Are Truth ads fair?

Great Debates
41

By the way, I think the larger picture here of what the Truth ads are doing in terms of telling kids that the cigarette companies are manipulating them in order to make money is a very important message. One of the difficulties of trying to reach kids is that you a fighting a battle against companies that are very skilled at portraying smoking as a way for people to rebel.

It is important to make kids realize that this is not rebeling at all but rather playing right into the hands of adults…only of adults who could really give a flying fuck about them rather than adults who actually care about them. In this regard, erislover, I think that Thomas Frank’s book “Commodify Your Dissent” is a very worthwhile book to look at (perhaps more than “One Market Under God”…although I don’t know since I’ve barely looked at this one).

42

Fine, but I only have a finite amount of capacity for shock and outrage (okay, so it’s pretty large, but still finite). It seems to me that it is hardly worth wasting it on some ads that, in order to influence kids not to do something that pretty much everyone agrees is harmful (and thus that they should not…and legally do not…have the option of choosing to do at their age), may give the kids limited information by telling them there are lots of deadly chemicals in cigarettes without also telling them that most of these are probably not found in sufficient quantities to really be harmful, as only a few of them are.

This is truly, truly shocking I say! (Yawn!!!)

43

Except for the fact that truth was after the tobacco companies for lying and/or misleading consumers, eh? I mean, the irony is positively dripping off their soapbox. It isn’t like I’m in DC protesting about how their funds should be revoked. I am not that concerned about it either. But that is the question here, and that is my answer. :slight_smile:

44

**

But they do this by manipulating kids with mistruths for a cause other then money. This is better because?

Marc

45

I do wonder what the ads have done to counteract youth smoking- the ‘hook’ of the Truth campaign is that, well, most of the people who work for them are teenagers. At the beginning of it all they heavily recruited youth leaders though organizations like the YMCA. I think it’s a case of them creating their own monster- a lot of the who work for Truth are so bent on their message and the ‘in your face’ delivery method that they just don’t give a rip about reprisals.

46

(a) For the reasons I’ve mentioned, I hardly think this qualifies as “manipulating kids with mistruths”, at least from the evidence presented thus far.

(b) I personally think that, while ends don’t justify the means, they do matter. So, yes, I find it more abhorrent that one would lie and manipulate kids to make money than that one says things that are I suppose exagerations if taken too literally (which I don’t even think they are very likely to be) in order to get kids not to do things that society as a whole, and in a pretty broad consensus, has deemed to be bad for them and in fact illegal.

By the way, if people here are inflamed about the Truth ads, I imagine that you ought to be positively livid and bouncing off the walls about the anti-drug ads that appeared during the Superbowl. It seemed to me that those were way more deceitful…After all, our tax dollars and surely lots of legal dollars in the world financial system have found their way to supporting drug kingpins and the terrorists they sponsor. (Interestingly, such drug kingpins are not still considered respectable members of society in the way the CEOs of the tobacco companies are!)

47

I assure you, jshore, I cannot possibly hate the drug war any more than I already do.

48

I hate those poorly-directed, “we-so-wanna-be-edgy,” arrogant, obnoxious truth ads. I also hate smoking. No one smokes in my apartment, or in my car. Or in my presence, if I can help it. You come over to my place and want to smoke? Go stand on the balcony. It’s 5 degrees and snowing outside? Too fucking bad.

But everytime I see one of those foul ads, it makes me want to go buy a pack of cigarettes. I’d throw them away unsmoked, but I still have the urge to buy them, just because I hate those ads.

Maybe I’ll pick up a pack next time I’m at 7-Eleven.

Kirk
Smoked a cigarette once… yuck.

49

i haven’t seen a truth ad that is logical and/or scientific.

how about the one with the human sized rat coming out of a sewer with a note saying, “Cigarettes contain cyanide, same as in rat poison.” or something to that effect.

well, if there was enough of it to kill a rat (or as the commercial implies, a human sized rat) in cigarettes, I doubt cigarette smokers would get past 40 or 50 packs before they die.

what pisses me off most is that the ads try to act like Truth is run by radical kids (using tactics akin to the Earth LIberation Front) when in actuality the ads are funded by rich elites with an agenda. I don’t know any early 20 radicals who can afford to put dozens of commercials on a day…

and the biggest point. yes, cigarette companies are no angels. they hid evidence for quite a while. But damn, for the last 30 years or so we’ve known (for the most part) that cigarettes will kill you. There have been warning labels on packs since the 80s I think…

Since the ads are targeting kids, I think it is basically useless. Any kid knows already that cigarettes are harmful, will kill you, etc… I’m 23 and have known my whole life that fact. Yet I have been smoking for a good 7 or 8 years… It is a personal choice, don’t let them fool you.

what pisses me off more nowadays: the Anti-Drug ad that says that if you buy drugs, you may be supporting terrorism. worst propaganda ever? well, no…but worst I’ve seen in a long time.
It is of course based on the fact that Afghanistan has a big opium trade going on… doesn’t specify opium, and since marijuana is the most prevalent drug in our culture, I see the ads as unjustly correlating marijuana with terrorism. so, that hippie with grow lights in his basement is a terrorist? hardly…

The funny thing is, the terrrorists that we are fighting (Al Qaeda) got their money from oil. It would be much more logical/factual to say, “Whenever you fill up your car with gas, you may be supporting terrorism.”

colin

50

No angels? That’s a quite an understatement. These are the men and women who put revenue before human life. Tobacco execs are the people who lied to the public for years about the deadly, highly addictive poison they were peddling to us. They are the people that choose a cartoon mascot to attract a young market; without new users they’d eventually kill off all their existing customers.

The reason that kids know cigs are bad is because of all the anti-smoking publicity. If we shut off the “propaganda” as you called it, the new generations would not be exposed to that knowledge. I think the goal of the “Truth” campaigns and others like it is to not only keep us aware of the dangers of cigarettes but to expedite the day when no one decides to pick up a butt, and Congress has the support to outlaw cigarettes. There is no positive side to cigarettes, they are responsible for health costs that are a drain on global economies, people that aren’t able to quit have to continually increase their usage, and they kill 1000 people every day. Cigarettes are Nazi Germany, and the Truth Ads is “What We Are Fighting For,” the 1943 WWII propaganda film they made every US troop watch, small points are over emphasized, big things are glossed over, but the message is intact: We have an enemy and we must eradicate it. In both cases I think the minor deceptions used to relate that message is necessary and justifiable.

P.S. I also hate the Drug Users = Terrosists ads.

51

Okay, so “no angels” is an understatement. I agree. As a communist I see the tobacco industry as another example of profit coming before human life. But only when certain facts about the dangers are undisclosed (as they were for a long time).
But, my argument was, that nowadays we know the dangers of cigarette smoking. And it certainly isn’t from Truth ads. It is from reputable scientific research. It is from the leaking of confidential tobacco industry documents. I have no problem with propaganda as long as it is factual and not illogically subversive. That is what I see from the Truth ads vs. scientific evidence against smoking that are completely cogent (or as cogent as medical science can be I guess).

Comparing cigarettes to Nazi Germany? Come on… I don’t ever remember reading that Jews/Commies/Handicapped citizens in Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, etc. had a CHOICE in being put in the gas chambers. I don’t recall evidence saying that they PAID to be put in gas chambers. Again, it rests on an accurate disclosure of information, and we’ve had that for decades. When someone goes to buy a pack of cigarettes nowadays, they know it can kill them. They know that, at the least, it is very detrimental to their health. But they choose anyways. Cite evidence that Jews chose to be put into the gas chambers in Nazi Germany. Cite that cigarette smokers are violently coerced into smoking…

I agree that tobacco should be free of chemicals (there are several brands that do not have any additives in them- Winston, American Spirit, Planet, Nat Sherman, etc.). That is just f’ed up. But I don’t think there should be a time when tobacco is outlawed. First off, I don’t believe that prohibition as a tactic works. Education does, and that entails being responsible enough to be factual and honest about the situation. Telling your kids that smoking marijuana will turn them into raping lunatics (ala Reefer Madness) is ineffective (if you even want to stop them from smoking marijuana- now that is madness!) because it is too easily found that the statement is not true.

Secondly, I believe in the right to kill myself. Although the government is against euthanasia and suicide, I personally think we should be allowed to make any choices on our own behalf, regardless of the danger. Like Alister Crowley said, “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law until you violate the rights of another.”

If you are smart you will retort to that by saying, “the drain on our health care system is violating the rights of non-smokers.” This is an interesting and cunning way to counter my point, but I think this too is invalid. Smokers have to pay gigantic premiums on health insurance, especially when related to ailments commonly stemming from tobacco use. And I have seen no evidence pointing to insurance companies going broke. Gauging from my insurance payments vs. what I receive (as a smoker) I think they are making out pretty well still.

colin

52

And in the UK, the tax on cigarettes pulls in more than enough money to pay for treatment of smokers. (See here (an anti-smoking site).)

What is this terrible agenda of the “rich elites”? I thought the “agenda” was just to stop kids from smoking.

53

I get the impression that several of the posters here are pretty young. Cigarettes have had the warning label since the 1960s. I believe there was a warning label previous to that which said that cigarettes may be harmful or something to that effect.

Cigarettes were universally recognized as harmful well before that. The term “coffin nails” to refer to cigarettes goes back to the turn of the century (the last one). It’s not as if everyone was kept in the dark, and it took a 60 Minutes show to uncover some Tobacco Institute documents, and we all said “if only I’d known!”

Also, some earlier quotes suggest that cigarette smoking is going down. Could this be correct? When I was in high school in the 1970s, there were a few kids who smoked, but it was the exception. Now I see kids and it seems like the vast majority smoke. Maybe it’s sample bias, but it sure seems to me that smoking among kids has gone way up.

54

‘Coffin Nails’ is exactly how my grandfather referred to cigarettes - because he said that’s what they called them when he was a kid.

They were definitely using the term at least as far back as 1920, so there was indication, clearly, that cigarettes were harmful. I mean, they don’t exactly call them coffin nails for nothing.

And I really do think that regardless of what the tobacco company puts into the cigarette, or how they market it, the person who makes the decision to light up and take that first drag holds all the responsibility for anything that comes after it.

I’m not going to blame the heroin maker if someone chooses to take that first needle full and become addicted just because the maker knew it was an addictive substance. The conscious choice to use it rests in the person who puts the needle in their arm or the cigarette to their lips.

I knew cigarettes were health hazards, that the possibility exists of my getting cancer from them, and that I could become addicted - and you know what, I chose to smoke anyway. I chose.

Nobody put a gun to my head and a lit cigarette in my mouth and said ‘Inhale!’. I chose.

55

And I think if you walk down the street in a bad neighborhood and get killed, then you…not the person that killed you…should bear full responsibility. After all, he might have done something illegal but it is you who chose to walk down that street when you knew damn well how dangerous it was!

56

That is a good point… and it demonstrates the folly of placing ALL the blame on the smoker. Blame is to be shared by the irresponsible victim and by the persons who induced him to engage in the foolhardy deed.

57

I’m seeing this argument quite a bit, im not picking on joshmaker he just said it best. Lets looks at who else adds addictive substances to thier products:

Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Starbucks…

Sure caffeine is addictive, but is anyone suing coffee and caffinated beverage makers for NOT saying that caffeine is addictive?

According to the logic that the ‘added addictives’ argument uses, I can sue Coca-Cola and my local espresso vendor for not having some massive label on thier product telling me that caffeine is addictive, can lead to sleep deprivation, and occasionally induces some odd behavior. I was a caffeine addict, slamming back a 12 pack of 12 oz. cans, and an espresso around lunch, plus coffee with friends several nights a week. And these corporations were putting an addictive substance in thier beverages and not telling me, so they are evil and should be stopped before I hurt myself further.

I have issues with Truth, they use a stronger form of propaganda than cigarette advertisers use, they harass people at thier workplace (seen the one where they walk around the office building?), and infringe on ones basic right as a sentient being to destroy oneself.
They’ve gone beyond saying “Hey this is bad, you’re ganna screw yourself up if you do it.” and on to “This is bad, so lets not allow anyone to do it.”.

If it matters I don’t smoke, I don’t do drugs, and I’ve cut my caffeine intake back to safer levels.

58

This isn’t the same: murdering me is illegal, but selling me something isn’t.

59

I can clear all this up. Some of you say that the ends do not justify the means. Well, the fact is, they most certainly do. Everybody knows this, they just don’t want to think or say it because it’s not a terribly populare viewpoint to make public.

However, the other fact is that the truth campaign is not working. Or at least you’ll never find any evidence of it -there have got to be dozens of organization claiming that they’re personally reducing teen smoking. (I think most of the thanks rest in the government taxes that makes cigarettes an inefficient means of getting a not so satisfying buzz, sending kids in search of booze buyers and dope dealers in substitute). And don’t give me this “if we can save one child…” crap. Hey, this money is being wasted. It could have gone to the government so they could use it for something useful like… health care.

60

The exposure of the tobacco industry in the 90’s wasn’t new information, it was confirmation of something we had always suspected: cigarettes are significantly more harmful and addictive than they tobacco companies told us or most people believed, and big tobacco is intentionally marketing their poison to kids. This wasn’t always common knowlege to the average first grader.

A quick google turns up a few links:
Reuters: US teen smoking down; alcohol, drug use stable
CNN: Smoking down in 1999 among high school students, CDC says
University of Michigan: Cigarette smoking among American teens declines sharply in 2001

You’re not allowed to drive a car without a seatbelt because you might destroy yourself, wouldn’t that be a violation of this “basic right” you describe?

My final question for this thread is, to all the supporters of the “right to smoke:” Other than because you enjoy them, why should cigarettes not be aggressively propagandized into extinction as the “Truth” ads seem to be promoting. Why would we possibly want to keep cigs around? Sure they taste good, they are relaxing, they are good for social settings, but would you prefer your child growing up in a world with them or without them?