Running Head: A SMOKING EPIDEMIC 1

A Smoking Epidemic

Name

Institution
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Tobacco consumption has increased in the past two decades despite the health warnings and

anti-tobacco campaigns. The reason for the increase in Tobacco consumption is different ways in

which the tobacco industry has tried to convince consumers that smoking is harmless to smoker’s

health. After losing the war of television advertisement in the 1970s where health experts warned

of the dangers of smoking, tobacco manufacturers turned to film advertising which portrayed

tobacco to be friendly, heroic and sexy. The films like Sylvester Stallions’ Rambo that appeal to the

young was used to promote smoking in children. The main actor in Rambo was paid $2m to smoke

in a 90-minute Rambo movie (A Smoking Epidemic, 2019). The moviemakers knew that the film

would appeal to the young therefore, the film would entice the young to view smoking from a

neutral perspective. The young would even associate smoking to the heroism of Sylvester Stallion

in Rambo. Another successful attempt to promote smoking through movies is through the release of

Cartoon character Joe Carmel by the Carmel Tobacco giants. The target of Carmel Company was to

appeal to the young audience and make them tobacco-friendly as they grow up with a likelihood of

converting the young Joe Carmel viewers to adult smoking addicts.

The second attempt by tobacco manufacturers to promote smoking was through convincing

the consumers that smoking is harmful, but tobacco produced in the United States are not as

harmful as portrayed by health organisation. The manufacturers even held a court battle where eight

executives were asked if they included nicotine to tobacco during manufacture. All the eight

executives accepted adding nicotine but denied the fact that nicotine is addictive (A Smoking

Epidemic, 2019). Marlboro also claimed that the groups advocating for harmful nature of second-

hand smoke did not take into consideration of ventilation that played a role in the distribution of

second-hand smoke. The second-hand smoke was reported by health organizations to be more

harmful than first-hand smoke.

The third way the tobacco manufacturing companies lured people into smoking is targeting

women and children in their advertisements. Marlboro realized that they are leaving out over half of
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the potential customers due to taboos that restricted women and children from smoking. The

tobacco industry had to overcome this taboo. The first attempt by Carmel was to associate tobacco

to slimming in women. The result was that tobacco industry grew by 30% by adding women and

children to their customer domain.

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Reference

A Smoking Epidemic. (2019). [DVD] YouTube: Mainland TV.