Questions Remain in Government’s Anti-Cigarette Campaign
Jun 23rd, 2011 | 8 responses
by Walter Brasch
The federal government has launched what may become one of the most effective propaganda campaigns in American history.
Beginning September 2012, every cigarette manufacturer must display one of nine government-approved graphics on the top half, both front and back, of every cigarette pack. Among the warnings is a picture of a pair of healthy lungs next to a pair of cancerous lungs, with the notice: “Cigarettes cause fatal lung disease.” Another warning is equally definitive: “Cigarettes cause cancer,” with a picture of rotting gums and teeth. A person with an oxygen mask is the graphic for the text, “Cigarettes cause strokes and heart disease.” Other pictures show smoke coming from a tracheotomy hole and a dead body with autopsy stitches on his chest. Other warnings, with appropriate graphics are: “Smoking during pregnancy can harm your baby,” “Tobacco smoke can harm your children,” and “Tobacco smoke causes fatal lung disease in non-smokers.” One graphic shows a man in a T-shirt with the message, “I quit.” Cigarette manufacturers must include all nine warnings in rotation on their packs.
In addition, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) also requires that one-fifth of every print ad must include the warnings.
The FDA directive is based upon Congressional action in 2009. The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, which received strong bipartisan support, also prohibited cigarette manufacturers from sponsoring sports and cultural events. It further restricted tobacco companies from advertising their products on T-shirts and other clothing items.
The first cigarette ad was in the New York National Daily in May 1789. By the Civil War, cigarette ads were appearing regularly in newspapers. The tobacco industry’s own propaganda machine significantly increased full-page full-color ads in magazines during the 1930s and 1940s; a decade later, the industry was one of the first to recognize the influence of the emerging television medium. The ads not only extolled the advantages of smoking, they linked dozens of celebrities to their campaigns. Bob Hope pushed Chesterfields; Ronald Reagan wanted Americans to give Chesterfields as a Christmas gift. One popular ad even had Santa Claus enjoying a Lucky Strike. Marlboros became hugely successful with its Marlboro Man commercials that featured rugged cowboy individualism. To get the largely untapped female demographic into its sales net, cigarette companies went with what is now seen as sexist advertising. Lucky Strike wanted women to smoke its cigarettes “to keep a slender figure.” Misty cigarettes emphasized its smoke, like its women, was “slim and sassy.”
Camel cigarettes, which would eventually develop Joe Camel as its cartoon spokesman to counter the Marlboro Man, tied health, opinion leaders, and tobacco smoke. Its survey of more than 100,000 physicians of every specialty said Camels was their preferred brand.
However, by the mid-1960s, physicians had begun backing away not just from Camels but all cigarettes. A Surgeon’s General’s report in 1964 concluded there was a strong correlation between smoking and lung cancer. The following year, the Surgeon General required tobacco manufacturers to put onto every cigarette pack a warning, “Cigarettes may be hazardous to your health.”
In 1967, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ruled that the Fairness Doctrine required TV and radio stations to run anti-smoking ads at no cost. The message was clear to the financial departments—voluntarily eliminate cigarette advertising or lose five to ten minutes of sales time every broadcast day. In 1971, the FCC banned all cigarette advertising on radio and TV.
By 2003, cigarette advertising peaked at $15 billion, according to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) To counter cigarette company advertising campaigns, government steadily raised cigarette taxes. State and local taxes accounted for $16.6 billion in 2008, according to the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution. Federal taxes, raised to $1.01 a pack in 2009, brought in about $8.5 billion. New York City residents pay the highest taxes per pack–$1.50 city tax, $4.35 state tax, $1.01 federal tax. The average combined tax nationwide is $5.51. Much of the money is used to develop anti-smoking campaigns.
About 443,000 deaths each year are primarily from the effects of cigarette smoke, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The new campaign aims to cut that by half. The FDA estimates there are about 46 million smokers.
It’s obvious that both tobacco manufacturer and government advertising campaigns have been effective. But there are several questions that need to be asked.
If the federal government demands health warnings on cigarette packs, why doesn’t it also demand similar warnings on other products that also carry known health risks, like liquor?
If there is so much evidence that cigarette smoke—with its tar, nicotine, and associated chemicals—poses such a high health risk, why doesn’t the federal government ban it, like it does numerous products known to be unsafe?
Does the federal government’s campaign violate the First Amendment protections of freedom of speech? This becomes an even more important question since the Supreme Court ruled in 2010 that with few exceptions corporations enjoy the same rights as individual citizens.
If there is evidence that tobacco smoke is unsafe and unhealthy, and the government levies excessive taxes, why did the federal government grant $194.4 million in agriculture subsidies in 2010 and about $1.1 billion in subsidies since 2000?
Finally, if the evidence is overwhelming that cigarette smoke is dangerous, and the federal government taxes every pack but doesn’t ban cigarettes, why has it been so adamant in refusing to decriminalize marijuana, which has significantly fewer health risks than what is in the average cigarette?
[Dr. Brasch has never smoked, but respects the rights of those who do. His latest book is Before the First Snow: Stories from the Revolution, a literary journalism novel about the counterculture.]
8 Responses to “Questions Remain in Government’s Anti-Cigarette Campaign”
Marijuana doesn’t have fewer health risks than cigs. There was a recent study that said that smoking a joint was the equivalent to smoking a pack of cigarettes. Most people just tend to smoke that much less.
EEllis, I think you may have contradicted your opening sentence.
In any case, how about a link to that study you mention?
Walter asks questions that deserve honest answers. I think many of us already know what those answers are though – something along the lines of $$$$$$$$$$$$$. Hypocrisy is never pretty. In the case of tobacco it’s deadly.
The government’s war against cigarettes has gotten completely out of control.
It’s one thing to prosecute tobacco companies for deliberately misleading the American people about the health risks of smoking nicotine. It’s quite another for the government to force cigarette companies to pay for anti-cigarrete advertisements which they must then slap on their own products.
That would be like the government forcing Budweiser or Coors to pay for anti-alcohol advertisements and then forcing them to slap these advertisements on their cans of beer–or forcing McDonalds or Burger King to pay for anti-fast food advertisements and then forcing them to slap these advertisements on their Happy Meals.
Why are these labels even needed? The overwhelming majority of Americans already know that cigarettes are not good for us. It’s taught to us in schools. It’s taught to us in advertisments. It’s taught to us by our doctors. It’s mentioned in black-and-white on existing warning labels on cigarettes.
Politicians needs to get it into their heads that people don’t choose to smoke cigarettes because they’re ignorant of the dangers. People choose to smoke cigarettes because they’ve made a choice (a very poor choice in many of our minds, but a choice nonetheless).
Sooner or later, people have to take personal responsibility for their own actions rather than assigning the blame on others. In a free society, an individual promotes healthy lifestyles through persuasion–not through coercion.
The War on Drugs–whether it’s laws against cannibis, laws against nicotine, or laws against alcohol–is based upon coercion. As long as the people buying, selling, or using such products are consenting adults and not engaging in fraud, then the government has absolutely no right to use coercion or the threat of violence against any of these people.
I don’t smoke nicotine or cannibis, and I very rarely partake of alcohol. However, I would never EVER advocate violence or the threat of violence against anyone who chose to buy, sell, or use any of these substances.
I am willing to bet that there is no legitimate study that shows that smoking a joint is more hazardous than smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. If you smoked a pack of joints a day you might make a case but as someone who smoked some pot 40 years ago I will tell you that would be impossible. Unlike nicotine and alcohol cannabis is not not addictive – you can quit with no pain or problems. You can’t say the same for nicotine of alcohol – I know from personal experience.
That said the latest war on tobacco is absurd and an incredible waste of money.
You will find the 400,000 death claim by the government is simply derived from a computer number. Not from actual death certificates!
Not 1 Death or Sickness Etiologically Assigned to Tobacco. By Dr. Simoncini, MD. All the diseases attributed to smoking are also present in non smokers. It means, in other words, that they are multifactorial, that is, the result of the interaction of tens, hundreds, sometimes thousands of factors, either known or suspected contributors – of which smoking can be one.
SECOND HAND SMOKE and MIRRORS
The great hoax is more precise!
Smoke-Free Workplace Law is primarily intended to protect workers from health hazards resulting from exposure to secondhand smoke.
Even exposures in the home couldnt stand up,the congressional research office concluded:
•the statistical evidence does not appear to support a conclusion that there are substantial health effects of passive smoking;
•it is possible that very few or even no deaths can be attributed to ETS;
•if there are any lung cancer deaths from ETS exposure, they are likely to be concentrated among those subjected to the highest exposure levels… primarily among those nonsmokers subjected to significant spousal ETS.
•Even when overall risk is considered, it is a very small risk and is not statistically significant at a conventional 95% level.
According to the CRS, basing an assessment on only the most pessimistic study of those reviewed, exposure only to background ETS (as in workplaces and bars) creates a lifetime risk of about 7/100ths of a percent of dying from ETS related cancer.
Additional studies also undercut key assumptions in the “estimates” of the 63,000 victim “death toll” espoused by anti-smoking forces. The WHO’s International Agency on Research on Cancer published a 1998 study that ran for 10 years, covering 7 different countries, concluding that there is no statistically significant risk for non-smokers who lived or worked with smokers.
http://iarnuocon.newsvine.com/_news/2007/10/17/1028570-secondhand-smoke-mirrors
Scientific Evidence Shows Secondhand Smoke Is No Danger
Written By: Jerome Arnett, Jr., M.D.
Published In: Environment & Climate News
Publication Date: July 1, 2008
Publisher:
http://www.heartland.org/policybot/results/23399/Scientific_Evidence_Sho...
myth-of-second-hand-smoke
http://yourdoctorsorders.com/2009/01/the-myth-of-second-hand-smoke
BS Alert: The ‘third-hand smoke’ hoax
http://www.examiner.com/public-policy-in-louisville/bs-alert-the-third-h...
It’s disgusting, but not surprising. After all, many have wanted the federal government to be one’s nanny and more often, truly their parent of a small child (for a long time now, early elementary or pre-elementary school age). Of course the parent will scare the kiddies!
I see it, large pictures of obese people on bottles of Coke (lots of room on the two liter one) and smaller pics on packets of sugar showing decaying teeth. Our sedentary lives indoors should prompt pictures interspersed with content on TVs and computer screens, since your life expectancy is lowered (more corpse pictures?).