<<
What BS... this HAS been reported by the media in the past, >>
It received only scant coverage.
<<
the tabacco company made front companies that were smuggling smokes in from the US, and people were getting killed doing this. Then the tabacco companies, who created the front companies, would point to these front companies and say 'look at all this smuggling... half the people are buying blackmarket cigarettes anyways, so the high taxes aren't doing anything but getting people killed'... when infact it was the tabacco companies that were instigating all this). >>
Ah yes, they are accusing the gun manufacturers of the same thing here in the U.S, and it all turned out to be bullsh-t. However, I can't speak about Canada's tobacco issues because I could care less what Canadians think or do.
<<
hm, first you gave the link to www.thetruth.com, which is a hardcore anti-smoking compaign, then you make stupid comments like this? >>
First, yes I'm aware of the vehemently biased antitobacco website I cited. Which is why I referred to court documents that were published on that site as of 6 months ago when I spent 6 hours reading over their blatant misrepresentations of it.
At the time, I haven't been there since, but at the time they portrayed the "evil" cigarette manufacturers as manipulating the nicotine levels in cigarettes to hook smokers harder and keep them hooked. Their "proof" was a court document that mentioned nothing about manipulating nicotine levels to get smokers "hooked", it was a document detailing two manufacturer's attempt to produce a safe cigarette that smokers would accept. Since the substitutes they were experimenting with did not provide nicotine, and nicotine is THE key to getting smokers to accept an alternative to tobacco, they had to add it.
<<
Did you even read the link you gave us? If you had, you would see that they do go on to prove that advertisement DOES increase teenage smokers, and that with the reduction of advertisements, there has been a reduction in teen smokers. >>
I trust unmanipulated scanned images of actual court documents, but I don't trust a word found on that site otherwise. Cigarette advertising on television was banned in 1971, which resulted in the reversal of a four-year downward trend in cigarette sales. Tobacco companies again agreed to significantly restrict advertising in 1982 and 1990 (limiting only to magazines intended for adult readers, limiting promotions and give-aways, prohibiting sponsorship of various athletic events, etc). The result? Here is your "reduction in teen smokers":
"The number of youths who took up smoking as a daily habit before the age of 18 increased by 73 percent between 1988 and 1996, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention." [Smoking rates up among teens, October 8, 1998: CNN Health News]
A long-term study by University of Michigan Institute for Social Research has been tracking high school seniors for 25 years and following eighth and 10th graders for the past nine years...The study found that the proportion of teens who smoke cigarettes declined somewhat [during 1999], although..."these rates are well above smoking rates in the early '90s, when teen smoking began to increase substantially." The survey included 45,000 students from 433 schools across the country. [Study Indicates Teen Drug Use May Be Leveling Off, December 18, 1999: Washington Post]
Between 1991 and 1994: The prevalence of smoking by eight graders increased 30% form 14.3% to 18.6%. The prevalence of smoking among 10th graders increased form 20.8% to 25.4%. The prevalence of smoking among 12th grade students increased from 28.3% to 31.2%. The prevalence of smoking among college freshman increased from 9% to 12.5%. [Monitoring the Future Project (MTFP) - 1994].
Smoking rates are highest among lower income/lower education youth. Teenagers that drop out of high school, for example, are twice as likely to be smokers than high school graduates. Among high school students that plan to get a college degree 6.9% are frequent smokers as compared to 19.5% of teens not planning on going to college [CDC, 1994]
My comment: Apparently, poor people buy more magazines and attend more athletic events, etc. than wealthier persons. Presumably, they are able to afford these cost-intensive things more than wealthier persons, since marketing is obviously the "cause" of smoking. ???
"Alarming Rise In Teen Smoking Defies National Effort": Atlanta Journal & Constitution,
04/03/98
Smoking Among Teens Continues To Rise: Philadelphia Inquirer, 04/03/98
Smoking by Black Youths Is Up Sharply: The New York Times, 04/03/98
"Teen Smoking Campaign Flops" By Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe, 04/07/98 - "We have made it illegal for minors to acquire tobacco; we have made sure they know that smoking is unhealthy; we have jacked up the price of cigarettes with state and federal taxes. That much makes sense. Anything more - the bans on tobacco-logo T-shirts, the Joe Camel insanity, the persecution of restaurant owners - is hysteria.
And as the new statistics suggest, nothing makes tobacco more alluring to adolescents than hysterical grown-ups admonishing them not to smoke."
Sexual Orientation Associated With Increased Health Risk In Teenagers, PR Newswire, 05/04/98: "The responses came in a voluntary, anonymous Youth Risk Behavior Survey prepared by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention with an added question on sexual orientation, according to Robert H. DuRant, Ph.D., professor of pediatrics at the Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, and senior author of the Pediatrics paper. . . The survey was conducted in Massachusetts high schools in 1995 . . use of smokeless tobacco in the previous 30 days was four times as common among gay teens than straight ones. . . Fifty-nine percent of gay teens smoked cigarettes, compared to 35 percent of straight teens. . . 48 percent smoked cigarettes before age 13 . . "Gay, lesbian and bisexual adolescents face tremendous challenges growing up physically and mentally healthy in a culture that is often unaccepting," the researcher said."
Comment: Well, now apparently, not only do poor people buy more magazines and attend more sporting events, homosexuals do to. Voracious magazine buyers and sporting event attenders, those gays.
<<
If advertisement doesn't work, then why is it that 86% of teen smokers smoke the 3 more advertised brands? Obviously advertising does work, otherwise the industry wouldn't have spent billions on it. >>
Advertising works no differently for tobacco companies than it does for any other industry. Advertising does not "cause" people to start using a particular type or class of product. It ONLY promotes a particular brand of product to those consumers who are ALREADY interested in using a product of its type. If I don't want a boat, I'm not going to leap out of my arm-chair and run to the boat shop after seeing a boat ad. However, if I am already interested in buying a boat, an advertisement for Maxum or Four Winns may influence my purchasing decision.
There is Z-E-R-O evidence that suggests advertising is "driving" cigarette sales, but instead influences brand selection by those already interested in smoking. When you attempt to correlate increases in overall tobacco marketing expenditures with increases in overall cigarette sales, you find NO relationship. Indeed, the more we clamp down on tobacco's marketing, smoking rates increase.
What you do have are losses or gains of market share within the universe of cigarette sales correlating with increases or decreases in marketing of a particular brand. No marketing philosophy holds or teaches that you can "create" a car buyer, a boat owner, a soda drinker, or a smoker. You can only promote particular brands to consumers already interested in using a product of its type.
<<
And no, they didn't just take it off Hot Rod Magazine and Guns and Ammo... boy, talk about strawman fallacies. They took it out of ALL magazines, including Teen magazines, Rolling Stones, Times, Life, WWF magazines, etc, magazines that kids DID read. >>
I'm 30 years old, and I can guarantee that no cigarette manufacturer has ever advertised in "teen mags" or "Boy's Life" or any minor-oriented publication in my life-time. Kids read Playboy, too, that doesn't make it a kid's publication. By the same logic, anything that a child "might" read, see or hear, should be strictly regulated for their protection, such as the internet, cable television, DVD sales and rentals, CD music, etc. Don't you agree?
It isn't enough that kids "might" read it, what matters is the TARGET audience. And no, Rolling Stone Magazine, Life, Playboy, Hot Rod, Guns and Ammo, Soldier of Fortune, Law Enforcement Tactics and Weapons, U.S. News and World Report, et. al. are NOT targeted towards non-adult readership, though I have no doubt that minors have read these publications. That a minor "may" read it is irrelevant, no less than a minor "may" see something on the internet or cable television that isn't intended for them.
<<
Did you even take your advice of reading through all those court documents as you mentioned earlier? If you had, you would have known that it was discovered that the tobacco company had documents EXPLICITLY stating that the best market is teens, that after the age of 20 or so, the number of smokers that light up is less than 5%. >>
Yes, 18 and 19 year olds. 18 year-olds are adults by any standard. 18 year-olds can legally buy guns in the United States. Not so long ago, the age of consent and maturity was considered to be as young as 15 and 16. My father left home at the age of 14, and was married at 16. This was the "norm" in his generation.
Tobacco no longer markets to these age groups.
Facebook
Twitter