It just seems that all the media are caving in to tobacco to collect on the mandated ad money, but it’s all a sham.
Now they have ads on TV how good Phillip Morris is. Before the settlement, they couldn’t run ads.
Now they buy the backs of magazines saying “Tobacco companies refuse to try to sell to kids”
But inside is one of those hard pages with a mail-in coupon for a free carton. It’s obviously meant just for kids, or it would be a regular coupon. The appeal is to get cigarettes without having to show I.D. and a carton is enough to keep a kid sneaking smokes for a month.
It has to quiet the editorial side of a publication when people are throwing ad money around like that.
If you think about it, those “Philip-Morris: We’re so great, aren’t we?” ads don’t say anything.
“We won’t advertise to kids.” - Is that horrendously subjective, or what?
“No cartoon characters in ads.” - I haven’t seen this done for at least five years anyway.
I just find it difficult to trust a company that says, “Hey, we’re going to fuck our own product and annihilate our profits” just for the sake of a tiny bit of positive publicity. They’ll find loopholes, of course, and exploit them in every way they can.
Yeah, the TV ads are driving me batty. “Oh aren’t we so great? We don’t do this and that anymore!” Well, you ain’t doin’ it because it’s part of the settlement, not because you’re a great company. Sheesh!
The ads about the “philanthropy” of Philip Morris are even grosser. “Oh, aren’t we so great? We give money to battered women’s shelters!” That’s nice and all, but it doesn’t change the fact that you knowingly market a deadly and addictive product to children.
Yeah, and you’re right. Now they are putting their name all over the airwaves, where they couldn’t do that before.
IIRC- Part of the settlement meant that they had to show these ads. Basically describing what the settlement did and what it means to people now.
Again, I’m not positive, I’ll try to find a link. BTW- Have you ever tried a search on this subject? It’d take days to go throught it all.
One final point. Mike Ciresi, one of the lawyers in this mess, and is running for congress here in Minnesota, shared the tobacco settlement with everyone in his office. Everyone, including janitors and misc. staff. My parents next door neighbor were able to buy their house flat out, cash, and make any number of improvements. Just last month the guy put in a three season jacuzzi. Haven’t seen him working much lately…
Did I mention that the guys wife was/is a secretary at that office?
Did I also mention I mowed Mr. Ciresi’s lawn when I was a kid. Huh? My one and only brush with fame. Ohh, wait, I had that bald guy from gymnastics fame ask me to move my feet once when he tried passing my seat at a gymnastics invitational some years back. Oh, and Gene Siskel, I saw him at…