On a side note, I feel like I’m chasing you all over this board tonight–sometimes for, sometimes against…
Anyway, my point is not so much on the effectiveness of the companies’ actions, although I still maintain that if it didn’t work they wouldn’t do it. My point was more in the attempt. From what I know of the cases, it is pretty clear that they intended to target minors. There’s no real way to know just how effective they were. However, they did target minors in violation of the law, so they pay for it. Maybe it should be reduced if you can get some people up there to say it didn’t work so well, but they still pay.
To make a comparison (which will probably only make things worse, but oh well). If I shoot you, I go to jail for homicide. If I try to shoot you and fail, I go to jail for attempted homicide. I “pay” less for the second one. Nw I’m not trying to draw a paralell between shooting someone and giving them a cig. My point is that if you break the law in trying to do something, and you fail, there’s still a price. It’s a lower price, but it’s still there.
Of course, how you figure that out…well, I’m no lawyer.
So basically this is what it comes down to:
YOU: They attempted to target minors which is against the law. Whether or not they actually succeeded, we can’t prove. However, they probably did to a certain extent, AND they should pay for it. Or, at least, pay for the attempt.
Tell you what, I’ll swap you. I’ll concede this point, IF you concede that the ONLY thing they should pay for legally, is attempting to target minors.
They also pay for lying to the government. This is sort of a different issue, but it’s pretty clear they obstructed justice. I have no idea what the repercussions of that are…money, sanctions, whatever.
You have to include the people who were damaged pre-warning but post-tobacco companies knowing it kills.
I HAVE BEEN SMOKE-FREE FOR:
Three months, two weeks, three days, 12 hours, 10 minutes and 44 seconds.
4340 cigarettes not smoked, saving $542.53.
Life saved: 2 weeks, 1 day, 1 hour, 40 minutes.
Well it looks like everyone has had their say, more or less. I have only one thing to add that I got from reading this thread.
The most obvious example of cig makers marketing to minors is the notorious Joe Camel. It is very obviously intended to appeal to kids (at least to me, and I’ve never met anyone who seriously questioned it).
Yet I’ve been taking the Budweiser frogs-lizards advertising as merely being targeted at the immature. I never even made the connection that this might be intended to have similar appeal as Joe Camel to kids; it certainly comes from the same idiom. My own bias, I guess. Hmmm.
