Wendy Waite
English 102
Instructor: Cynthia Hamlett
October 9, 2017
It goes without saying that smoking advertisements are an often-debated topic that often divides opinion. These advertisements are used as a sort of propaganda for the tobacco industry. Marriam-Webster defines propaganda as the spreading of ideas, information, or rumors for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person. For centuries tobacco companies have been using ads with tricky tactics to enhance a teenager’s interest in smoking. When it comes to the Federal Trade Commission, they state that, “advertising must be truthful and nondeceptive…advertisers must have evidence to back up their claims…and advertisements …show more content…
No, there are advertising companies that have perfected the craft at influencing our youth to begin smoking. Advertising agencies utilize all forms of media to produce explicit product images to make a connection with consumers. The use of endorsements and the skills in marketing have proven to increase profits. Surprisingly enough, studies have shown that the youth who do not smoke were more familiar with the tobacco advertisements than the youth who consider themselves to be smokers. But even the nonsmoking youth were affected by the tobacco advertisements. Even though cigarette companies are advertising their anti-smoking messages, they are still having a enormous influence on youth today. Cigarette manufacturing companies spend a whopping $1.06 billion on advertising every year, according to the Federal Trade Commission. A substantial portion of this money is spent targeting young people in the average retail store or shopping mall. In these advertisements, young people are being made to believe that smoking is related to popularity and or relaxation. These ads are quite powerful when compared to the threats from the anti-smoking ads. Many young people today have a sense of being invincible, that the diseases won’t happen to them. The tobacco companies have gotten very good at planning out their targets over the years. They know that an everyone, at some point in time, struggles to be …show more content…
This is a very controversial topic. Various people would claim that young adults start smoking because of the advertisements, but let’s also look at the other reasons. There are many big, tobacco companies like RJ Reynolds who have been sued because of their advertisements. I read an article that discussed how a jury listened to the testimony Lynn Beasly, who is the marketing vice president of the RJ Reynolds tobacco company. The courts believed that the advertisement was directly aimed at youth under the age of eighteen. There were documents from the board of directors stating that they had set a goal to increase their profits. They would accomplish this by targeting youth from the ages of fourteen to twenty-four years old. Lynn Beasly continued by claiming that she did not know how an ad directed toward an eighteen year old would also attract kids under the age of eighteen. She also brought up the fact that the “Joe Camel” campaign is not projected to target kids. These same companies are the ones that say that young smokers are not especially valuable to them. Another interesting fact is that the government is the one making money off of the cigarettes. They make more money than the cigarette company. For instance, “Joe Camel”, a cartoon character was used to sell cigarettes to adults. Cartoons were made for children, weren’t they? Using these characters, who