Note, please, that I used the term ‘anti-smoking zealots’ rather than ‘people who want to discourage smoking.’ I submit that a group proposing that any movie showing tobacco use be branded with an automatic R rating, rather than, say, cracking down on actual kids’ access to actual cigarettes, ought to get used to the zealot tag.
Who shot who in the what now? Who won what? I prefer to ridicule people on accurate grounds, so clarification on this point would be greatly appreciated.
Well, I was fresh out of salmon.
I assume you want me to say “the media,” then bow, chastened and enlightened, to your greater wisdom. On this point, I’ll concede that kids do in fact draw notions of cool and uncool from the media, at least in part. In real terms, how much does “at least in part” amount to?
Huh, I did write that, didn’t I? Yeah, that part is true, and yes, tobacco companies do pay people to put their ads in movies. What I meant to say is that these people feel tobacco companies carry enough clout to rewrite movies strickly to that their products will be placed in them. That’s what I feel is bullshit. When a script says “They fight,” taking $100,000 and having a spaceship crash through a Marlbro Ad does not constitute a rewrite. Heh, my bad. Wording sucked, but the fact remains that smoking is written into scripts long before tabacco companies are approached to sponsor the film, so therefore, the claim that cigarrette companies force movies to change plot/storyline/character for the sole purpose of using their products is bullshit. So there, I’ll admit what I said wasn’t exactly what I was thinking, and that yes, you were right beagledave in that cigarrette companies (and any other company that can afford) will sponsor a movie and ask that they get some recognition in the film. That’s how you end up with people’s uncles and friends in bit parts in films, and where would we be without them.
As for your cites, well, I went searching for some cites of my own to counter your “Advertising is the sole and most influential influence on teen smoking” links, but then I realized, you obviously can do a google search on your own. Just look up stuff like “peer influence on teen smoking,” or “parental influence on teen smoking” and, well, any kind of influence on teen smoking. You’ll find plenty of organizations out there who have “studies proving” that whatever they’re lobbying for is the main influence on the subject matter. Have you been watching television lately? What do all the substance abuse campaigns say? Not “lock your children up and don’t let them be exposed to film and media portraying people smoking,” no, it’s “Parents, talk to your kids, because you’re the biggest influence on their decision to smoke/drink/use drugs.” Need a cite? Fuck off, watch Saturday morning cartoons, or any stretch of television for an hour. Think all that’s based off of inconclusive evidence and random made up facts?
Hmmm…you probably do. See, you’re just as thick headed as I am.
And don’t be so quick to discredit the post in MPSIMS. How do you think all these tests are made? You take a sample of the target, ask them a few (generally vague) questions, and quantify your information. Well, can you think of a better “target sample” than the board? We’ve got members of virtually every race, gender, ethnicity, social class and background. That post is just as legitimate as any mail box survey of five questions about what brands one knows of, and more insightful than most.
Again, thanks for all the nifty quotes, but honestly, I don’t give a shit about that. I admit that advertising works. I have faith in it because it will one day get me a job. But it’s influences on children, especially about such things is very, very little. If a child is constantly bombarded by smoking ads wherever they go, it’s most likely that they live in a society where there’s a high level of smoking anyway. Seeing a fucking Newport billboard everyday on the way to school is NOT as impactful as having a single parent or friend who smokes.
And as for Urban Ranger, how does someone calling you a zealot mean you won? Well, here’s your prize, a nice swift boot to the head…maybe it will help dislodge it from your ass.
Choosing to deliberately misconstrue my post eh? I DID NOT say tobacco advertising was the sole reason for teen smoking choices.
I was actually responding to your assertion (you remember it earlier, right?) that cig advertising serves “only as a prompt” for kids who were already going to smoke, that it plays no role in influencing an actual decision TO SMOKE.
I made no claim that peer pressure or family background plays does not play a role in that decision as well.
The trouble is that at some point, the tax on the drug starts becoming so high that it becomes worthwhile for organized crime to get involved in distribution. In my humble opinion, several states/localities are starting to tread that line right now. If legal cigarettes cost $10.00 per pack, but the guy on the street corner can get them for you for $5.00, pretty soon illegal cigarettes become huge business.
I don’t think we want to go down that path. Keep the price of the drug high, but low enough that organized crime doesn’t get into it. If the profits are high enough, it won’t matter what the penalty for dealing bootleg cigs is.
Smuggling’s already a problem. And one that will continue to grow worse with increased taxation. IIRC, Canada has had to lower the taxes on cigarettes because of smuggling (aided by the tobacco companies). We’ve banned pot, cocaine, and other drugs, and that hasn’t stopped people from doing them, what in the hell makes people think that if we ban smoking entirely, people will quit that as well?
beagledave, I stated that all advertising functions more as a prompt to everyone, not just specifically cig ads and the media’s influence on children. Most of this thing between you and I cmoes from this statement of yours, questioning me
I never claimed product placement didn’t work, I’ve said that I believe it does, but I do not believe that it “significantly influences” a child’s decision to smoke. You keep criticising me on not believing your links, well here’s something from one of your links:
Someone else already pointed this one out, but you casually glanced over it. I studied advertising in college, I’ve worked a bit in the business, and I’ve worked on developing, executing, and annalysing surveys and the like that produce similar results to what your links provide. I know how manipulated and manipulative such things are, the difference is that what your links are set to do are not say “Hey, media influences your children, so adults need to discuss the subject matter because they are a key influence,” they’re designed to say “media influences children to smoke and therefore should be banned/kept in check/censored.” There is a difference.
And again, this is off focus from the theme of the OP anyway, which is that there are people and organizations out there that want to take a two hour film and give it a rating of R if there’s a single scene of smoking in it, regardless of the content of the film. That is fucking ridiculous. The world is not full of mindless fucking automitons that follow everything that the media feeds them. There are free thinkers out there, and a lot more influences on a child’s developement and decision making process than the fucking movies. The people pushing for this form of censorship (whether it be about smoking, drinking, sex, or having sex with pastries) need to step out of the little bubbles they’ve been living in, get out and experience the real world and realize that the world is full of free thinkers with free will, not mindless sheep.
Right. You claim (like the cig manufacturers) that cig ads do not contribute to the decision of someone to smoke…they just contribute to brand loyalty for those who are already going to smoke.
Again, there is plenty of research done that contradicts that position…that links tobacco ad exposure to an increase inthe rate of teen smoking. Of course this does not rule out the role of other factors (including peer smoking). I don’t even need to address those other factors to prove my point. To recap, my point was to disprove your assertion that cig ads do not act as a factor in the decision of a teen to smoke.
I absolutely agree that hanging around friends who smoke…or growing up in a household with smokers is also an important factor, so I’m not sure why you keep trying to “educate” me about that notion.
Again, you made two points early in this thread that I found demonstrably false:
That you disagreed that “Big tabacco companies pay filmakers to put them in to help sponsor their brands.”
(which I think you later retracted or modified)
and
2) That cig ads, including product placement, only serve as a “prompt” for brand loyalty…that they don’t contribute AT ALL to a teens decision to smoke, that the ONLY contributing factors are peer pressure and household environment.
Hell, even the Phillip Morris spokesman (Guy Smith) that I cited earlier admitted cig advertising was a significant factor in the decision process to begin smoking. Are you going to tell me that he is wrong as well?
And again, I never weighed in directly on the part of your OP about restricting movies with smoking content to teens, mostly because you were kind of vague about the specifics. Indeed I said that there was at least a legitimate debate to be had about the role of government in that sort of thing.
These people are the “ONES” that feel they are the arbiters of what is “good and right” in society.
They cross all political boundries, but they are all assholes and hypocrites.
I think they get their start running neighborhood associations, where they get off on telling you your house is the “wrong” brown. (“I got the Power!”)
Y’know, I don’t give a horse’s patoot about the motivation or character of those who want to get smoking out of the movies that kids see.
There’s really only three questions here:
Does smoking in movies affect kids’ decisions to smoke?
Do cigarette makers arrange to get movie characters to smoke?
If the answers to the first two are ‘Yes’, should minors be kept out of movies where the characters smoke?
beagledave, in a first-class job of fighting ignorance, has answered the first two questions with strong cites. So far, we haven’t really addressed the third question. But insulting the character and motivations of those supporting such a restriction doesn’t amount to a hill of beans as an argument against it, Klaatu.
Personally, I think valid cites in this case would be independent sources.
beagledave, your first cite (an Australian site [Quit Victoria]), is replete with references and links throughout. Maybe it’s well researched and maybe it’s not, but it is an obvious ‘biased site’, and therefore is not ‘independent’.
Your second cite (third post) includes 3 links, two are obviously against smoking (thesmokinggun.com whattaname) which is just copies of the cigarette manufacturers internal classified memos produced in the infamous trial which was already won. They say what the cigarette manufacturers intentions were, but are hardly proof of ‘advertising makes you smoke’.
Your third cite is a rag called Education Week (it even has .org in it’s name, woo! woo!) which is just a rehash of a news story:
However, it does not provide a link to the original. Education Week is concerned with education (or should be) and probably is not knowledgeable about the matter. I hardly call that a source.
Your fourth cite is good ol’ JAMA, the Journal of the America Medical Association, itself. Wow, we must bow to it’s logic. Although clearly the most ‘independent’ of your sources, the conclusion is:
A lot of it is gobbledy-gook, but the word to watch is ‘causally’. Even use of the word causal has it’s problems.
Your fourth post, this time with 6 cites is little more than “I’m gonna
tell my mama on you”, or “You didn’t believe me the first time, so this
time I’m gonna snow you with links” kind of post.
[ul]
[li]His first link is to a site called smokefreekids which sells a program to quit smoking:[/li][quote]
No Smoke is now available FREE for individual use, or for organizations wishing to evaluate the program.
[/quote]
, so it is hardly unbiased.
[li]Next, beagledave threatens to turn all of us into the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, created by the founder of Johnson and Johnson (you know Band Aids). I guess he sort of created a need for his product since he was (according to his bio at beagledave’s link, btw) [/li][quote]
The title by which most knew him - General - grew out of his service during World War II as a brigadier general in charge of the New York Ordnance District. He resigned his commission to accept President Roosevelt’s appointment as vice chairman of the War Production Board and chairman of the Smaller War Plants Corporation.
[/quote]
:rolleyes:
[li]His next cite is from the American Lung Association, I think I’ve already let you know about this so-called organization in an earlier post. The thing that caught my eye in this link was the first words or actually a hypenated word “Smoking-related”. Why not Smoking-caused, why not Tobacco-caused. Probably because they don’t know for sure, but it sounds so evil.[/li]
[li]The next link is purportedly to Guy Smith but it looks like someones incomplete term paper. [/li]
[li]His last two links are pro and con about the efficacy of taxes upon teen age smoking, and as such are not really germane.[/li]
[/ul]
So therefore, I say to you, both beagledave and RTFirefly, do not mistake volume for validity
Okey Dokey. I was in a bit of a hurry when I googled that first link. I knew that Sylvester Stallone had signed a product placement deal awhile back…and included the first link I found when I googled it. You don’t like it? OK…then here is the primary source letter
I trust that this is satisfactory in the validity department?
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Damn. Nothing like judging a book by its cover. You DO know that the smokinggun.com is NOT an anti smoking web site, right? The name of the site refers to a slang for “evidence”. It’s a fairly well known web site that has primary source material about famous people or incidents.
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Well, they are going after the 14-24 age range in their product campaigns. Why exactly are they advertising to that range, if not to gain new product users?
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Umm…hello? I didn’t claim it was a primary source…I kind of expected the reader to note the referenced story. Perhaps you chose not to? Are you saying that all cites used on the boards must be primary source cites?
**
So to sum your review of the JAMA bit…it’s “gobbledly-gook” (is that a logical fallacy term as well? :rolleyes: ) You chose to NOT point out whatever logical fallacy there might be in JAMAs use of “causality”…or are you claiming that every use of “causally related” is flawed?
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uh huh :rolleyes:
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It covers the same story as the Ed Week bit…see comments above
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No comment.
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Let me guess, I’m supposed to take your word on a vague un-cited bit about the ALA and a Cal State professor as a reason to dismiss the ALA as a reputable source? :rolleyes:
Not sure what your fascination with the term “smoking related” is all about. The term “smoking-related” is a widely used term in the medical community and in popular media reports. See here
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In retrospect, you’re right. I couldn’t find the primary source online (a book by William E. Bailey)…so I “settled” for that quote.
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They’re not germane to the question of whether cig ads are a contributing factor to teen smoking, they are related to the other question raised in the thread (what, if anything should be done about the rate of teen smoking)
BTW, I also did include a link to research done at Harvard (it was in PDF format). You didn’t mention that link.
My use of the word “independent” was probably not a good choice. I should have used the phrase “distinct sources” to get to my true meaning (my meaning behind “independent” was that the sources were distinct and not related to each other, I can see how it can also mean “without bias”
Anywho…there were 2 intitial points made in the OP and subsequent threads
a) Tobacco companies don’t pay film makers for product placement
b) Cig ads only serve as a “prompt” for people who have already made a choice to smoke…they build brand loyalty. They don’t factor at all in the decision making process of a teen to smoke.
I provided numerous cites (some primary, some that referenced other primary sources) that dispute both of those notions.
I do note that no one has provided cites to the contrary.
whattaname) which is just copies of the cigarette manufacturers internal classified memos produced in the infamous trial which was already won. They say what the cigarette manufacturers intentions were, but are hardly proof of ‘advertising makes you smoke’.