Kurt's Tobacco
Tobacco
- Advertisement and Promotion - Brand Share or Market Expansion? (Tye, Warner, and Glantz)
- The tobacco industry is steadfast in claiming they advertise in order to increase their brand share in the already existent tobacco user base.
- Tobacco policy reform advocates claim advertisement of tobacco is done for the purpose of increasing total tobacco consumption (Market Expansion).
- In a year, only about 10% of smokers change "brand." Oftentimes, the brand they change to is owned by the same parent company as their original brand.
- If the massive amount of money spent by tobacco companies on advertisement was really only to increase brand share, it would not be a fiscally wise practice. (Billions spent to retain loyal consumers?)
- Discussion
- The tobacco industry's dishonesty regarding its reasons for advertising represents serious problems with expecting it to self-regulate the way it does advertise.
- Tye, Warner, and Glantz. "Tobacco Advertisement and Consumption: Evidence of a Causal Relationship."
- Simon-1968 "The abolition of cigarette advertising would decrease per capita consumption by 5% in the first year and cumulatively more in following years."
- Peles studied US cigarette advertising between 1953 and 1960. He concluded each dollar of advertising $ spent results in an increase of 600 cigarettes sold.
- American study found that the more a child smokes, the more likely he/she is to be aware of tobacco advertising messages.
- Norway: 1975. Cigarette taxes increased, educational programs instituted, advertisement of cigarettes banned. Cigarette sales drop 15% in five years. Highlights the need for a multifaceted approach.
- Legislative action which includes advertising bands are more effective than those which rely exclusively on "voluntary approaches."
- Tobacco Advertisements also could encourage media outlets in which they are contained to limit their anti-smoking dialogue for fear of "biting the hand that feeds."
- They do not try to claim that advertisement of tobacco is the only reason people continue to buy cigarettes. Only that it directly causes an undetermined percentage of sales.
- Discussion
- If tobacco advertising directly causes consumption of tobacco, which is a product which is deadly when used as intended, why does it continue to be a legal practice in the United States? Answer: Tobacco Lobby
- Thankfully, anti-advertising has the opposite effect on tobacco sales. A legislated increase in tobacco taxes could go towards a huge national anti-advertising campaign against tobacco.
- A legislated ban on advertisement of tobacco products, like the one I mentioned on alcohol, could serve to free up the media to further discuss policy change.
- Barbeau. "Does Cigarette Print Advertising Adhere to the Tobacco Institute's Voluntary Advertising and Promotion code? An Assessment."
- The Code
- Proscribes any suggestion that "smoking is essential to social prominence, distinction, success, or sexual attraction"
- Prohibits any person smoking in an exagerrated manner.
- Ads may include healthy, attractive people as long as there is no suggestion that these conditions are due to smoking.
- Prohibits depictions of any smoker participating in a physical activity requiring stamina of athletic conditions beyond that of normal recreation.
- Requires that any models used appear older than 25.
- Their goal was to find out how children perceive tobacco advertisements in relation to other "control" products. The sample was made up of students grades 6-8 in MA public schools
- Their findings indicate that the tobacco industry fails to abide by its own self imposed regulations.
- If the code was indeed effective, one would expect people in cigarette ads to be less appealing to young people than those in other "benign" ads. Obviously, this is not the case.
- Since the publication of this study, tobacco advertisement in library editions of several magazines with a large youth readership has been banned.
- Malone, Boyd, and Bero. "Science in the News: Journalists' Construction of Passive Smoking as a Social Problem."
- The mainstream press plays a significant role in providing the public with recent scientific discoveries.
- Print media plays a large part in policy problems being considered as such.
- How reporters choose to frame issues largely determines how the public will view those issues.
- Scientific evidence is often eclipsed by a focus on social policy issues.
- Articles continue to cite the scientific studies, but more focus goes into possible unethical practices by the tobacco industry
- Media converts scientific findings into "real human drama." (Much more palatable to the average American)
- Smokers are portrayed as helpless addicts rather than free willed individuals.
- Paints the tobacco industry as a predator of weak willed individuals.
- "Innocent people are being harmed because of the influence of big tobacco"
- This helps to fit anti-passive smoking laws into the commonly held American ideal of freedom while maintaining a public health focus.
- Media shifts public concept of passive smoking from "unguided actions and unintended consequences" to "purposeful harm and intended causes."
- Without the press coverage of passive smoking, legislation banning it couldn't have proceeded as rapidly as it did.
- If passive smoking is constructed as a moral issue, and people will take notice.
- Discussion
- The media's exposure of passive smoking as a social problem represents its considerable power in setting the political agenda.
- If the media was able to construct passive smoking as a social problem, could it not construct the prosecution of illicit drug users in much the same way? Make them "victims of the system" rather than "deviant criminals"