Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know, because I’ve done it thousands of times.
― Mark Twain
Some Daily Post readers will remember the cigarette ads from the 1950s, before it became common knowledge that the promotion of smoking, by the tobacco industry, was causing millions of people to suffer from lung cancer and heart disease.
We don’t promote smoking in Pagosa Springs. But we do promote tourism. Interesting choice.
According to Britannica.com, “The first half of the 20th century was the golden age of the cigarette.”
In 1950, about half of the population of industrialized countries smoked tobacco; smoking was an acceptable form of social behavior in all areas of life — at work, at home, in bars, in movie theaters — and advertisers were keen to remind us that leisure activities were complete only when cigarettes were at hand. Smoking cigarettes was popular across all social classes, and increasingly among women. The cigarette habit was celebrated on the Hollywood screen by movie stars such as Edward G. Robinson, James Cagney, Spencer Tracy, Gary Cooper, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, and Marlene Dietrich.
We were fooled by an illusion of ‘sophistication’.
In 1950, studies by American physician Ernst L. Wynder and by British statisticians Austin Bradford Hill and Sir Richard Doll provided firm evidence linking lung cancer with smoking. This information came as a considerable shock to smokers, who proved reluctant to give up their habit. Naturally, the tobacco industry denied the evidence, even after the reports by the Royal College of Physicians (1962) and the U.S. surgeon general (1964).
The tobacco industry began adding ‘filters’ to their cigarettes in the 1950s, in a failed effort to reduce lung cancer. As a result, cigarette butts are now “the most littered anthropogenic (man-made) waste item in the world.”
An estimated that 4.5 trillion cigarette butts become litter every year, and most degrade into ‘microplastics’.
I’m writing about cigarettes — in an editorial series about tourism — because I perceive an uncomfortable similarity. In both cases, a majority of intelligent people were happily convinced that the industry was providing a pleasant, uplifting experience, without any significant negative side effects.
We’ve learned our lesson, where cigarettes are concerned. Or at least, most of us have. But it took 500 years to finally accept the truth. (King James I of England [1566-1625] famously described tobacco smoking as “a custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs…”)
We haven’t learned our lesson yet, regarding tourism. We’re still getting fooled by an illusion.
At the October 4 meeting of the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners, a member of the Pagosa Springs Area Tourism Board, Michael Whiting, told the commissioners, “Anyone who would suggest that we’re under-performing as a tourist community is just not in touch with the facts… What I would suggest to the people who feel like they don’t have enough of the facts is that they show up at the meetings. The lodgers’ representative attends fewer of our meetings than all of the other board members, so it wouldn’t surprise me if the lodgers had less information because their representative is there less often. So, in that regard, I would suggest that people just participate in what we do, first, before criticizing…”
Commissioner Ronnie Maez, who also serves on the Tourism Board, commented that the increase in tourism during the COVID crisis was not sustainable. He suggested that the tourism market is returning to a more normal level.
The question for our community, and especially for our elected and appointed leaders, is whether “normal” is an acceptable level.
I’m using cigarette smoking, in this installment, as a metaphor for the refusal by our elected and appointed leaders to notice what tourism has actually done to our community.
Just as the tobacco industry produced millionaire owners at the expense of the general public, a select group of business owners have benefited from the continued growth of Pagosa tourism. Motel owners. Vacation rental owners. Rafting companies. Tour guides. Gift shop owners. Restaurant owners. Realtors.
But the Tourism Board, and the businesses that benefit, are promoting what some of us view as an unhealthy addiction. If history provides any guidance, the industry itself will be the last to admit the negative effects.
Three significant trends in the Pagosa economy have been noticed by everyone who’s paying attention, over the past eight years or so. A massive increase in annual tourism. A massive increase in home prices and housing costs. A massive increase in the number of “Now Hiring” signs.
This trend doesn’t have to continue.
The millions of dollars projected to be spent promoting tourism over the next few years could easily be used, instead, to address the real problems in our community.
As we all know, there are some real problems.
And a shortage of tourists isn’t one of them.