Essay on Smoking in America

Today the tobacco industry is barred from directly recruiting celebrities to endorse smoking. Therefore, tobacco companies have begun to use covert advertising in movies. This has proven to be a very profitable tactic for the tobacco companies. Covert advertising in films have helped the tobacco industry to target new users of tobacco. In this type of advertising cigarette makers receive more advertising time for their money than just a quick glance of a cigarette pack or an advertising billboard. In almost every movie with covert cigarette advertising, there are scenes in which a few of the characters smoke; typically these characters are smoking in a manner that glamorizes the use of tobacco. (Tye, J. 2010)

Commercials are used to target a wide variety of audiences and the television is the perfect way to do so, however this particular commercial is targeting a much more specific audience. Its main audience is teens and young adults. We know this for many reasons; one is the teens in the classroom. Another is the use of a hideous creature to represent the cigarettes. Teens who may be in the situation to choose to smoke or using smokeless tobacco will see these visual representations of what they are putting into their bodies and turn the other way. Another possible audience could be adults and parents. They are less

Tobacco is the number one cause of preventable death in the United States. According to the American Lung Association in 2009, 20.6% of adults were current smokers. In 1970, the United States banned television and radio advertisements of cigarettes. Across the world countries battle similar issues in how to help prevent deaths, lower healthcare costs, and educate the population. Countries have banned advertising, posted health causes, renamed brands, and even included informational fliers in packs of cigarettes. In 2001, The Government of India decided to ban the advertising of cigarettes. This ban was created to help the youth of India and hoped to reduce the amount of future smokers. The proposal of this restriction caused debates between the government, advertising companies, and tobacco manufacturers. The supporting and dismantling arguments for these ethical and commercial causes of the ban have enabled the government to make their final decision.

Mickey Mouse and Joe Camel had something very much in common in the early 90’s, and it was not that they were both cartoon characters. What they did have in common is that each was just as recognizable as the other among preschool aged children. RJ Reynolds used Old Joe Camel to market their Camel brand cigarettes from 1987 to 1997. While these Tobacco companies claim they were targeting adults with their Joe Camel advertisements, the marketing was much more successful with children than the intended adult audience. Although RJ Reynolds was sued, and forced to stop the use of the cartoon character, not much else has changed. According to the article “Tobacco Marketing Influence Youth Smoking”, the Tobacco Industry’s current marketing strategy has failed to shield today’s youth from its influence. Therefore, the Tobacco Industry’s marketing and advertising are currently conditioning children to start smoking at an early age, and continue into adulthood.

However, in the early 2000s, scientists and health specialists all over America began publishing research journals and propaganda stating how detrimental smoking was to one's life. Coincidentally, smoking rates and death also began to go down simultaneously. This propaganda paired with scientific facts provided by various laboratories, nicknamed anti-smoking propaganda, began to immediately change the atmosphere of smokers within America. Therefore, one must wonder how the changing trend in smoking-related propaganda and the newly introduced anti-smoking propaganda has affected its American populous. This research will analyze that exactly, and come to a conclusion on how the changes in smoking-related propaganda have affected the American populous.

The extent to which tobacco advertising contributes to the increase in smoking habits has been debated and still is being debated. The focus is heavily on the degree to which the advertising affects adolescents. Previous research which is explored above, suggests significant relationships between smoking behavior among youth and these advertisements. Tobacco companies on the other hand, have tried to prove their ads are not directed towards our youth. Specifically, the R.J. Reynolds tobacco company has run full page ads in national magazines advising youth to not smoke. They have asserted

Each day, more than 5,200 people under the age of eighteen smoke their first cigarette, and approximately 3,100 youth and young adults become daily smokers (Youth Tobacco Smoking Rates Putting Millions At Risk Of Premature Death. n. pag.). These numbers are unusually high and are most likely due to the excessive amount of tobacco advertisement. Today in the United States tobacco companies spend more than eleven billion dollars on tobacco advertising, targeting mostly younger generations of people. Some may argue that this type of advertisement is beneficial in the U.S because it brings in billions of dollars in revenue that can be used for many different purposes. However many are concerned about young adults and

Over the last few generations, the cultural image associated with smoking has dramatically changed. In comparison with the youth of our grandparents, the novelty, rebellion, and the social normality linked to smoking has significantly depleted. The past decade has altered that perception further and changed the idolization of smoking into a more stigmatized and negative view. Such attitude change has been a process and can be attributed to the utilization of many anti-smoking programs. The first large-scale national anti-smoking program was implemented as a part of the Fairness Doctrine, from 1967 to 1970 (Farrelly et al. 2005). During this time, television networks were required to maintain a balance between anti-smoking and pro-smoking advertisements. Since then, many other campaigns have taken on the challenge of combatting anti-smoking with the tobacco industry’s promotion. The “truth” campaign, specifically, imposed an early and effective model for anti-smoking programs to follow, therefore making it highly successful.

Advertising for tobacco is another source that cause teenagers smoke and adults smoke. Recently, tobacco companies have found new ways to promote their products to youth. They support their sporting events, concerts and movie. Many people favor idols or stars smoke in the movies and they seems very cool. And Teenagers are curious about imitation. Smoke containing nicotine acts as a stimulant to the brain. Nicotine in the bloodstream acts to make the smoker feel calm. In fact, nicotine is a lethal poison, affecting the heart, blood vessels, and hormones. Tobacco smoke contains over 4,000 chemical compounds. More than 60 of these are known or suspected to cause cancer. What is more, secondhand smoke can be harmful in many ways and it ruins thousands of non-smoking people, children's health. The US Surgeon General and the US Food and Drug Administration are among those who have examined the evidence and concluded that tobacco advertising does increase overall consumption. If we ban adverts on tobacco products, they will gradually lose their appeal, because they won't symbolize anything "cool", "smart" or "amazing". Tobacco products will become ordinary consumption goods and thus the number of young people who take up smoking in order to "be somebody" will decrease.

The effects of cigarette smoking can be horrifying. Smoking is dangerous not only to those who smoke, but to non-smokers and unborn children as well. Cigarette smoking is also physically and socially harming.

The tobacco industry is important to the economy. In 1991, worldwide tobacco sales exceeded $59.8 billion and in 1992 the industry was rated as one of the top one hundred advertisers (Pechmann and Ratneshwar, 1994). However, there are high prices to pay - socially, economically, and personally - as a result of this industry. Annual mortality figures indicate that cigarette smoking is the number one cause of preventable death in the United States. An estimated 390,000 people die each year of smoke related illnesses, which is greater than the combined mortality for cocaine, crack, AIDS, homicide, suicide, and alcohol abuse (Botvin, G., Baker, Botvin, E., Dusenbury, Cardwell, and Diaz, 1993).

Attention getter: According to Tobacco-Free Kids, “about 400,000 people die from their own smoking each year, and about 50,000 die from second-hand smoke annually. Smoking kills more people than AIDS, alcohol, car accidents, illegal drugs, murders and

In the 1930’s cigarette smoking was looked upon as alluring. The well to do beautiful, who’s who, type of people flaunted their smoking habit. The first Surgeon General’s Report on smoking and health was released in 1964. In today’s society, smoking is not so attractive... It is strange to watch movies of years gone by when Hollywood stars would pose as smokers in a setting such as a hospital, restaurant, or airport. While the Marlboro man would ride horseback across the screen in commercials between movie segments. This has now become passé. Public facilities have now set rules against smoking in many establishments, and tobacco commercials have long been banned from public television. Over the past 50 years extensive research

This problem of creating a trendy stylish image of cigarettes are hurting many people by recruiting new young smokers from all around the world, winning over sales due to the false image and then addiction. Third world countries are hurt the most by this unethical way of advertising because they don’t have money for this extra expense that they now need due to addiction. Critics claim that sophisticated promotions in a unsophisticated societies entice people who cannot afford the necessities of life to spend money on luxury- and a dangerous one at that. Every cigarette manufacturer is in the image business, and tobacco companies say their promotional slant is both reasonable and common. They point out that in the Third World a lot of people cannot understand what is written in the ads anyway, so the ads zero in on the more understandable visual image. Due to actions such as this and the negative effect it has on people economically and physically, this is a good example of how the tobacco industry is unethical.

Cigarette smoking is something people all over the world have been doing for about 2000 years. Back in 2003, the first electronic cigarette was successfully created by a gentleman named Hon Lik. Lik was a 52 year old pharmacist at the time, whom of which was also a smoker. The inspiration behind making the electronic cigarette came after Lik’s father passed away from lung cancer due to him also being a heavy smoker. “A Historical Timeline of Electronic Cigarettes.” cassia.org. Consumer Advocates for Smoke Free Alternatives Association, 15 June 2017. The idea behind creating this device was to give smokers a way to still ingest nicotine, the most addictive chemical in tobacco cigarettes, without the countless negative health effects that