Smoking and Advertising
Coolness is a term that is often a bit mysterious and difficult to describe accurately. What is “cool” to one generation or culture might be ridiculous or foolish to another. Sadly, the use of cigarettes somehow evades such a problem and millions of people pick up a smoking habit after seeing an advertisement or pro-smoking propaganda each and every year.
The tobacco industry dedicates roughly fifty dollars per person, per year to tobacco advertising. The figure is staggering when you realize that such a dollar amount is multiplied by the billions of people currently living here on Earth. Clearly there is a lot of money in the tobacco industry, even in light of some decreasing numbers of smokers in certain populations.
For example, the number of adult Americans who smoke has decreased by around twenty-three percent since the 1960s, but tobacco use has increased in developing nations by around four percent since that time. Additionally, around eighty to one hundred thousand teens and youths from around the world will pick up the smoking habit each day of the year. They will do this after seeing print ads, billboards, and movies or television programs that glorify smoking.
Sadly, it is youths that the tobacco industry targets in their advertising campaigns as it tries to depict smokers as glamorous, sexy, and attractive. Unfortunately their efforts done accurately depict the real smoker their lifestyle, their health, and their looks. Few pro-smoking ads reveal someone with smoker’s cough, yellow teeth, or stinky clothing and hair. Young people, who are especially concerned with image and looks would be far less likely to even consider smoking if they were well-informed of the long-term costs of smoking. It is truly rare to see a throat, lung, or other form of cancer patient bemoaning their choice to smoke a pack or more each day.
This is what makes the targeting of young people so frustrating. For example, over two thousand young adults will begin smoking each day of the year in the United States alone. It is estimated that roughly half of them were inspired to try cigarettes after seeing a favorite star smoking on a television show in a movie.
In fact, around eighty percent of all PG-13 rated American movies will show tobacco use, and around sixty percent of the leading stars are shown smoking in those films or programs. Of course such percentages don’t actually match the reality or the true statistics about the number of famous smokers, but they do lead to thousands of people becoming smokers each year.
Half of the new smokers motivated to try smoking after seeing a favorite star do so will acquire some sort of disease or chronic illness associated with their new-found habit and a majority will die from the condition.
