unhealthy period at the end of life” but “primarily eats into the relatively healthy years in midlife, bringing forward the onset of ill-health. This means a 60-year-old smoker will typically have the health profile of a 70-year-old non-smoker.”   

GIF of a supine Lindsay Lohan, smoking in The Canyons (2013).

The unusual construct of the noun tobacconist (one who deals in tobacco) was tobacco + -n- + -ist.  The abnormal inserted consonant appeared to reflect the way the word actually was pronounced.  The sense of the commercial trader in the product dates from the 1650s although the earlier meaning, dating from the 1590s was “someone addicted to tobacco and by 1873 the word nicotinism (morbid effects of excessive use of tobacco) had been coined so the awareness of the adverse effects of tobacco are not new.  The first “tobacconist” (a shop where tobacco and related products are purchased) seems to have operated in Florida in the early 1800s.  The -ist suffix was from the Middle English -ist & -iste, from the Old French -iste and the Latin -ista, from the Ancient Greek -ιστής (-istḗs), from -ίζω (-ízō) (the -ize & -ise verbal suffix) and -τής (-tḗs) (the agent-noun suffix).  It was added to nouns to denote various senses of association such as (1) a person who studies or practices a particular discipline, (2), one who uses a device of some kind, (3) one who engages in a particular type of activity, (4) one who suffers from a specific condition or syndrome, (5) one who subscribes to a particular theological doctrine or religious denomination, (6) one who has a certain ideology or set of beliefs, (7) one who owns or manages something and (8), a person who holds very particular views (often applied to those thought most offensive).

Art deco: Snuffbox (left) and cigarette case (right).

Snuff (powdered tobacco to be inhaled) was first available in the1680s and was from the Dutch or Flemish snuf, a shortening of snuftabak (snuff tobacco), from snuffen (to sniff, snuff).  The practice of taking (sniffing) snuff quickly became fashionable in England and generated an industry in the making of “snuff boxes”; many small and exquisite, they’ve long been collectable.  The slang phrase “up to snuff” (knowing, sharp, wide-awake, not likely to be deceived) dates from 1811, the order of the words thought a reference to the upper-class association with the substance while the meaning is presumed to allude to the "elevating" properties of snuff.  The noun nicotine (which still appears occasionally in scientific papers as nicotin) describes the poisonous ,volatile alkaloid base found in tobacco leaves and was first documented in English in 1819, from the French nicotine, from the earlier nicotiane, from the Modern Latin Nicotiana, the formal botanical name for the tobacco plant, named for Jean Nicot (circa 1530-1600), the French ambassador to Portugal who in 1561 sent tobacco seeds and powdered leaves from his embassy in Lisbon to Paris.

Marlboro packaging.

Until the mid-twentieth century, there was much variation in packaging but in the post-war years things were (more or less) standardized in terms of size and shape.  It was a relatively small area with with to work and the convention which developed was to use the simple corporate symbol and product name, thus Marlboro's famous red-on-white chevron.  As the product range proliferated (women were a target market thought to have great potential), Philip Morris adopted the technique of semiotics to differentiate while retaining the same identifiable shape, the basic difference being in the color: red for the standard cigarette, blue for mild, green for menthol, gold for longer (ie 4 inch or 100 mm sticks) and black for higher-priced special offerings.  That didn't last and while some manufacturers stuck to the red (strong) / blue (mild) / green (menthol) convention, Marlboro's pack colors seemed increasingly to become random.       

James VI and I (1566–1625) King of Scotland as James VI (1567-1625) & King of England and Ireland as James I (1603-1625) was appalled by tobacco and in 1604 wrote the treatise A Counterblaste to Tobacco in which he left none in any doubt about how he felt and it’s a document which sounds very contemporary in its condemnation even if some of what was then medical orthodoxy is dated.  The king blamed the scourge of tobacco on Native Americans (although it was European adventurers which brought it from the New World) and was especially scathing about what is now called passive smoking, responding by imposing heavy taxes but such were the adverse consequences for the American colonies that in 1624 a royal charter was instead granted and the whole crop became a royal monopoly: it was the "if you can't beat them, join them" model to which which governments become attracted if there's money in it.  Written originally in Early Modern English (here transliterated) the king's words still read well:

Have you not reason to be ashamed, and to forsake this filthy novelty, so basely grounded, so foolishly received and so grossly mistaken as something good to use?  In your abuse you are sinning against God, harming both your health and your wallet, making yourselves look absurd by this custom, scorned and contemned by the civilized people of any nation.  It is a habit loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black stinking fumes are like the horrible Stygian smoke of the bottomless pit of Hell.

The king’s mention of Stigian is a reference to the goddess Styx (Στύξ) (stýks (literally “Shuddering”)) who in Greek mythology took the form of a river of Elia, Arcadia which surrounded Hades nine times and flowed from a rock into silver-pillared caves.  What the king probably had in mind was the tale that Stygian waters imposed senselessness for a year and a draft of the waters was decreed by Zeus for gods who had perjured themselves.  More positively though it was said of Zeus he also insisted the oaths of the gods be sworn by the water of the Styx.

Mid-century cigarette advertising.  Even in the 1950s the public's suspicion that tobacco was a dangerous product was rising and the industry's advertising switched from the traditional "lifestyle" model to one which relied on endorsements by celebrities and scientists; there was much quoting of research and statistics, much of which would later be wholly debunked.  The tactics and techniques were similar to those later adopted by the fossil fuel lobby in their long campaign to discredit the science of human-activity induced climate change. 

Marianne Faithfull (1946-2025), smoking.

Although there were always the fastidious types like James I who found it abhorrent, it wasn’t until late in the twentieth century that in the West governments began to crack down on the industry to the point where in many jurisdictions the stated aim is to eliminate it completely, the most recent innovation being progressively to raise the minimum age at which tobacco products can be purchased which, in theory, means that within decades, nobody will be able to buy them.

The Australian government took the conventional approach of taxing cigarettes to the point where the cost of consumption became prohibitive for all but the rich (who now tend not to smoke).  That method works well in economics textbooks and elegant models can even predict the point on the elasticity of demand curve at which the punitive taxation becomes effective but the IRL (in real life, a inconvenience which often annoys economists) what happened was organized crime began smuggling cigarettes from overseas where they remained cheap, selling them as "under-the-counter" merchandize in 7-11s and similar outlets, demand guaranteed because they cost Aus$20 rather than the Aus$60 of the lawful (and taxed) product.  As well as being addicted, smokers tend to be poorer than average so were pragmatic; while smoking may not be rational behavior, paying Aus$20 for a pack rather than Aus$60 certainly was and this had the unintended consequence of a rapid decline in government revenue.  Although the intention was to remove this form of revenue by reducing tobacco consumption to zero, what instead happened was much of the forgone money ended up instead with those in the criminal supply chain, organized crime (the importers) the greatest beneficiaries.  That was bad enough but organized crime is not monolithic and the gangs took up battle against each-other, the preferred method to gain control of regional distribution being to fire-bomb the shops obtaining their contraband from the opposition; fire spreading to surrounding shops (florists, hardware stores and such) was collateral damage.  Presumably, with alcohol prohibition in the US (1920-1933) being a well-documented case-study, the implications of the putative approach mush have been considered but governments seem to have though it "worth the risk".  Having effected their policy, the heath advocates might have hoped to see light at the end of the tunnel, only for vaping to become a thing.

Governments were always interested in tobacco as a form of revenue and taxing an addictive, lawful product provided for centuries a constant and often gradually increasing source of income and cynics like to note the attitudes seemed only to shift when advances in surgical techniques and drug treatments meant those suffering the consequences of a lifetime of tobacco use began to be kept alive for decades, often at public expense.  Previously, the afflicted had had the decency quickly to drop dead, usually at an age when their usefulness as economic units had either vanished or significantly diminished to the point where, as pensioners, they were a cost to society.  The BBC’s comedy Yes, Prime Minister explored the math & morals in a discussion between the prime-minister and the permanent head of the cabinet office.

Sir Humphrey Appleby: Notwithstanding the fact that your proposal could conceivably encompass certain concomitant benefits of a marginal and peripheral relevance, there is a countervailing consideration of infinitely superior magnitude involving your personal complicity and corroborative malfeasance, with a consequence that the taint and stigma of your former associations and diversions could irredeemably and irretrievably invalidate your position and culminate in public revelations and recriminations of a profoundly embarrassing and ultimately indefensible character.

Prime-minister: Perhaps I might have a précis of that?  It says here, smoking related diseases cost the National Health Service £165 million a year.

Sir Humphrey Appleby: Yes but we've been in to that, it has been shown that if those extra 100,000 people had lived to a ripe old age, it would have cost us even more in pensions and social security than it did in medical treatment.  So, financially speaking it's unquestionably better that they continue to die at their present rate.

Prime-minister: We're talking of 100,000 deaths a year.

Sir Humphrey Appleby: Yes, but cigarette taxes pay for a third of the cost of the National Health Service.  We're saving many more lives than we otherwise could, because of those smokers who voluntary lay down their lives for their friends. Smokers are national benefactors.

Prime-minister: So long as they live.

Sir Humphrey Appleby: A lot of people, eminent people, influential people have argued that such legislation would be a blow against freedom of choice.

Prime-minister: Rubbish. I'm not banning smoking itself. Does every tax rise represent a blow against freedom?

Sir Humphrey Appleby: Well, depends how big the tax rise is.

Prime-minister: Oh, that's fascinating. Does 20p represent a blow against freedom?  25p? 30p? 31? Is something a blow against freedom simply because it can seriously damage your wealth?

Sir Humphrey Appleby: I foresee all sorts of unforeseen problems.

Prime-minister: Such as?

Sir Humphrey Appleby: If I could foresee them, they wouldn't be unforeseen.

The Kennedy connection

The 1941 film Tobacco Road was based on the 1932 novel of the same name by Erskine Caldwell (1903-1987).  It involved a family living in poverty in the rural backwoods of the US and their antics did not suggest the possession even of average intelligence.  The term “tobacco road” came to be used as a slur against such folk and their lifestyle and while it’s usually an amusing disparagement exchanged between the rich and well-connected, even among them context can matter as Thomas Maier (b 1956) illustrated in one episode recounted in When Lions Roar: The Churchills and the Kennedys (2014) involving John Kennedy (JFK, 1917–1963; US president 1961-1963) and Pamela Harriman (1920–1997), later one of Western society’s last great courtesans but then just divorced from what had been a brief and understandably unhappy marriage to the even then dissolute Randolph Churchill (1911-1968), son of Winston (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955).  Crooked old Joseph Kennedy (1888–1969) fashioned his sons to become politically powerful establishment figures but didn’t forget his great-grandfather had in 1848 left the poverty of rural Ireland during the potato famine to begin to build wealth and influence in Boston.  He’s made sure his sons knew the family history and when in Ireland in 1945, JFK’s curiosity had prompted a trip to the old Kennedy homestead:

At the Kennedy farm in County Wexford, accompanied by Pamela, Jack discovered not much had changed since his great-grandfather left. “I’m John Kennedy from Massachusetts,” he said after his knock on the door was answered. “I believe we are related.” His distant cousin Mary Kennedy Ryan seemed dubious at first but eventually invited the two strangers in for tea.

The Kennedys who remained in Ireland had spent much of the past century trying to regain the land rights to their tenant farms from the British and supporting Ireland’s independence movement led by such politicians as de Valera. Mary Ryan herself had been a member of the old IRA’s women’s auxiliary during the 1920s conflict against the British, carrying guns and money, either in carts or under her dress, to a secret hiding spot near their farm. “Jack kept pressing on about his ancestors going to America and so on, trying to make the link,” recalled Pamela. As a treat, Jack took the Irish Kennedy cousins for a short ride in Kick’s shining new station wagon, accompanied by the former Mrs. Randolph Churchill. “They never could figure out who I was,” recalled Pamela. “‘Wife?’ they’d ask. I’d say no. And they’d say, ‘Ah, soon to be, no doubt!’”

After nearly two hours “surrounded by chickens and pigs,” Jack recalled, he “left in a flow of nostalgia and sentiment.” The trip reaffirmed the Irish stories he’d heard from his parents and grandparents. Neither Pamela nor Kick, however, seemed impressed. As their car pulled away from the Kennedy farm, Pamela turned to Jack with a remark meant as witty. “That was just like Tobacco Road!” she tittered, referring to the popular novel about rural life in Georgia. Jack wasn’t amused. “The English lady,” he later recounted, ” …had not understood at all the magic of the afternoon.” To Dave Powers and Ken O’Donnell, his Irish-Catholic political aides from Boston, he was much blunter: “I felt like kicking her out of the car.” At Lismore, Lady Hartington was even haughtier. After listening to her brother’s wondrous account of the Kennedy homestead, Kick mustered only a bemused question. “Well, did they have a bathroom?”

Flagstaff

Flagstaff (pronounced flag-staf or flag-stahf)

The forms flag-staff & flag staff both exist, the original mistake often replicated and often seen in commercial use.  Flagstaff is a noun; the noun plural is flagstaves or flagstaffs, the latter now more common.

(1) A pole on which a flag is flown (by convention, a flagstaff is shorter, often portable and used with miniature flags while a “flagpole” is used taller, used for full-sized flags and usually a permanent structure.

(2) A locality name in a number of countries.

Circa 1610: The construct was flag + staff.  Dating from the late fifteenth century, Flag was from the Middle English flag & flagge (flag), the origins of which are uncertain.  Possible sources include (1) the early Middle English flage (name for a baby's garment), (2) the Old English flagg & flacg (cataplasm, poultice, plaster), (3) a blend of the nouns flap & fag (in obsolete sense “flap”) or (4) an imitative form of something unknown.  Although it’s speculative, there is support for a link with the Proto-Germanic flaką (something flat), from the primitive Indo-European pleh- (flat, broad, plain), the reference obviously to the shape of a flag.  The Germanic cognates included the Saterland Frisian Flaage (flag), the West Frisian flagge (flag), the Dutch vlag (flag), the German Flagge (flag), the Swedish flagga (flag) and the Danish flag (flag, ship's flag).  The words may be compared with the Middle English flacken (to flutter, palpitate), the Swedish dialectal flage (to flutter in the wind) and the Old Norse flögra (to flap about), all akin to the Old High German flogarōn (to flutter), the Old High German flogezen (to flutter, flicker), the Middle English flakeren (to move quickly to and fro) and the Old English flacor (“fluttering, flying).  Staff (in the sense of a “stick or pole”) was from the Middle English staf (stick or pole, especially one up to 6 feet (1.8 metres) in length and carried in the hand (typically “a military standard”)), from the Old English stæf (plural stafas) (walking stick, strong pole used for carrying, rod used as a weapon, pastoral staff), probably originally stæb, from the Proto-Germanic stab- (the source also of the Old Saxon staf, the Old Norse stafr, the Danish stav, the Old Frisian stef, the Middle Low German & Middle Dutch staf, the Old High German stab, the German Stab, the Gothic stafs and the Middle Dutch stapel (pillar, foundation).

The locality names are probably usually in some way related to the presence of a flagstaff (or flagpole) and there are some romantic tales about how the city of Flagstaff, Arizona (county seat of Coconino County) gained the name, most in some way related to the US centennial celebrations of 4 July 1876 when a large flag was flown from a tall tree (in some tellings it was raised on an actual flagpole made from an impressively straight and tall pine tree felled for the occasion).  The actual details remain murky but all seem convinced the flag flown on the day was the central feature.  Flagstaff is the location of the Museum of Northern Arizona which holds a collection of ten sandpainting reproductions (by an unknown Navajo artist) of photographic images taken by Barry Goldwater (1909–1998), the Republican Party nominee at the 1964 US presidential election.  An avid photographer, Goldwater captured many images of Western landscapes and Native Americans subjects, publishing three books of his photographs between the 1940s & 1970s.  The terms flagstaff and a flagpole often are used interchangeably but among specialists there is a convention distinguishing use:

Flagstaff: (1) A shorter pole or staff, often portable or decorative and seen on tables at international conferences, inform of each representative or delegation. (2) With the exception of those used on vessels or vehicles, the flagstaff is most associated with ceremonial, indoor use. (3) Flagstaffs are often fitted with an ornamental finial (a decorative topper) which is often styled to match the base (which, if fitted, is typically wide and relatively heavy to provide stability.

Flagpole: (1) A typically taller and more robust structure, used outdoors (although there are “full-sized” flagpoles in enclosed buildings. (2) Flagpoles usually are fixed installations and designed to withstand severe weather, holding a flag (or flags) in a permanent or semi-permanent position. Flagpoles can be installed in the ground or attached to a building (or some custom structure), usually with a mechanism for raising or lowering the flag, the most common of which is the halyard system.

Lindsay Lohan with flagstaff equipped Mercedes-Benz 600 (W100, 1963-1981) Pullman during filing for Liz & Dick (2012).  The Even more then forty years after the last was built, the 600 remains a popular choice for film directors wishing to summon the verisimilitude of wealth, power and evil, the latter because of the roll-call of kleptomaniac, megalomaniac and occasionally genocidal heads of state who formed a great fondness for the things.

Breakdown of Mercedes-Benz flagstaff part numbers for W116 (1972-1980, left) and W123 (1976-1986, right).  Despite the appearance, as the numbers indicate, the shafts were different although some of the fittings were interchangeable.  Although the W123 (equating with the modern E-Class) was in the “mid-range” market, it was popular in governmental and diplomatic use, being much cheaper than the bigger S-Class (and certainly the gargantuan Großer (Grosser (the W100)) and there was a long-wheelbase (LWB) version with seating for seven to eight.

The term flagstaff is now associated mostly with the devices attached to limousines (and increasingly, armored, truck-like SUVs) used by the military, the corps diplomatique or other government dignitaries.  These are used to fly national flags, personal standards or whatever is appropriate to the occupant’s station.  Because they are used on vehicles which, being used for ceremonial purposes, often travel at low speed in parades, the flags used are sometimes rigid to emulate the appearance of one in a stiff breeze, a similar trick to that NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) used for the flag “flown” on the moon to mark the Apollo 11 landing in 1969.

Flagstaff-equipped Mercedes-Benz 600s (W100, 1963-1981): comrade Josip Broz Tito (1892–1980; prime-minister or president of Yugoslavia 1944-1980) (left), comrade Nicolae Ceaușescu (1918–1989; general secretary of the Romanian Communist Party 1965-1989) and Pope Paul VI (1897-1978; pope 1963-1978).

Although not a technically difficult device to create, some manufacturers who serviced the market (Rolls-Royce, Mercedes-Benz, Cadillac, Lincoln & Imperial) offered the flagstaffs as a factory part-number (technically, some coming from third-party coach-builders).  On the Mercedes-Benz 600 they were available either as a pair or single fitting (installed either left or right although they were interchangeable and a single part-number) but there doesn’t seem to have been any asymmetrical installs.  There are photographs of 600s with bumper-bar mounted flagstaff but these were an after-market, third-party fitting and not a factory variation.  Because many Lincolns, Cadillacs, Imperials et al were built by independent coach-builders on either a “commercial chassis” or as a “stretch”, there’s much variation in both the design and placement of flagstaffs.

1960 Rolls-Royce Phantom V Canberra state limousine by Park Ward, Buckingham Palace, 1990.  On limousines, although the most common location of flagstaffs is the front fender (almost always paired), the cars of the Royal Mews (what the British royal family call their garage) fly a standard from a single, central mount at the front of the roof.