The Ban On Advertising Tobacco Products

Can one limit what is advertised? Who is to say whether cigarette advertising is ethical? There have been many bans on tobacco advertising. There is a notion that advertising cigarettes is unethical because society has claimed it to be. Smoking has been one of the biggest parts of advertising for decades. Doctors would promote certain cigarettes. Many believed cigarette smoking to be a way to relieve the stress of a long and stressful day at work. Today, many people view smoking as a form of suicide. It is a well-known fact that many people die from diseases that are caused by smoking. It is unethical to advertise tobacco use because

According to the CDC, in 2012 cigarette and smokeless tobacco companies spent more than $9.6 billion on advertising and promotional expenses in the United States alone. This is an extremely atrocious amount of money to spend on a product that has been proven to harm or even kill its consumers. In addition, the world lung

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.

     Should tobacco advertising be restricted? This is a very controversial issue. There is the idea that young children that smoke started smoking because of advertisements, but there is also the idea that children start smoking for other reasons. Many big, well-known tobacco companies like RJ Reynolds are being sued for their advertisements. On Monday April 20th, 1998 the jury heard a testimony from Lynn Beasly, the marketing vice president of the RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company. The courts believed that the advertisement was directed towards children under the age of 18, due to a document from the RJ Reynolds Board of Directors showing that they set a goal to increase the company's market share among 14

Tobacco ads have been barred from television for over twenty years. Young children don’t need the influence to smoke or dip, considering they’ll have enough peer pressure to do so later in life. By essentially censoring television ads, the government decreases the advertising power of tobacco companies. However, there are simply some things that should not be censored. When censored, any sort of art loses its meaning. When the government tries to censor art, such as music, paintings, digital art, movies, or TV shows, people can no longer truly express their feelings or convey the message they were attempting to portray.

Plastered all over magazines, buildings, and billboards used to be positive advertising of tobacco, encouraging people nationwide that tobacco use is fun, trendy, and completely innocuous. “More Doctors Smoke CAMELS than any other cigarette”, “More delicate in flavor, too...for those with keen, young tastes”, and “My throat is safe with Craven ‘A’... you can trust their smoothness and quality” were both notable examples of advertising that hooked the now addicted users (Lindstrom). Nowadays, although advertising has become more educational on the negative health effects of tobacco use, it is still normal to see people as young as 18 using the toxic products. However, how can it necessarily be considered ‘wrong’ if the legal age for tobacco

Guns do not kill people; people kill people. Cigarettes do not kill people; people who choose to smoke are killing themselves. The health risks of using tobacco are common knowledge. It is a known fact that if someone smokes their chance of getting lung cancer is increased drastically, yet so many Americans choose to do so. The FDA is taking steps to tighten the rules of tobacco marketing, some of these rules will include prohibiting self-service tobacco displays in stores, restricting vending-machine sales, and forbidding most free samples of tobacco products. (Reid pg. 1) These are just small hits to the big tobacco industry, but the FDA has no intention of stopping there. The question that comes to mind is, why attack the advertising

The First Amendment is a constitutional doctrine which allows individuals to exercise certain freedoms such speech, the press, or the right of the people to peacefully assemble. However, what the First Amendment does not carefully articulate is how “free” one’s freedom really is, or how such freedoms should be practiced. Advertising is a subject many often overlook when considering the freedoms that The First Amendment protects. However, it is a subject certainly not overlooked when regarding the question of cigarette advertising. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other federal and state regulators have targeted tobacco manufacturers for decades. Many claims have accused

Advertising in general influences everyone in many ways, particularly children imperiled by advertisements and its effects. (Raju & Lonial, 1989) I think it is an important topic to protect the children from advertising, specifically from tobacco advertising, because we all know that smoking is not good for your health, might cause cancer and could lead on to death.

Those against the ad ban point out that the tax revenue generated by the tobacco industry add to the government coffers. They further argue that in India, the government contributes so little to its health and welfare systems that the benefits of tobacco’s monetary contribution to the economy trump the cost of healthcare. They further argue that the cost illnesses caused by tobacco usage are offset by those who die early from tobacco related illness. Premature deaths save the cost of government benefits and pensions. (2010. “Ban on Tobacco Ads by the Government of

the examples of other nations which have deemed it constitutional to place such bans on tobacco advertising. They claim that studies have shown that in these countries the consumption of tobacco products among the younger crowd has dropped. It is also claimed that the ban itself won 't hurt the economy because in reality the revenue the government receives from the tobacco industry does not offset the costs it creates.

The ethical issues of advertising include the marketing of unhealthy products. The most obvious example would be cigarettes. The tobacco industry was banned from broadcast media long ago and in 1998 most other forms of tobacco advertising were eliminated. Smoker’s still smoke and elimination of that fact remains unscathed. The media machine is over-saturated with anti-smoking campaigns. As if it were the only negatively influential product out on the market. The irony of it all! Many products like prescription drugs, alcohol and fatty foods outweigh the adverse health affects of smoking. Why is the tobacco industry so vilified and heavily regulated?

The arguments in favor of the government banning tobacco advertising generally begins with the belief that the government has the right to intervene in the best interest of its citizens. The banning of cocaine, which is generally seen as worldwide, is often used as an example of this. Public health is often the motive that is cited when countries such as Belgium and France banned tobacco advertising. It was that “…the French ban on advertising tobacco products was not unconstitutional as it was based on the need to protect public health and did not curtail the freedom of trade.” (ICMR, 2001)

Tobacco advertising refers to promotion display of tobacco products in media such as; radio, television, print, billboards and at retail stores. The ban on tobacco advertising by the Indian Government has many effects on the people as well as their ethics and freedom of choice. This paper will provide a summary argument in favour of the ban as well as opposing the ban. And to conclude with my opinions on what the government should do with tobacco advertising.

Those in favour of banning advertising believed it to be a necessary step in defending India’s citizens from a threat to public health. While the evidence that tobacco is bad for one’s health was not in dispute, that does not tell us if banning advertising is the right thing to do about it. The case for negative would prefer to treat smoking like other common vices, such as sugar, or coffee, or alcohol. The case for the affirmative sees smoking as a threat in the same way as cocaine or guns.